Woodbury Train Station Part II

Having become a local history buff after moving to Woodbury, I was really honored to be working on the Train Station. Not only did G.G. Green's endeavors, both financial and personal, find their epicenter here, but it was the site of whistle stops by by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, W.H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson (both as Gov. of NJ, and as Presidential candidate) and many others

It was the site of an historic train wreck, in 1904, that had farmers and their families coming to town for weeks to view the wreckage. The wreck happened just past the station, which cand be seen in the upper right of the photo.

The train station richly deserved restoration, and credit must be given to the Woodbury Old City Restoration Comittee (WORC), whose efforts led to the matching grant funding from the NJ Historic Trust, that made the project possible, and to Shirley Sharkey, whose alliterative name was a source of endless fascination to my metronomically named daughter, Emma Nevada. Shirley acted as liason between the committee and the construction crew, and always impressed us with her efficiency and charm, as well as her dedication to the project.

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Our first order of business was structural stabilization. Some rafters needed to be replaced, some needed to be braced, others sistered, in order to straighten the roof and prepare it for the considerable weight of the new slate roof. The slating itself was performed by a local roofing company, pro bono, as I recall, which was a very generous contribution.

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The first floor was most in need of structual repairs. Slogging about in muck, we dug footings for the posts that would support a new main beam down the center, then sistered or replaced all of the floor joists.

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The bottom two courses of clapboards were carefully removed, and a new pressure-treated sill was installed around the whole perimeter. Any wall studs which had rotted were cut back to where they were healthy, and a new cripple securely attached. The new sill plate was atached to the new joists, making the entire structure of the main building integral and sound. This would prove to be invaluble later on, as you will see.

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The station is constructed in what is known as the Eastern Stick Style, and the posts going around the platform and apron, though they don't look like much, support a considerable amount of weight.

They had settled unevenly, and the part of the job that Don K.(the other carpenter on the job) and I were dreading was the digging of the individual footings tthat had been specified by the architect: 30" wide 4 foot deep, with sonotube and a rebar cage in each. Well, it was actually the digging we were dreading, the rest was a breeze.

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One day this big guy wandered up, looking much like Lurch from the Addam Family, and asked if we had any work for him. We looked at each other, and then at him, and said, "Well, we need some holes dug," To which he said"

"I know how to work a shovel."

in a voice that matched his appearance. So we said "leave us your name and number" and he wrote out on a piece of paper what looked to us like Don Husker. His name was actually "Hasher" but I call him Husker to this day, because Don K. and I were so excited by the idea of someone else digging the holes, that for days, our cries of "Husker DU!" could be heard by curious passersby.

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After clearing his hiring with the office, Husker showed up the next day. We saw him coming down the street a block and a half away, swinging what appeared to be a child's lunch box in his hand, that turned out o be a small Igloo cooler. We showed him what we needed, gave him a shovel and a pick, and went back to our work inside. 20 minutes later, he came inside and asked, "Where d'ya want the next one?" Skeptical, we went outside to show him what we REALLY needed, and found a perfect hole, perfectly centered, that looked like someone had magically extracted a 55 gallon drum from the spot.