From The New York Times:
PRINCETON, N.J. — The run of the train known as the Princeton Dinky is both impressively long and unusually short. For 145 years, this rail link in a college town has ferried students and commuters over the briefest of distances. But Year 146 has not been kind to the nation’s shortest regularly scheduled commuter route, which travels a four-minute, 2.7-mile stretch of track between a small station at Princeton University and a larger one at Princeton Junction.
For one thing, New Jersey Transit, which operates the train, has raised Dinky fares and cut off-peak service, much as it has done with other trains and buses in these tight economic times. It has also consulted with local and university officials on a proposal to pave over the Dinky’s tracks and install a bus system that would extend through the whole town. Such a system, supporters say, could reach more people, run more frequently than the Dinky and even ease a dispute that has long delayed the establishment of a university arts complex.
But if these are the Dinky’s final days, one might not immediately sense it from riding the train. On a recent weekday morning, most of the seats in the Dinky’s one open car were filled with commuters sharing newspapers and conversation.
Robert Gibbs, 57, walked down the aisle, taking tickets and chatting with riders. (“How’re you doing?” “All right, got breakfast.” “Good, good.”) Mr. Gibbs first worked on the Dinky 25 years ago as a trainee conductor, with his most recent stint beginning two years back. “It’s a seniority job, mostly,” Mr. Gibbs said, his blue conductor’s cap pulled snugly over his bald head. He hopes to work on the Dinky until his retirement, in 2015.
Audra Sbarra, a talkative social worker wrapped in a bright pink coat, looked up to greet Mr. Gibbs and then, referring to the Dinky, said: “There’s nothing else like this. It’s a minitrain, it’s so cute.” Behind her, a couple discussed Shakespeare.
On weekends, the Dinky’s customers include more students and families, but the train retains some of its weekday communal spirit.
“You can start talking to anybody, because you know you’ll be off in three minutes,” said Kelley Taylor, a Princeton junior who was returning to campus on a recent Sunday from a class trip to the Guggenheim Museum. Ms. Taylor said she was “highly opposed” to replacing the little train with a bus.
The Dinky’s interior, with its fake wood paneling and vinyl seats, is hardly romantic. Nor is the view from its windows, which reveals a second line of rails, abandoned in 1955, in the undergrowth along the train’s right of way. That sight serves as a reminder of the golden days, when the route had two busy tracks.
Football was one factor in the train’s decline. When Ivy League games were more popular at the turn of the 20th century, the PJ&B (Princeton Junction and Back) line, as the Dinky was then known, carried tens of thousands of fans into Princeton for grudge matches against Harvard and Yale. There was also much fanfare on the line in 1913, when Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural voyage to the White House began at Princeton Station. Albert Einstein rode the train into Princeton, too, and John Nash, the mathematician of “A Beautiful Mind,” still does.
“If someone knows the Dinky, then they know Princeton,” said Lynn Harper, 29, a Baptist minister who runs a side business selling T-shirts emblazoned with the tiny train’s image.
Townspeople keen to preserve the train have flocked to a “Save the Princeton Dinky” Facebook group. In less than a month, the group has attracted about 4,400 members. Some of them are moved by nostalgia for the Dinky and others by practical concerns, like the difficulty a bus system would face in staying on time while navigating the often-crowded streets of Princeton.
“Service has changed a lot over the last decade,” said Marc Monseau, 43, one of the administrators of the Facebook group. But with the bus, he said, “you’re replacing a reliable, comfortable service with something that is very much unproven.”
Marvin Reed, the chairman of the master planning subcommittee of Princeton Borough and the most vocal proponent of the bus plan, will face Dinky supporters at a meeting of the borough planning board early next month.
“If people get engaged in the process, then on balance I’m hoping that they’ll see that this is a way of progressing toward something better for Princeton,” said Mr. Reed, a former mayor of the borough.
The bus makes sense in transportation terms, he said, but he argued that it would also allow the borough and the university to sidestep their long impasse over the school’s planned arts complex. The university wants to move the Dinky station 460 feet farther south to make room for the complex, but the borough is resisting that idea because it would make the station a longer walk from town. The stakes are large: The complex will be financed partly with a $101 million gift from Peter B. Lewis, an insurance executive — the largest donation Princeton has ever received.
The final decision on the Dinky’s fate lies with New Jersey Transit.
Penny Bassett Hackett, a spokeswoman for the agency, said in an e-mail message that New Jersey Transit had originally proposed that the bus system operate alongside the Dinky. But both town and university leaders said that approach was impractical.
If the Dinky does shut down, all sides agree, the region’s rail system would lose one of its more idiosyncratic links.
“The Dinky brand says authentic Princeton — it has stories and memories,” Ms. Taylor said. “It’s not just a bus that you take somewhere.”
A version of this article appeared in print on May 15, 2010, on page A17 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/nyreg ... urnal.html
