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WALDWICK -- The NJ Transit locomotive slowly nosed into the little rail yard here at 3:15 p.m. Monday, pulling behind it six passenger cars with darkened windows. Its arrival was nothing special, except that it marked the quiet continuation of a tradition that started 126 years ago, back when the yard first made it possible to travel directly from Jersey City to Chicago, and Waldwick was a loose collection of wooden shacks.
For all those years, a stubby little tower stood watch over the tracks. When it was built in 1890 the Waldwick switching tower was the air traffic control center of its day, packed with the latest technology to control train movements and affording operators a commanding view of the tracks, said Glenn Corbett, vice president of the Waldwick Historical Society. The building was abandoned by NJ Transit in 1986 and deteriorated rapidly until the early 2000s, when the society started to refurbish it.
The project is finally done. It cost $200,000 and took 15 years. That's a lot of effort for a tiny building that most people...