I was bored and came up with a fantasy rail map of the East New Jersey area using defunct rail lines and existing highway/road easements. Some of the elements I included in the map, like the Northeast Corridor, the Raritan Valley Line, the North Jersey Coast Line, the Staten Island Railroad, and the Raritan Bay-NYC ferries already exist.

What I was interested in making a depiction of is things like bringing back the Seashore Line of the Central Jersey Railroad in northern Monmouth County on the Raritan Bayshore, which is now leased to the park system for use as the Henry Hudson Bike Trail, but still retains the option to resume service along what would be a pretty popular route... this line met the ocean by crossing from Highlands to Sea Bright at Sandy Hook and continuing down Ocean Avenue next to the seawall to Long Branch and beyond.

The Toms River Railroad also had a branch to Stafford through Waretown and Barnegat in Ocean County that is now the Barnegat Branch Bike Trail but can be returned to service to provide Toms River and south along Route 9 rail... preferably a line that connect to a bridge over to Long Beach Island, which floods enough to make this map truly a fantasy... unless anyone knows of suitable light rail or tramway or whatnot that can service a flood-prone area.

The Middlesex-Ocean-Monmouth (MOM) Line is a real proposal NJ Transit has studied and considered that you can read about, so I just depicted my version of it which actually would connect to Burlington and Union Counties, too... but mainly it would follow the Route 9 corridor, which could desperately use a rail line. Continuing down to Stockton University with a new Great Bay Bridge at the birthplace of the Jersey Devil (Leeds Point) would allow connection to Atlantic City and Philadelphia through a southern pines route.

Anyway, this is my first post here, but not technically since the last time I was here, this was no train forum, and it wasn't a furry forum either, lol. rip