| An eastbound train rounds the tight curves of a small section of track built between 1999 and 2002 known as the Montclair Connection. This short section of track was first proposed long ago by the then-competing Erie and Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroads as a way for the Erie to detour trains from their New York & Greenwood Lake division over the DL&W's Montclair Branch as a result of regular flooding issues the Erie used to face in the meadows between Kearny and Jersey City. As time went on and the Erie and DL&W began to consolidate their operations the possibility of the project being executed was revisited a few times. In the early '60s shortly after the merger of the Erie and DL&W the project was considered once again as a way to consolidate the NY&GL and the Montclair Branch as one route a result of a larger series of re-route projects the new Erie Lackawanna was considering all across North Jersey. The project was shelved though when the affects of the Interstate 80 and Passaic Reroute projects resulted in heavy freight traffic being diverted from the DL&Ws original Boonton Line between Secaucus and Paterson to the Erie's original New York & Greenwood Lake from Jersey City to Wayne. These projects also resulted in the NY&GL being renamed to the Boonton Line. For another 25 years or so the project sat dormant until it was once again revisited by NJ Transit in the 1980s. Around this same time NJ Transit was in the process of closing the original DL&W Montclair Terminal and replaced the historic 6-track terminal with a less-than-stellar single track station near Bay Street. What was significant about this short new alignment was instead of following the historic route towards the old terminal it instead curved away towards the Boonton Line as a way to setup for the possibility of executing the Montclair Connection project proposed so many years before. The late '90s saw negotiations start between NJ Transit and the town of Montclair over land acquisition between Glen Ridge Avenue and Pine Street. The project would require Grant Street and Sherman Avenue to be severed in order to dig out a small cut and a handful of local businesses and homes to be acquired through eminent domain. Demolition and construction began in 1999 with the project wrapping up in September 2002. Monday, September 30 saw the first revenue trains to pass through the new 1,000ft electrified connection. With the electrification being extended from Bay Street Station to Montclair State University the new "Montclair Line" was now part of the NJ Transit's MidTown Direct service bringing direct access to Penn Station New York to another section of the railroad. As a result of this connection the former alignment of the Boonton Line between Pine Street in Montclair to West End interlocking in Jersey City was abandoned by NJ Transit. Rights were not maintained to operate over the line with Norfolk Southern (previously Conrail) who owned this section of the Boonton Line. Two drawbridges in Kearny over the Passaic and Hackensack rivers were in desperate need of heavy repair or replacement and NJ Transit claimed that the ridership levels did not justify any continued operations. The track became known officially as the Orange Running Track was was served by local NS freight trains until about early 2008. |
| Date:
5/11/2018 |
Location:
Montclair, NJ |
Views:
564 |
Collection Of:
 
Michael Sullivan |
| Locomotives: Rolling Stock: |
Author: Michael Sullivan
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| Picture Categories: Passenger,Track,Action |
This picture is part of album: NJ Transit - 2018 |