Light Rail Transit in New Jersey Today

Introduction

New Jersey Transit (NJT) operates three light rail systems in New Jersey.

Two are powered by electricity.  The one in Newark has two lines operating out of the basement of Newark Pennsylvania Station.  The other, the Hudson-Bergen Line, starts as two lines in Bayonne and western Jersey City, meet at the Liberty State Park Station to run together north along the Hudson River where one breaks off to terminate at Hoboken Terminal and the other continues north through Hoboken and turns west using the Weehawken Tunnel (built in 1881-1883 for steam railroads) to end west of the Palisades.   During the week cars also run from here to Hoboken Terminal.  The line is totally within Hudson County but an extension up into Bergen County is planned.

The third system runs on diesel fuel following the Delaware River between Camden and Trenton and aptly called the River Line.

All photographs were taken in October except as noted.

 

 

When I first rode the NJT Newark Light Rail in 1977 it was the one remaining Newark Streetcar Line, called the Newark City Subway, and the streetcars were painted in Bicentennial colors.

They were called PCC cars.  If you are interested in more in formation on this type of streetcar here is a Wikipedia entry.  By 1990 the cars were painted in then standard NJT colors.  This picture is at Newark Pennsylvania Station.

You can see why I called it the basement.  Not only did it perform the station function, the cars were stored there.

Today it is much different in the basement.  It has been renovated into a modern terminal.   A second line has been added.  A storage yard and car maintenance shop has been built elsewhere.  And the cars are modern, articulated Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs).  Here's one in the basement with its destination sign indicating it is headed for the new line.  I rode it out and back.

And here's the car at the end of the new line ready to return.

Here is a car approaching the last station on the other line.  To the left you can see part of the storage and maintenance facility.

The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line serves PATH at two points, Exchange Place and Hoboken Terminal.  This picture at Hoboken Terminal shows an LRV in the light rail station plus two commuter rail diesel engines, the grand old terminal itself with its clock tower, and a surprise I just realized -- the Empire State Building.  The second picture is of the very interesting etched glass bricks that make up one of the wind breaks on the light rail platform.

The first segment of the line opened in April 2000.  Here is a shot of a train arriving at the Marin Boulevard Stop Just south of Jersey City's downtown.

I was taken with the stained glass blocks in the wind brakes.   Here is one of the Bayonne/Staten Island Bridge.

And railroad logos at the Liberty State Park Stop.

But the most surprising were the ones done by grade school students.  Some day Grandmas or Grandpas will bring their grand children to see their name.

I didn't get a chance to ride the River Line this time, but will next time.  All the pictures are from a few hours in the afternoon and evening of one day.  The first thing I noticed is the cars are bigger than the straight electric light rail car.  I say "straight" because the 740 hp diesel engine in the River Line cars turns a generator to power the motors at the wheels.  The ride from one end of the line to the other is over an hour.  The line opened March 2004.

The first picture shows a 2-car train, the first one wrapped for Rutgers University, approaching the 36th Street Stop in Camden.

The diesel is in the middle section.  If it's being worked on here is what you get -- the end units, here parked nose to nose.

Here's a train in downtown Camden at the Rutgers Stop with the Philadelphia skyline on the other side of the Delaware.

One more picture to give you a feel for the size of the beasts.

Now you have something to do the next time you are in New Jersey -- ride light rail!

Central Railroad of New Jersey's Jersey City Terminal Today

Built in 1889, this terminal received trains from Atlantic City and Washington, DC and as far away as Chicago and St. Louis.  But its main purpose was to transfer Manhattan-bound commuters between commuter trains from northern New Jersey to ferry boats for Manhattan.  The timetable for September 27, 1936 shows 132 weekday train departures.  The last train visited in 1967.

The terminal is in Liberty State Park, faces lower Manhattan across the Hudson River, and is about a mile north of Liberty Island.  Today Liberty Island Ferry tickets instead of train tickets are sold at its ticket windows and it serves as a waiting area for those ferries.  This has probably kept it from the wrecking ball.

Using pictures, let me walk you from outside the front of the depot to the back where the trains came in.

From out front of the station's head house, i.e., the waiting room, ticket office, newsstand, and baggage room, the lower Manhattan skyline and the ferry dock dominate.   This shows one of a ferry slip as it was left in 1967 except the roofing between the headhouse and the ferry slips has been removed.  The Liberty Island Ferries do not dock at the original slips.

This shows a slip with the new World Trade Center Towers rising in the background.

When you turn around you see the head house.  The building is in the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

When you enter the front doors looking through the head house you can see the gates for the trains through the doors and windows at the far end.  The people are waiting to go through security to board a ferry for Liberty Island.  The clock is correct except in is on Standard Time instead of Daylight Savings Time.

Walking through the head house and turning around this is the scene looking east.

This shot is in the Concourse, the area between the head house and the gates to the trains.  Portions of the movie Funny Girl was filmed at the terminal.  In the clip from the movie listed at the end of this essay, Barbara Streisand runs across and sings in this long room years after the trains actually stopped running.

Here is one of the gates.

These are two bumper posts for two now virtual tracks.  The train shed has become a natural botanical garden.

The north side of the train shed has an outdoor track.  Centered in the picture is the north end of the Concourse.

Here is the west end of the Bush-type train shed where the trains came in and passengers detrained or boarded.  The station had about 16 tracks.  The people are headed from the parking lot (left) where the tracks that led to the station to the head house for the Liberty Island Ferry.

The Barbara Streisand  clip from Funny Girl shot partially in the Terminal years after the trains stopped running is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_g3kkGH8Mo

Side Note

To the north of the head house is a 9/11 memorial.  These two pictures are self explanatory.

 

Note:  Wikipedia supplied many of the facts in this essay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Railroad_of_New_Jersey_Terminal

Each of Our Visitors Is Our Student, and Each of Us Is Their Teacher

This is an article I wrote for the Orange Empire Railway Museum's Gazette, their monthly newsletter, while I was in residence there last spring as a full-time volunteer.  It was an effort to help them along the road from being a club to being a museum.  I am a member.  I have added a few comments of clarification in square brackets and italics.

That is what we promised when we accepted Section 501(c)(3) non-profit status five decades ago. The people allowed our donors to receive a tax deduction (our life blood) and gave us a few other benefits, such as no property taxes and reduced postage on Gazette mailings. In return we committed to being a teaching institution. Our artifacts of Southern California railway heritage became the people’s and we promised to teach them about that heritage. Ever since the people bestowed upon us our non-profit status, we have been the custodians of this collection for the public’s benefit and we have worked hard to take care of it, but how are we doing in our commitment to teach them about it?

A visitor spends a few hours here. Does he or she leave realizing we have an operating signal system? Did the visitor learn anything about it? Yes, the signal garden could be a teaching tool, but falls short. So is our signaling system merely a hobby of a few guys with no larger value to society?

If a visitor is not at least 60, he or she could not remember streetcars running in a Los Angeles street. When I’m in the Ballash Carhouse (1), I get questions about the buses [it's a barn full of Los Angeles street cars and work cars]. When our guests leave here can they picture a streetcar running down a street connected to a 600V DC overhead wire? If they can’t, we have let them down.

When visitors stand next to our Southern Pacific “U-Boat” U25B [General Electric diesel engine] to have their picture taken is a member explaining the basics of a diesel-electric locomotive to them? They probably know trucks have diesel engines, that electricity comes from a wall plug, and that a motor runs their kitchen mixer. Who is explaining that they are standing in front of all that?

We have the instructional tools in our magnificent collection. We operate trains and do some teaching during the ride, we have a weekday docents program, we have a charter program, and we have a web site; but show and (a little) tell is only one level of teaching.

We will have a library and, of course, preservation of our achieves is extremely important.  But the typical visitors walking through the front gate will not (thank God) spend an hour digging through our old documents to teach history to themselves.

Today, it is far more necessary to educate the public about rail transportation. Fifty years ago, essentially everybody who came through our gate had ridden a train, a streetcar, and/or an interurban. The opposite is true now and most of our guests have never ridden on these modes of transportation. Thus the opportunity we have to teach, the knowledge gap we have to fill, and the possibility to spread our love for railway artifacts is nearly infinite.

I never quote scripture but one line from Luke keeps going around in my head as I write this. “No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, that those who come in may see the light.”

We have hundreds, maybe a thousand lamps under baskets. I have pointed out only three — the signaling system, streetcar vs. bus, and the operation of a diesel locomotive. How many of our visitors are taught that we run on three track gauges and the historical reasons why? How many leave knowing what a track gauge is? We all can add many things to this under-the-basket list, but Randy [the newsletter editor] has only so much room in the Gazette... Well, one more, my favorite hidden artifact, the puzzle switch, so well hidden under its basket that many members don’t know what an interesting piece of simple engineering it is.

If every volunteer took the time to turn over just one basket, this place would meet its commitment. It comes of no surprise that good teaching is difficult, but it is extremely rewarding. Some explanations may require interactive displays. And yes, I know, it is more fun to operate trains, to put that final touch of paint on a PCC, or to work on the dream of Emma Nevada [a beautiful 3-foot gauge steam engine] running again. But all that constitutes only the beginning of our commitment to educate. To paraphrase a song: “These little lights of ours, we need to let them shine. Let them shine all the time. Make them shine.”

A much smaller railway museum in Snoqualmie, Washington has taken its teaching obligation quite seriously. A few years ago they hired a full-time educator. She has implemented an excellent set of teaching programs and is well on her way to becoming a very good curator. She is turning over their baskets.

As a member I helped her with an important one last summer. I put a railing in the cab of their articulated logging steam engine so visitors could have access instead of looking through a cab window. She also labeled all major components inside and out. I think you ought to clone her then each give her significant help turning over a basket of your choice.

As I complete my third winter here in the desert with you, I want to sincerely thank you. I have had the opportunity to look under your baskets. You have so much to teach the next generations, as you promised to when they bought in half a century ago. Good luck teaching the details of the contribution each of your artifacts made to the development of Southern California. Teaching is rewarding. You impart a little of yourself, your knowledge and love of trains, into your students.

I’ve been on the west coast for four years. Long enough! Trains and museums on the east coast call. But my intent is to come back some winter, if you’ll have me.

A Grand Observation Car You Can Ride, I Did

The Rio Grande Scenic Railroad of Alamosa, CO has a wonderful observation-lounge car from the Illinois Central Railroad.  The diamond drumhead on the rear reads City of New Orleans, the streamliner immortalized in the Steve Goodman folk song.  The train was inaugurated by the Illinois Central (IC) on April 27, 1947 as a day train running each way between Chicago and New Orleans with the Panama Limited running on an overnight schedule.  Amtrak now runs the City of New Orleans as an overnight train.

The car is the Mardi Gras.  Lets walk through her from the blunt end to the round end via the next three pictures.

Mardi Gras is one of two observation lounge cars rebuilt by the IC from older coaches in 1947 for use on their new City of New Orleans. The cars ran on the City until late 1968, before being retired and sold.  It passed through many hands, all of them caring, before arriving at her current home.

I rode in her round trip on May 27, 2012 from Alamosa in the San Luis Valley to the village of La Veta in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains -- a wonderful day trip.

Across from her bar/cafe mid-car is this stinning etched glass mirror.

And she still contains her built-ins.

As a Chicago boy I really appreciated this poster.

Some shots out her back windows.

And, as promised, a sing-along on the return trip.  When I rode I didn't know who the guy to the right in the light blue shirt leading the sing along was.  He's Ed Ellis and I was sitting in one of his many passenger cars on one of many of his railroads.  Ellis is the CEO of Iowa Pacific Holdings -- a modern-day railroad magnate of the good sorts.

And to top that, the train was pulled by a steam engine seen here turning around at La Veta.

A most pleasant day, lunch included.
The end.

See: https://flic.kr/p/R9TZG1 for more technical detail.

P.S.:  Here is a photo of the car shot by Roger Puta in 1988 when it was owned by the Roanoke NRHS's.

A Model T With a Built-in Turntable

The two-foot gauge Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway Museum in Alna, Maine has one of the most unique rail cars anyplace.  The front end, including the engine, is Model T Ford.  The remainder is homemade to resemble other railcars.

So here you are riding down the 2-foot wide tracks on a beautiful summer day in the Maine woods about 50 miles northeast of Portland.

What do you do when you get to the end of the line?  From the middle of the car you crank down the turntable as this young lady is doing.

When you have the wheels off the tracks ...

... you rotate the car.  Note the turntable.

And you head back to the station.

And when you get back, you turn it on its turntable for the next trip.

Here are a couple more pictures.  In the first the Museum's steam engine is passing.  In the second you can see the raised turntable.

File this under fun with big boy toys.

For more on the steam engine please see my blog posting on my favorite Maine 2-foot steam engines.