23-06-19a PHOTOS: Hoboken Terminal and Tonnelle Ave

Here is part 2 of my June 2023 combined NJT M&E / light rail trip. In part 1 I covered a round trip on the Newark City Subway, continuation to Newark Broad St and then stops at Denville and Summit before ultimately arriving at Hoboken Terminal. In part 2 I'll cover Hoboken Terminal before heading out to Tonnelle Ave on the HLBR. The full set of photos can be found here ( mirror ), just scroll down to see those photos covered in this section.

Upon arrival at Hoboken I encountered Arrow III MU #1314. Despite the M&E being largely electrified, MU's are only used on a few services such as the stop intensive Gladstone Branch locals.

Other equipment hanging out near the buffers included Comet V cab car #6063, #6035 and #6055, along with and split level cab car #7062 and Metro North Comet V cab car #6712 next to NJT Comet V cab car #6040.

Class leading NJT Comet V cab car #6000 could be found adjacent to the new track #5 end buffer that replaced a 1907 vintage buffer that was run through by a slow moving NJT train in 2016. The placement of the new stop mechanism cost about half a carlength of capacity.

The station interior was as gorgeous as ever.

The area outside the official main entrance has been named the George Warrington plaza.

NJT also installed this digital chart to cover all of the strange service patterns.

On the southern expansion platforms I found split level cab cars #7053 and #7037 along with a Metro North Comet V cab on storage track #19.

23-06-19 PHOTOS: Summit and Denville

One of my bigger blind spots has been NJT's non-NEC operations in North Jersey. In fact I can count the number of trips I've taken on this part of NJT over the last 20 years on one hand. In the summer of 2023 a surprise mid-week day off from work granted me the opportunity to plan a trip that would not only visit the notable junction stations at Summit and Denville, but also ride the Newark City Subway and HBLR. This set of photos will cover NCS, Denville and Summit parts of the trip with Hoboken Terminal and HBLR to follow. You can see the full set of photos here ( mirror ).

The trip's itinerary actually involved going first to Washington to meet up with a railfan friend to use an Amtrak BOGO coupon to go to Philly. After laying over a night we would continue to North Jersey before returning back south that afternoon. The first leg of my journey was an Amtrak Regional hauled by ACS-86 #638.

After that it was a transfer to and Acela trainset with power car #2029.

We had booked cheap tickets on an early AM Keystone which required an even earlier AM PATCO connection, dutifully provided by PATCO rebuild car #1005.

Departing Philly and passing the stored Acela II sets in the Penn Coach Yard before making all the local commuter stops on the NEC.

Our Keystone train continuing on to NYC while being pushed by ACS-86 #617.

Kinky LRV #114 would be our ride out to the intermediate terminal at Branch Brooke Park.

Branch Brooke Park had been the terminus of the City Subway when it had been serviced by PCC cars before their retirement in 2001, the old PCC loop being replaced by a pocket track.

Short turning at Branch Brooke Park instead of riding to the end of the line at Grove Street afforded some additional photo opportunities such as LRV #120 departing for Penn Station and #107 arriving for the headway after that.

Quick front facing video of the inbound ride from Branch Brook to NJIT. The NCS runs along the former Morris Canal right of way.



Making a quick transfer to LRV #119, I would take my first ever NCS trip to Newark Broad Street Station.

This was also my first time visiting Newark Broad St, which has remained an impressive facility despite the City's ups and downs.

22-01-15 PHOTOS: Nicholson Cutoff

In the winter of 2022 I finally made it out to the famous Tunkhannock Viaduct in Nicholson, PA. Although closer in proximity to me than many of the sights in central and western Pennsylvania, Scranton was just not a place I had either the ability or motivation to visit until recently when Subchat buddy Phil N moved into the area. Phil was nice enough to drive me around to both the viaduct and a variety of signal locations over the course of a day, and although I got about 1000 infrastructure photos we scored a goose egg for actual train movements. Fortunately another Subchat buddy, Kevin Painter, was able to bail me out with not only the usual tour of Reading and Northern equipment at North Reading, but also an introduction to the Colebrookdale Railroad in Boyertown, PA. You can view the lengthy set of photos here ( mirror )with the non-signal stuff all the way at the bottom.

The Tunkhannock Viaduct, sometimes known as the Nicholson Viaduct or Nicholson Bridge due to the community it spans, is typically viewed as a singular achievement of railroad engineering. In actuality it was just the showpiece of a far larger project initiated by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1915. The Clark's Summit-Hallstead Cutoff (aka the Pennsylvania Cutoff or Nicholson Cutoff) was the second great construction project undertaken by the DL&W shortly before The Great War (the first being the famous Slateford cutoff in New Jersey that proceeded the PA cutoff by a few years) and replaced over 40 miles of the 1850's era alignment with a brand new, high speed and low grade main line. The viaduct, measuring 2,375 feet in length and 240 feet above the ground at its highest point, was necessary to traverse the Tunkhannock Creek at an elevation sufficient to free the railroad from having to follow the path of existing rivers just north of Scranton.

Fueled by the flush profits transporting premium home heating coal at the turn of the century, the DL&W had the financial resources to not only reconstruct its greater Pocono region main lines, but also use the era's high tech wonder material, reinforced concrete. It would be the bridge's 167,000 cubic yards of concrete that would make it such an iconic and imposing presence compared to a similar bridge of steel beams.

The bridge consists of 10 spans, 9 piers and 2 abutments, all made from reinforced concrete. At the time of construction it was the largest concrete structure in the world and is likely still one of the largest concrete bridges in the world.

Although still branded Lackawanna, the DL&W Main Line did not survive the 1960 Erie Lackawanna merger with most traffic transferring to the Erie side. The Conrail merger of 1976 saw the line pass to the Delaware and Hudson, which was able to abandon its own less efficient Scranton-Binghampton route. In the 90's the D&H was sold to Canadian Pacific before ultimately falling under the umbrella of Norfolk Southern in the 2014.

The scope of the cutoff can be seen at other points along the line where local roads have to literally tunnel through the massive embankments.

The DL&W applied its use of reinforced concrete technology to everything, including station buildings and interlocking towers. Here the station in Glenburn, PA has been repurposes as public works offices with EL caboose #C267 on display nearby.

Moving down to North Reading the next morning, Kevin and I encountered the NRFF lashup awaiting its departure with GP38-2 #2014 on the tail end behind the two NRFF painted SD50s.

03-07-19 CLASSIC PHOTOS: Port Jervis Trip

Before the age of formal Informal Railfan Trips, trips still happened, they were just fewer in number and not as well organized. Even the old Subtalk was known to get into the action and one such that trip organized in the summer of 2003 had the ambitious plan to go to Port Jervis and back on a weekend.

Port Jervis is always a tempting target for a railfan trip, but with 2_ hour travel times in each direction combined with spotty service frequencies, it is easy to get in over one's head. In this case everything was fine until the return trip where the brakes locked on an old CNJ vintage GP40P, which had to be set out and delayed us by an hour or more. Even returning express via the main line didn't do much to aid in our timelyness and we arrived at Hoboken well past the portal arrival and also well after the sun had set.

Because all of the "adventure" took place after daylight hours and before digital cameras had large memory capacity or native video, this photo set will cover all of the more "typical" railfan stuff that took place earlier that day.

We begin with a pair of Arrow III MU trains headed inbound and outbound at Hamilton, NJ with #1412 and #1377. Remember when NJT used to use MU's on it's electrified services? Crazy right?!

Amtrak left the lights on at MIDWAY interlocking. It also looks like I got lucky with a forward railfan view on an NJT train. Unfortunately with only 96 shots available on each card and a paltry 3x zoom, I couldn't take advantage of it.

Transfer to PATH at Newark and head out across the DOCK drawbridge. This was only 2 years after 9/11, but you can see what I thought of PATH's photo ban. 

SRS Doodlebug #149 was hanging out in Hudson yard. I believe that HUDSON Tower was still open.

PATH was still recovering from a land slide that had taken place the previous June.

PATH Journal Square yard complex.

 Arriving at Hoboken I found NJT and MNRR GP40PH-2's #4137 and 4190 sitting side by side.

The interior of Hoboken Terminal had just been renovated.

Hanging out on one of the outdoor tracks was an Arrow III Gladstone train with #1314.

Under the train shed the aluminum body of Comet I cab car #5128 was showing through the white paint.

#5000 Class car of the currently stored Comet III fleet was also waiting quietly at Hoboken.

Here Comet 1 cab car #5110 sits next to Metro North Comet IA cab car #919. This would be the car that the group would eventually ride to Port Jervis in.

#5000 wasn't the only special car at Hoboken. The lead car of the entire Comet coach family, #5100, was also there posing for photographs. #5100 was built by Pullman in 1970.

03-06-23 CLASSIC PHOTOS: Penn-Jersey Tunnels

The boom bust history of railroading in the Northeast United States has left a plethora of abandoned or disused infrastructure that was built on the wealth generated by industrialization and anthracite coal and then decimated by the decline of both. Early in my rail enthusiasm I was very much into this infrastructure of yesteryear as that was the focus of many of the available books and websites. During the summer of 2003 I had the opportunity to visit a couple of historic tunnel locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and took some photos that can be found here ( mirror ) and here ( mirror ). Twenty years later these photos not only capture the distant past, but also how much has changed since then.

North Jersey was much more on my radar in the late 90's and early 2000's due to the frequency of youth oriented activity trips to the Delaware Water Gap region for winter or summer outdoor activities. The two primary North-South routes, NJ Route  31 and US Route 206, intersected with all of the fallen flag main lines, some of which, like the former Central RR of New Jersey main line, retained NJT commuter commuter service. Here is a photo of the station in High Bridge, NJ that serves as the terminus of the Raritan Valley Line that had been cut back from Phillipsburg in 1986.

Situated on the approach to New Jersey's drainage divide, the CNJ main line traverses an impressive earthen fill through which the Raritan river and an adjacent road bore through in side-by-side tunnels. NJT's ARCH interlocking, located directly above the runnels at the end of the commuter line, is likely named for these structures.

A short distance to the west, the Lehigh Valley Railroad passes through the same line of hills via the 3000+ foot long Pattenburg Tunnel. In 2003 the tunnel had recently been single tracked for double stack clearance purposes with the entire length falling within the limits of the new interlocking, CP-64.

The interlocking was new enough that the CorTen steel of the relay huts had not yet fully weathered. On the east side of the tunnel, CP-64 was occupied the former location of the LVRR's BELLEWOOD tower that had enabled passenger services to a nearby amusement park. The property was later converted into a quarry that itself was then abandoned.

The "New" Pattenburg Tunnel replaced an older bore in 1927. The remains of the previous 2-track configuration could still be seen. I would visit this location again in the winter of 2020.

Here is the western portal of the LVRR Pattenburg Tunnel. Interstate 78 passes over the railroad on the ridgeline.

A little ways to the northwest is the Manunka Chunk tunnel, located on what used to be the original DL&W Main Line between Washington, NJ and Shateford, PA known as the Lackawanna Old Road. The curvy route to the Scranton coal fields via the Delaware Water Gap was ultimately replaced by the more famous Lackawanna Cutoff, serving as a backup route until 1970 when it was completely abandoned. The twin bore Manunka Chunk tunnel allows the Old Road to transition between the Peaquest River valley and the Delaware River Valley.

Lined with rubble type rock, the Manunka Chunk tunnels have seen significant deterioration over the decades and are completely flooded in parts, making traversing them difficult without wading. Still, the rails are still present in at least one of the bores.