"Bob Watt" wrote in message
...
On 08/04/2004 22:05, in article
,
"Stephen Furley" wrote:

The original station in Newark, I can't remember the name.
Park Place, IIRC. In the 70s, the swing-bridge which carried the H&M
across
the Passaic River en route to Park Place was still extant. It had two
levels with RR tracks on both - the H&M was on the upper level.

That's it. I don't know anything about it. where was it, and when did it
close? Newark Penn seems to have undergone some major reconstruction in the
'30s, judging by the style of the builnings; was the H&M diverted there
then?


Between Newark and Juornal Square the line crosses two rivers, which of
these is the Passaic, and what is the other. There are massive bridges
crossing both of these rivers, which obviously opened at one time, but I
don't think they do now. Where was Manhattan Transfer, and whos trains
served it?

Hoboken is interesting, with its views across the Hudson to Manhattan,
and
its fine old copper clad ferry terminal building, long closed and now in
poor condition, but to be restored. The waiting room of the main line
station has also been restored, and reminds me of the Great Hall at the
old
Euston.
In the 70s, there were two large-scale models of steam locomotives in the
waiting room - one in Erie livery, the other painted for DL&W; are they
still there ?.

I didn't see any large-scale models, but there are two large wood and glass
cases, one in the waiting room, and the orher as you walk down the right
side of the station towards one of the Path entrances, which collect money
for charity. I dropped a few coins in as I walked past, but didn't look
closely. I think they had model railways in them. I'll have a better look
when I'm there.

On the South side of the station, near the entrance to the last track, there
was a small pipe coming down from above, from which came a burst of steam
and hot water every few seconds. It cane from the direction of the old
ferry terminal; I've no idea of its purpose.

The terminus of the new Hudson-Bergen light rail line is also on this side
of the station. It doesn't reach the main station concourse, but ends some
distance to the West. There is Major development taking place in this area;
the old ferry terminal is to re-open, so the temporary one will no longer be
needed. I don't know if the line will then be extended those last few tens
of metres to reach the main station.

One station which changed name; Pavonia Avenue. Was originally Erie
(before
the Erie trains were rerouted to Hoboken). Look carefully at the
decoration
on the pillars holding the roof up, and you'll see an 'E' worked into
them.

They are still there, but are no longer picked out in paint. The whole
capitol is painted green unlike, for example, Hoboken where the letter is in
white, on a blue background. It has been renamed again in fairly recent
times, and is now Pavonia Newport. The area has seen much new development in
recent years, greatly increasing use of the station, and the old side
platform is being re-opened. The Hudsen-Bergen has a station nearby, which
was called Newport, but which seemed to be announced as Pavonia Newport. It
is however a rather poor interchange, several minutes walk, and poorly
signed. It is now generally better to change between the lines at Hoboken
or Exchange Place. Newport was the terminus of the line from when it opened
about four years ago until the opening of the extension to Hoboken, sometime
between my April and October visits in 2002. The line turns East to enter
Hoboken, but there is a triangular junction in place, and the line is to be
extended further North.

Taking the H-B South from Newport, can be seen another relic of the old H&M,
the original power station, derelict, but with some rather fine decorative
brick and ironwork. it stands alone in the centre of a large cleared area,
and there were proposals for ir to be preserved, restored and converted to
ather uses. I haven't heard if its future, if any, has yet been decided.

A couple of years ago the Newark City Subway was re-equipped with similar
light rail units to those operating on the H-B. Some of the old cars were
still in the depot last year, and from what I could see of the one nearest
the fence, still looked in remarkably good condition for their age. I don't
know if there are any plans to preserve one. Towards the end of their life
they were fitted with pantographs for working from the new style overhead
line, though one or two of those stored at the depot still had trolley
poles.

The Penn Station terminus of the line was a building site last year, with
major renovations taking place. Only the two outer tracks are now in use.
There were workmen cutting metal and concrete slabs, clouds of dust and
smoke, gas cylinders and various construction plant on the platforms, 110
Volt cables trailing everywhere, and the station was still open to
passengers. Over here the Health and Safety people would have had a fit!

At the other end of the line the old loop has been removed, one of the
stations has closed, to be replaced by a new one nearby, and the line has
been extended to a new terminus, close to which is the new depot.

There is to be another extension to the line, a branch to Newark Broad
Street station. Since the subway already has a Broad Street, I assume we
will see a renaming here.

Last month NJ Transit opened a new, Diesel-powered light rail line, the
'River Line', from Trenton to Camden; I will be going to see it while I am
over there.

There's a lot of money being spent on railway development in the area at the
moment, but it is far from universally popular; one mans new or improved
rail system is another mans 'waste of my money by leftist liberals'. You
can't please all of the people all of the time. You will find many posts on
this in nyc.transit, misc.transport.urban-transit and
misc.transport.rail.americas, though sadly nyc.transit has recently been
taken over by Bush v Kerry, pro and anti-gay and anti-Jewish spam, and sadly
now has little worth reading. It's happening to more and more groups now.

The Prelinger archive has a rather nice little film of the old Third Avenue
Elevated line he
http://www.archive.org/movies/detail...ger&collection
id=31238

It is freely available for download, in various formats. I took the MPEG2
versiion, de-interlaced it, removed the 3:2 telecine pulldown, and made a
DVD from it. That links to another of my interests: film, and in
particular, documentary film. One of the main reasons for my visit to NJ is
to visit the Lowe's Jersey Theatre in Journal Square, which is now, slowly,
undergoing restoration. There's still a lot of work to do, but they run
film about one weekend a month between about October and May. They have
their original 1929 stage lighting board, and a lot of other plant still in
place. Up in the projection box there are now two relatively modern, as
projectors go, maybe 30 years old, Kinoton machines, with Ashcraft carbon
arcs, running at about 160 Amps, but I don't know how long they will be able
to get the very large carbons for them. There's also a simplex projector on
a Western Universal base, complete with turntable for sound on disk, two not
working but restorable Brenograph effects projectors, a carbon arc follow
spot, storage cabinet for the old 16 inch sound disks, and much more. They
have a web site he www.loew'sjersey.org. I do occasional projection work
at various places, and the reason that I couldn't get to the Path meeting is
that I was projecting at the David Lean Cinema in Croydon at the time.