Freight Trains Through Journal Square PATH station?

I take the PATH from 33rd to NWk everyday & at least 4 days a week, I catch that train pulling through the station. I've seen it in both directions. It's an NS train, I think it's 65J or something close to that. Usually has good power. This past Wed, I saw it w/ 2 ex CR SD40-2s, one in blue. I often wondered where these tracks went

i can see that. if you had a clear signal when it happened, you know you are good for two more, before possibly needing to stop. they are a lot more strict enforcing this stuff now, and even setting up "traps" to see what crews will do. (talking about dropping signals, or making them dark, not arcing the catenary onto roofs of locos) the old rule of thumb upon seeing a dark signal, was "if the last one was clear, this one is at least an approach". you slow down, and keep a lookout. it's a lot more restrictive now, what to do, and the game now seems to be "rules compliance first, moving freight last".

Noel I guess we could write a book about that stretch of railroad from the Meadows to Weehawken. I caught the last of the LV coal trains that used to run over the National docks as a Penn Central fireman in 1970. About Dec of 1970 they started to run the coal trains via the P and H thru the Meadows and up thru journal square to National JCT later renamed CP-Nave.I think the coal was going up the river line to a power plant at Roseton. I caught a few UPR-90's into the early Conrail era. You NYC River Line guys ran out of the Meadows or South Kearny and we Penn men were only qualified as far as Bellmans /CP-5.I'm sure we probably met somewhere along the way.

That stretch of railroad over Paterson Plank road and the Hoboken projects had to be more treacherous than the Santa Fe during the Indian wars out west. One night I was following the PR-7 out of North Bergen running the VE-1when the "Kids" rolled a junk car down the embankment in front of him. They had taken the trouble to set the car on fire to boot, of course the engineer dumped it and the "kids" looted the hell out of the train before the law showed up. Many crews were shot at with pistols,shotguns and rifles. IIRC the speed limit was 25 mph thru there but everybody ran thru their in run 8 hoping the hind end didnt fall off the bridge at NAVE or the slack didnt run in so the " kids" couldnt pull the pin on the hind end and strand you in the dead zone. It was total war back then. Many a train got cut thru there, those punks could pull a pin and turn an anglecock in half a second. I remember the Penn Central cops beating the hell out of some of those brigands and returning gun fire too. Ahh yes the good ol days LOL !

BTW Golden arm if the CP-Waldo PRR style posistion light signal went dark the next one was down the bottom of the bridge at CP-NAVE, That one was a NYC style searchlite that was powered from a different source so 99.9 % of the time it would be lit and displaying a clear. They always had signal trouble at Waldo and I recall the signal going dark on me once or twice. When you have a 15000 ton coal train grinding it out at 5 mph in run 8 at that point, as you are well aware, its time to make a judgement call. Of course back then there were no event recorders or that many draconian penalties as today and lying thru your teeth to the bosses was a high art form LOL !

i hear ya zeke. if i had a clear on the last one, or one went dark in front of me, i'd keep pulling, but would start to haul her down, watching switches (if there were any in between the signals) and for vehicles that didnt belong in the area. (weed weasels) i've never had a dark signal, as a test, but i have had a few dark signals over the years. just hauled down the speed, and reported them. a more disturbing thing i saw once, running south on the riverline, was looking back, and seeing green behind me, on two consecutive signals. i had the hardest time convincing the ds, that the greens were behind me, not in front. we stopped,and had a form d issued, after removing the signals from service. we never did hear about why that happened, but two consecutive signals "failed" to work in a fail safe mode. (the same ds made the infamous "4-way meet, at milton" the year before. THAT was a real beauty!!)

Yes, Golden-Arm we would relieve River Line crews a lot at 69th street North Bergen, Weehawken yard and the Meadows.I recall one of the NYC engineers telling me the same type of clear failure happened to him around Saugerties. When the RR and the FRA investigated they found a maintainer had mistakenly left a jumper wire on a circuit in one of the relay cases. The most restrictive indication it could display was a clear and it had been like that for week. Whew not good !

I saw the trash train in Journal Sqaure station today. Was stationery, not moving. Real cool, I've never seen heavy freight in path area before. Going from JSQ and headed towards Hoboken, looked like tracks don't go too much farther? An old fenced off siding and then what appears to be the main line goes across a bridge and that's it? Anyway, still cool to see the train though. Too bad I couldn't see the power for the move, just the cars.

Today (saturday Feb. 26th 2011), My family and I happened to be in Jersey City and saw the garbage train rolling through. It was actually interesting, as this was only the 2nd time I've seen it. My son and I were taking a quick look at the path trains, (we were inside the station) and then as we started to walk up the stairs out of the station, we heard a real loud rumbling noise. I stopped and went back to see what it was and sure enough 3 big road engines slowly roll through, (the third unit was #8812 C40-9), followed by the garbage container cars. The #8812 was with the cab facing the cars. The other two units faced cab forward. It rolled through and then halfway it came to a stop.

It was about 12:50 pm or so. It was cool to see the 3 big diesels running through the inside of the station. Although it appears from a distance they almost don't fit. Those engines certainly create quite a presense coming through the station.
I imagine though that a little SW fit's alot better. I wonder if they stink up the station much? In any event there's no mistaking when the freight comes through journal square. I'm curious... Is it only garbage trains that come through there or do other trains make this move? I believe croxton yard is in jersey city, so I assume the power comes from there? Since I've seen this twice now, any chance one of those former reading sw1001's might be attached to this consist? (they have cab signals so very useful, as all kinds of signals on path lines)