Erie Northern Branch (Northern Railroad of New Jersey)

A plan to move a historic train station and convert it into a visitors center and museum was heavily criticized by residents last night.

Speakers said it would be a historical inaccuracy and increase unwanted tourism in the small riverfront village.

"Piermont is in danger of losing its authenticity," said Elyse Knight, who has lived in the village eight years. "What we need to do is to keep that where it is."

Close to 70 residents and members of the village board gathered at Village Hall to hear a presentation by the Piermont Station Historical Society on the future of the train station. It included a brief history and recommendations on the site's use and accessibility.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/ ... useum.html

Does anyone besides me remember, or have pix of trains
X201 or X202, the Hoboken-Sparkill pass equip. deadhead trains
that ran from late 1965 thru Oct 30, 1966?

Thx

Beth

There is a thread on the New Jersey Railfan forum where a Member reports that in the mid sixties he lived in Closter and saw ribbon rail being laid on the Northern Branch. He says that the EL believed it could get government money for commuter improvements, and that when that didn't happen the EL removed the ribbon rail and put stick rail back. Here's a link to the thread; the thread is long. The poster who remembers this is pdtrains. The first post on the second page has details of the ribbon rail trains. Ribbon rail on the Northern
Anyone have any more information on this? Why would the EL have done this?

Actually, what's said here isn't exactly what happened....
Sorry if I gave you any wrong ideas....

The ribbon rail was dropped along side the ROW, from
Palisades Park to Closter. It was never installed.
New rail installation started down on the east end...and
that was all stick rail. As mentioned before, there was
never any intention to put in ribbon rail east of Palisades
Park, as far as I know.

As for the EL's intent....Talk that I heard on the EL was that it was
that either..
1) the Northern was going to be test bed for improved service,
which I'm guessing meant passenger service, or
2)It was some kind of tax dodge.

Just as an aside, I was told that the EL did test eliminating the KW to Bergen Jct back up move by running passenger trains
to Hoboken...thru bergen tunnel, past Erie Grove st tower,
which was still in service at the time, at up the "Hill" to
18F at Hoboken (freight) yard. As far as I can tell, this still might have
involved at backup move of 1 train length at the top of the hill;
IIRC, the hill track went straight into hoboken yard, and there
was no crossover to the Hoboken main there...but I could be wrong.
I'm guessing thatb the idea would be top put in a crossover at the
top of tyhe hill track, and eliminate the backup move.
I was told that this was tried at least once...don't know the results,
although I think they went back to doing the KW-Bergen Jct backup move.
This would have been c1964-1965.

I understand NJ Transit wants to put some kind of passenger service back on it using Diesel Multiple Unit cars that are much like Budd RDC's in operation. I wonder if any of the still existing stations are going to be used if they do.

I'm trying to remember this and it seems familiar. There was a general 'upgrading' around this time as well, as many of the dormant sidings and team tracks were removed coincident with the planned rail replacement. The team track in Closter, and the eastward bending siding at the Closter station were taken out prior to this planned rail installation.

>I'm trying to remember this and it seems familiar. There was a general >'upgrading' around this time as well, as many of the dormant sidings >and team tracks were removed coincident with the planned rail >replacement. The team track in Closter, and the eastward bending >siding at the Closter station were taken out prior to this planned rail >installation.

I think the elimination of the Closter Team track, and the Pascack valley stone siding happened much later...1980's or early 1990's.
The siding by the station, the Pascack Stone siding,
was originally used by a chemical co back in the 40's or 50's...
Then later by Pascack stone, which got a flat car or box car of stone
3 or 4 times a year.
It was a pretty cool siding...a pocket track that went back into higher
ground, and had a platform at car floor level. Would only fit max 2 cars.

After the spring switches were eliminated, Pascack built a dirt ramp
up to the runaround track, east of Durie Ave, and cars were just
left on the runaround, IIRC.

pdtrains

I believe this was done prior to 1992, but you could be right, I moved away from the area in the late '70's and while I was around visiting friends and family, the time passed quickly. Could have been anytime in the '80's.
I completely forgot that location was used for stone deliveries as well! Thanks for clearing up another mystery.

Rich

What tracks did the Northern Branch passenger trains use to get into & out of Hoboken before service ended in 1966? Any information is greatly appreciated.

I've been told that they had to reverse for a mile or so. The inbound train on the Erie would stop just east of the west end of the Arches, back up along the Erie main to the connection to the DL&W, then forward into Hoboken.

I road the Northern Passenger trains many times.

They pulled up to the begining of the Bergen Tunnel,
past the limits of KW interlocking, which was controlled by
Erie Grove Street tower.

Then backed up on the west side of Croxton yard to Bergen Jct
(where the "main line" and Bergen County lines met (post 1962),
then pulled down the main line thru West End in HOB.

Rear coach had back-up hose. Conductor road back platform
and signalled engineer with train line. No radios back then.




B

pdtrains wrote:They pulled up to the begining of the Bergen Tunnel,
past the limits of KW interlocking, which was controlled by
Erie Grove Street tower.

Then backed up on the west side of Croxton yard to Bergen Jct
(where the "main line" and Bergen County lines met (post 1962),
then pulled down the main line thru West End in HOB.

That is absolutely wild! How much time did this back-up move take? As a railfan, it had to be kind of fun, but as a daily commuter???

Maybe 5 to 10 minutes.

Since it was a 5 day a week operation, and 6 times a day,
everyone knew the drill and it went pretty fast.

I remember standing on the rear platform on an eastbound
one morning...Less than a minute after we came to a stop,
we had the signal at KW for the backup, and were on the move.

The railroads operated a lot smoother back then.
More railroaders, less lawyers

Today a backup move would take a half hour.

The commutters were all regulars, so no one was suprised by the
move.

The EL did look into eliminating the back up move, but any
progress in that direction came to an abrupt stop when
the RR applied to eliminate the NRR pass trains

beth

The back up move for the Northern Branch trains was cited by the State Highway Commission Division of Railroad Transportation (the overseers of state subsidies to commuter railroads) as a reason why the service was non competitive with private bus lines. Making a proper connection was estimated at 1 million dollars so they reccomended that the State of New Jersey not subsidize the service. The Railroad removed all service that the state was not willing to subsidize.

With the election of William White to the presidency of the Erie Lackawanna, the focus of the company became the inclusion of the railroad in a merger with the Norfolk & Western. N&W ordered that EL get rid of all intercity passenger services and end the drain of commuter rail operations as a condition of any further consideration of merger.

A few questions.

Did the backup move take place on the ex-NY&GL track in Croxton where they would backup west upon it, then under the BCL/ML, and then reverse up the ramp (by PSE&G) onto the ML (thus sharing the ramp with Boonton/NY&GL trains) for trip to Hoboken?

What was the scope of the proposed $1M connector? An elevated track configuration and tie in at West End?