Following a 25-year career at what was formerly known as RCA (currently, the Sarnoff Corporation) — including his part in the development of a significant part of the television, the electron gun — one would think Roger Alig would focusing on kicking back in his retirement.
But in his retirement, the West Windsor resident finds himself not only as an adjunct professor of physics at Rider University, but as an active participant in community organizations, including the West Windsor Bicycle and Pedestrian Alliance.
And now he has used his hobby to help others. He has created a guide for the Trolley Line Trail to be posted on the D&R Greenway Land Trust website so that other residents and visitors might enjoy the same trails he frequents with his wife.
Upon his retirement, Alig said he was looking for ways to get involved and joined Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh’s bicycle and pedestrian task force, which eventually led to the creation of the WWBPA. As he explored more of the area’s trails, he logged onto the D&R Greenway Land Trust website and began clicking on the links to the area’s trails, which contain maps and guides, and noticed that trails were missing for West Windsor and most of the eastern part of the county.
So, he began working on guides for the two trails for which he was familiar — one for Etra Lake Park in East Windsor and the other for the Trolley Line Trail, a two-and-a-half mile straight, paved pathway between Rabbit Hill Road and Penn Lyle Road that lies under the PSE&G power lines.
Now, with the trail guide complete for the Trolley Line Trail, Alig says the D&R Greenway Land Trust is currently reviewing the guide for inclusion on its website. “I mostly just walked the trail to identify where the details were,” and then added the information into his notes, Alig said. “I did it pretty much on my own.”
Alig’s guide describes the areas the trail traverses in West Windsor, and includes the history behind the Trenton to New Brunswick Fast Line electric trolley, which was in service between 1907 and 1937. “The trail passes through West Windsor Community Park, as well as the West Windsor Community Waterworks swimming pools and the West Windsor Community Skateboard Park,” Alig writes in the guide. “Elsewhere, the trail passes behind many residential areas, beside undeveloped wetlands, and crosses Big Bear Brook.”
The guide also directs visitors who may be unfamiliar to the area about how to get to the trail through Bernt Midland Boulevard from Route 571. He also advises users to be cautious with regard to the PSE&G power lines that run alongside the trail.
At one point, the trail heads over the Pig Town Bridge over Big Bear Brook, where a plaque provides history about the Fast Line Trolley. Pig Town was the trolley stop at Route 571, Alig wrote. “Orson Welles is reported to have used a trolley schedule to choose Grover’s Mill for the site of the 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’ radio drama,” Alig wrote. “Later the tracks were removed and PSE&G installed the power lines. The upper structure of the bridge across Big Bear Brook was removed along with the trolley line track.” Then, in the 1980s, West Windsor built the Community Park, and the bridge was erected in 2007 using the old abutments, Alig explains.
Using Community Park as a common point, the guide takes people along the 2.5-mile trail from north of Community Park, through the park, and then off to the south. In the north, the trail begins at Rabbit Hill Road, about 100 feet from the road’s intersection with Cranbury Neck Road, and passes between the Kings Mill and Brookshyre residential areas and through the wetlands along Big Bear Brook, he writes. The trail heads over the Pig Town Bridge and through Community Park, passes through the playgrounds and ball fields, and leads to the intersection with Route 571, eventually crossing with South Mill Road. The trail ends at Penn Lyle Road, midway between Cedar Court and Village Road West.
Alig also includes information about crosswalks and other details users could use in heading out on the trail themselves, and he lists future paths and bicycle and pedestrian initiatives expected to be undertaken to provide more connectivity in town.
A fan of walking and bicycling his whole life, Alig grew up in Indiana, earning his undergraduate degree at Wabash College in Indiana and then his PhD in physics at Purdue. His mother was a lawyer and his father was a coal miner. He moved with his wife to East Windsor when he was hired at RCA. They lived in East Windsor for 10 years, until they moved to West Windsor. They currently live on Landings Lane, close to the trail.
At RCA, Alig helped develop what is known as the electron gun, which creates electrons and accelerates them at a very high speed inside the cathode ray tube (CRT) — a big glass tube used in most televisions — to aim the electrons at the screen, where they light up the phosphor to produce an image.
He and his wife, Marcia, have three children, all of whom went through the WW-P school district and who now live throughout the United States, and their entire family has been involved with running, hiking, or biking in some way, he says.
His daughter was involved in the cross country program in West Windsor, and one of his sons ran last month in a half-marathon, where he placed third in his age group. And Alig and his wife do a lot of running themselves, including on the Trolley Line Trail. “At age 62, my wife discovered she had a talent,” Alig says of her running hobby, which she began doing just a few years ago.
The couple both have a history of hard work and community activism. His wife works for the Compassionate Friends, based in Illinois. The organization is a self-help group for people who have lost children, and the issue is familiar to Alig and his wife, who lost their oldest son in a school bus accident in East Windsor years ago.
“When you lose a child, chances are you don’t know anyone else who has that experience,” he said. His wife’s involvement with the organization began 25 years ago, when she started a local Community Action Center, part of the organization, and even served president of the national organization for a few years. Now, she is employed by the organization from home.
For Alig, it will be rewarding to enable others to use the Trolley Line Trail, hopefully with the help of the trail guide he has developed.
Alig says the trail is ideal for all age groups, as the park traverses Community Park, where there are tennis courts and playgrounds and many other activities that those who take the trail can enjoy. And there are pedestrian-friendly improvements on some of the roads the trail traverses. But “it mostly takes you through the residential areas of town, so it’s secluded but it’s still in the community,” Alig explains.
“I enjoy doing it, and I think others would enjoy it if they knew what to do,” Alig says.
