The big changes in northern New Jersey was a very gradual process that
sort of began after the 1976 start up of Conrail. The historic Penn Central
route was North Bergen, through the tunnel to Weehawken and continue
down to Nave (CP-Nave) and Waldo (CP-Waldo) where the River Line
ended and the track joined the P & H Branch for Hack Tower and the
Meadows yard. The P & H Branch continued to Waverly where it joined
the main line at Lane tower.
After the 1976 start up of Conrail, Waverly continued to operate as a yard
for a while but changes were in the works, the freight gradually came off
the corridor and was re-routed to the former Reading, Lehigh Valley and
other routes and in doing so, Waverly was phased out and the work was
transferred to Oak Island which was a former Lehigh Valley facility and
was the only reasonably decent hump yard that became part of Conrail.
In order to access Oak Island and to access the former Lehigh Valley
trackage, a connection from the P & H Branch was put in at a location east
of Waverly 5 and west of Karny which has been known by various names
including "Valley" and Stock among others. This was OK for trains coming
off the Lehigh Valley to continue north on the River Line but did not work
very well for trains originating or terminating at Oak Island Yard.
In order to correct the problem with trains entering or leaving the yard,
the old National Docks Branch which existed and was used back in the old
New York Central days as an interchange to and from the CNJ and the LV
but was allowed to literally fall apart after the Penn Central merger was
put back into use but this required much work on an ongoing basis. This
line joined the River Line at Nave and a straight through movement north
and south was again possible out of Oak Island. A connection was also
put in at the Nave area to the old Erie tunnel which lead to Croxton yard
where a through move could be made to the Northern Branch of the Erie.
A hand operated, electric lock crossover was then installed between the
old Erie Northern Branch and the former Penn Central River Line so that
a train out of Oak Island could also be routed that way and never even go
through Weehawken. This was first known as the "swamp switch" and
later on was changed to an interlocked crossover known as CP-2.
There was also a big improvement made at Marion where a straight move
could be made from Hack to Croxton and on to the Northern without any
reverse moves and this became the preferred way from South Karny or
most any other place in north Jersey for that matter for cars going north
on the River Line to Selkirk. Stacks, high vans and multi level auto
carriers had to use this route as there were no tunnels involved.
Eventually the route through Weehawken became used less and less and
another problem with the line through Weehawken was the housing
projects through Hoboken from which the locals had a year round season
on freight trains, every day they did their christmas shopping if a train got
stopped in the area for any reason and they did their best to try to stop a
train in the area if they could. Penn Central and later Conrail did not run
freight trains through this area without police cars on the scene first at
least most of the time.
Conrail by this time had decent alternative routes through the area and
when it was decided that this line would make a good transit route, the
railroad was willing to sell for a right price although I do not recall just
what Conrail received for this property.
I rode the light rail line through this area last summer while in the north-
east and I would have sworn that I could still see some of the stuff that
had either fallen out of freight cars or been removed in the area. That
ride brought back a lot of memories for me. When I get up north again,
I will ride through the tunnel too, lots of memories there for me too.
It has been well over 20 years since I have worked the lines in north
Jersey and the stuff that I wrote above was done from memory, hope it
answer's your questions.
Noel Weaver
