Phillipsburg service was a restoration a few years after the Aldene Plan had the CNJ main line discontinued passenger service west of Hampton, but I don't remember exactly which years. Eventually the restored Phillipsburg service was again cut bacl to High Bridge (?).
I did ride the evening commuter run from Newark to Phillipsburg, and stayed on mostly on the open platform observation car (was it the last in the USA?) whose interior was not a lounge but a plain rattan flip-over seat coach, with the rear seat flipped over to look through the rear observation windows. There were no chairs on the platform to sit and relax on the "rear veranda", so I settled for standing on my feet for most of the trip to be able to ride outside on the platform. Most of the passengers in the rear observation coach simply used the rear open platform as one would access the coach from a vestibule, though the flagmman was thorough in insuring that the trapdoor was down to provide a safe floor for me to stand. I am not sure if had I not been in "railfan mode" out on the platform if he would not simply had the trapdors up in motion, since no one else to have been interested in riding a unique "only" travel experience. I guess commuters get jaded after a while, though in my own commuting on the LIRR "Lower Montauk" branch Richmond Hill-Long Island City I never felt jaded, it was always an adventure for me!
All the other coaches, about 5-6 pretty much of a "full house" out of Newark, were 2nd -hand smooth side streamlined cars with reclining seats which I never found out the pedegrees for, but I am probably wrong, but for whatever reason I always in my mind referred to the "KCS cars" for that trip, similar to some that LIRR had at the time as well. I thinkl KCS sold their newest (1964 brand new streamliners, yet!) to the LIRR, and I recall these cars had tinted windows rather than shades which the earlier vintage KCS streamlined coaches did not have the tints but had the shades. Ine item about these streamlined cars which to me was an aesthetic disappointment, was the flooring, that tivy kind of ceramic floor tiles that were often used for public toilet floors. I can appreciate the beating the train car flors got from the shoes and boots in winter snowtime commuter service, but I still pined for the carpeted floors that streamlined long-distance cars tended to have. I don't know, maybe they were KCS originals in the 1960's eras of "practicality", like the tinted shadeless windows, or maybe they were CNJ's modifications. And maybe they weren't at all KCS's, since I only walked through a few at Phillipsburg, being mostly in the Obs car. After all I knew of the LIRR ex-KCS cars, the ones on the CNJ were my "assumed "KCS" cars! I'm sure there are those who could enlighten which streamlined coaches had come from.
As I passed throiugh the coaches from obs car to the front to check things out, it appeared to me that by Phillpsburg only a handful of passengers were left, but not having gone through the train over its run, in order to watch the unique view from the oen end platform, there was no way of determining for me how far west the passenger loads were. This was the main "after business" commmuter train to Phillipsburg, so I doubt if any much heavier passenger loads could have been expected on the other few trips to Phillipsburg during ther day. It was dark by then, and I could not identify any "station" as such, I might have missed it, but it might no longer have existed by then, and maybe was just a yard with asphalt plarform, like the LIRR Long Island City terminal was when I was commuting in New York.
Sincerely,
Vytautas B. Radzivanas
Perth, Western Australia
