Royal Blue Line - passenger service to Jersey City

B&O service thru Philly to Jersey City ended sometime in the 1950's. What year did it end ?

How did the B&O market its service against the electrified Pennsy with tunnels to Manhattan ?

Frankly, I am surprised that the service lasted as long as it did !

Thank you
SEPTA FAN

Septa Fan,

B&O service to Jersey City ended in April, 1958. Though B&O obviously fought a losing battle against Pennsy all along, they put all their stakes on quality vs. quantity, but the desire to get to/from NYC in a downtown terminus ASAP won out in the long run. You may or may not know that during and after WWI, B&O had service to downtown NYC at Penn Station as stipulated by the U.S.R.A., which if I recall correctly, ended in 1924, surprisingly, when you consider how bitter the competition was between those two roads.

You can get a copy of Herbert Harwood's book, Royal Blue Line, published in paperback by Johns Hopkins University Press from the Company Store of the B&ORRHS at the link below with my signature.

Septa Fan wrote:
How did the B & O market its service against the electrified Pennsy with tunnels to Manhattan ?

Class,that's how. Well, maybe they didn't market it that way, but that's what it amounted to. While the Big Red Fleet of the PRR was certainly efficent and had more frequent service, it didn't have the ambiance of the B&O's trains. Even with the 'inconvienace' of the ferry ride from Jersey City,people who liked to ride the train to NYC would always take the B&O. My father and his associates never took the PRR until they had to after the B&O stopped passenger service.

I was under the impression that the B&O operated a private bus connection to meet trains in Jersey City and take passengers to various midtown Manhattan destinations...

-otto-

They did operate buses to NYC via the CNJ's ferry boats. There is footage of these buses in one of Mark I Productions Vignettes of the CNJ series.

Otto Vondrak wrote:I was under the impression that the B&O operated a private bus connection to meet trains in Jersey City and take passengers to various midtown Manhattan destinations...

-otto-

Herb Harwood's book, that I reference above, covers the bus service you mention.