by Steve Hepler
Sixty years ago – May 9, 1965 – was the day that the Morris County Central Railroad ran its first revenue passenger train from Whippany to Morristown and return. That day was the culmination of nearly five years of planning and hard work by Morris County Central founder and president Earle Gil and his dedicated group of volunteers. On that sunny Mother’s Day six decades ago, nearly 1,500 people came to Whippany to ride the MCC excursion train, the first standard-gauge, steam-powered preservation railroad to operate in New Jersey.
In an article entitled “SR IN STEAM!” published a year later in the May 1966 edition of Trains Magazine, author and famed rail photographer, the late Don Wood noted, “There was… a certain style and dash to a Southern Railway steam locomotive…” He also wrote, “SR 2-8-0 No. 385, a Baldwin graduate of 1907… would have vanished too, but for a New Jersey aerospace technician named Earle R. Henriquez-Gil.” The locomotive was a classic, early 20th Century 2-8-0 “Consolidation” H-4 Class, fast-freight engine. “Now Mr. Gil is a very practical sentimentalist. He purchased, re-tubed and converted to oil, the 385 to do what a steam locomotive, especially a pretty one, should do: operate. He acquired four Jersey Central coaches and a Pennsy cabin car for a consist.”
ABOVE: Morris County Central steam locomotive No. 385 and Morristown & Erie GP15-1 diesel No. 25 pose together at Whippany Station, May 18, 2025. —Steve Hepler
Wood concluded his four-page photo essay on 385 and the MCC with these words: “It is reasonable to assume that Gil could have attracted many riders in the steam-starved East by firing up the most spartan of a contractor’s Vulcan 0-4-0T. Still, we like to think that at least a measurable number of his customers descend upon Whippany purely for the attraction of No. 385. These pictures say that would be reason enough.”
While the Morris County Central Railroad ceased operations at the end of 1980, the Whippany Railway Museum has persevered, and over the decades has saved several key pieces of Morris County Central equipment…
