Walking the Old Boonton Line – Book Talk and Signing

The Old Boonton Line of the Erie Railroad is the proposed route of a paved bike path that will stretch from Montclair to Jersey City. Wheeler Antabanez (Writer, Photographer, Weird NJ Correspondent) walked the rails one last time before the tracks disappear. After reaching the Hudson River Waterfront, Wheeler took to the sky in a helicopter to capture aerial photos of the New Jersey landscape he had just traversed.

Formerly part of the New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad, the abandoned Old Boonton Line of the Erie Railroad runs through; Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, Newark, Kearny, Secaucus, and Jersey City. His book is a marker for the winter of 2021/2022, the last moments when the Old Boonton Line was still perfectly abandoned, wild, and free.

Antabanez will show selected images and discuss this journey and his broader career as an explorer of NJ’s urban edges.

Wheeler Antabanez has been walking the fringes of literature and photography for over 20 years with his often controversial dispatches from the New Jersey underworld. Specializing in abandoned buildings and an expert on the highly polluted Passaic River, Wheeler flushes out hidden beauty from the devastation and decay of our urban environment. Wheeler is best known for his role as a correspondent for Weird NJ Magazine and is the author of numerous books. Walking the Old Boonton Line – A Photographic Journey on the Abandoned Rails of New Jersey is Wheeler’s latest release.