A ride on the Northeast Corridor: Always something new

Posted by Roy Blanchard

New Jersey Transit Train 3930 runs express from Trenton, N.J., to New York Penn Station, covering the 50 miles in 70 minutes. It departs Trenton at 8:09 a.m., arriving at Penn at 9:19 a.m. with three station stops: Hamilton, Princeton Junction, and Newark. For those of us in Philadelphia, it's an easy connection with the 7:04 SEPTA local out of the former Pennsylvania Railroad Suburban Station, making the total transit time exactly 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Amtrak service Philadelphia-New York is an hour and 12 minutes on the 8:35 a.m. one-stop (Newark) Acela, and 1 hour 29 minutes on the 8:30 a.m. three-stop (Trenton, Metro Park, Newark) "Northeast Regional." So if you want to be in New York for a 10 o'clock meeting, the Acela is an hour faster and the Regional is 45 minutes faster. But that time will cost you.

The lowest one-way fare on the Acela is $131; on the regional it's $67. SEPTA will nick you $8 for the Trenton ticket ($4 for seniors), and Transit gets $12.50 for the New York ride (seniors pay $5.75). Now I ask you: is an hour of your time worth $110.50 to ride the Acela or is 45 minutes of your time worth $46.50 to ride the Regional?

Train 3930 makes two stops past Trenton to the Regional's three, and both NJT stops are at the beginning of the ride. As soon as you clear Princeton Junction, it's track speed (110 mph, depending on track number) to Monmouth Junction, where you cross from Track 1 to Track 2, and it's 110 to 130 mph from there almost all the way to Newark.

I've been riding this line regularly for more than 40 years, starting as a Princeton Junction commuter in 1969, to the point now where I do it about six times a year from Philadelphia. Every time I make the trip, I see something new, and last Monday's trip was no exception.

I had a series of meetings in Newark and New York to discuss how the new positive train control rules will affect shortline operations on New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, and Metro-North. For my trip, the Septa-NJT combination made the most sense.

I like getting on the train at Suburban Station because it's a one-seat bus ride from my corner, and I avoid the Amtrak mobs on the 30th Street escalators. So I grab my coffee and bagel at my favorite street-corner stand at 19th and Market, and in five minutes, I'm on the platform at Suburban with a handful of neighbors going about their early morning rounds.

It's a leisurely trip up to Trenton, taking 53 minutes and making 11 stops over the 33 miles. We come into Trenton on Track 2 and everybody gets off. The SEPTA guys head east and cross over to the westbound side of the four-track main to be in position for the next train back to Philly.

A few minutes, NJT Train 3930 comes in (NJT has a storage year across the Delaware River in Morrisville, Pa., to avoid crossing over four main tracks in the middle of the busy Northeast Corridor main at Trenton Station) right where I got off the SEPTA local.

A goodly crowd of New York and Newark commuters boards the string of 12 Arrow III multiple-unit cars dating from the 1970s, and we find our seats. I'm in my favorite spot: a window seat on the left-hand side. This way I don't have the sun in my eyes when I'm reading, and everything is front-lit when I look out the window. I'm in the lead car, No. 1441, and although I can't see out the front like I could back in day, I'm a happy camper.  

It's 8:09, and we're off. We're staring out at Milepost 56.7, measured from Penn Station, and we stay on Track 1 (the eastbound local track) for our two upcoming stops. The first "new" thing I notice on leaving Trenton is the area where the old freight yards used to be east of the station has been cleared of brush and rubble.

As we go east, the scene is the same: open spaces where there used to be trees (some up to a foot in diameter) and underbrush. All of a sudden I can see the distant trees, neighborhoods, and adjacent highways. It's a lovely blue-sky Kodachrome day, and the low golden-hour shadows make every shadow crisp and every detail stand out. We make our two station stops six miles apart, and it's non-stop to Newark with a full train.

The signs of the clearance program continue (my NJT friend tells me it's stimulus money). I can clearly see the freight runner to J&J west of New Brunswick, the former Lehigh Valley right-of-way where it crossed under the Penn at Metuchen, and the adjacent highway at Iselin. To the casual observer, that may not seem like a lot, but when you've been looking at the same scene for a long time and suddenly have the veil lifted, especially in crisp light, the effect is something to behold.

So here we are rollicking along at a buck and a quarter, observing the passing scene, when every few minutes we pass a westbound train. Passing another train running at the same speed in the opposite direction takes my breath away. I'm reminded of high-speed meets inside the tunnels of Japan's Tokyo-Kyoto line when I was there in the 1960s.

Going through Linden I see the old GM plant is completely gone, and the adjacent rail yard is empty. No cars, no locomotives, no nothing. As we approach Elmora, the east end of the six-track main that starts in Rahway, I see a paved access road being laid down in the clear space between the outside main and a new cyclone fence that had been attached to the safety rails marking off a parking lot. The old Staten Island Railway overpass is unchanged.

East of the North Brunswick station, the site of the former PRR Waverly Yard is a field of weeds, dominated by the Newark Airport Monorail that runs around the Newark Airport Station. At Control Point Hunter, there are no more GG1s waiting for their Lehigh Valley Railroad passenger trains that ran into Penn Station. This service ended before my time, but I can remember the wayside signs and grease spots.

As we pull into Newark station I see that the Port Authority Trans Hudson trains have new cars, a far cry from what the PRR used when it started the "Hudson Tubes" a century ago. I gather my belongings and step out onto the high level Newark platform. I notice how closely the overhead structures mirror those found in Philadelphia 30th Street at Chicago's Union Station. The PRR lives on.

And a good thing, too. What better tribute to this fallen flag than to have NJT Train 3930 and its mates running at GG1 speeds on track that was laid out 80 years ago and using essentially the same position light and cab signal system?
 
I'll be back out there in a month, and I'll betcha I see something new.