Metrotrails Then and Now Series: Historic 1910 postcard image in Stockton, New Jersey from the Shane Blische collection, featuring the Belvidere Delaware Railroad station and the Stockton Rubber Co mill to the right.
The first station at this site was a one story stone structure built by the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad in 1852.
The Bel-Del originally designated the station as "Centre Bridge", for the nearby crossing of the Delaware, but changed the name to Stockton in 1867. The original station was replaced with a larger mixed stone and wood station building by the Pennsylvania Railroad after its takeover in the early 1870s. That building would be destroyed in an explosion set off by dynamite from an attempt by robbers to break open a safe containing quarry workers' pay rolls in November 1894. The station we see today was the borough's third incarnation built in 1895.
Stockton station was a combined passenger and freight depot like many on the Bel-Del line.
The local station agent was eliminated in 1958, and passenger service continued to the site until 1960.
The station was sold off, and hosted several businesses over the years. Today, it is a splendid convenience store and deli.
The Stockton Rubber mill originally began as the Stockton Cycle Manufacturing Company around 1895 which produced bicycles. Patrons as far as Trenton would hop on the train to purchase their products. The bicycle factory eventually closed, sold, and reopened as the Stockton Rubber mill, which operated until a disastrous fire around 1927 completely burned the facility to the ground. The rubber mill mostly made tires. The bicycle factory-turned-rubber mill was a railroad customer during those 32 years, receiving coal for its boilers and rubber gum for the process of rubber tire manufacturing. During its time as the bike factory, bikes were shipped out by boxcars.
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