Public Service of New Jersey

[daveklepper]

Newark Division, 1947:

[daveklepper]

Found it difficult to get photos of regular service cars on the street without auto interference, and here is one on Orange Avenue, again 1947, as an example:

[Flintlock76]

Wow!  Good old Public Soy-Viss!  Thanks Dave!

If memory serves, the Newark Division was the last to go, and the subway part still operates today under the auspices of NJ Transit. 

The ironic thing is NJ Transit buses still follow the routes of those long-gone trolleys.

[Overmod]

Flintlock76

The ironic thing is NJ Transit buses still follow the routes of those long-gone trolleys.

Why wouldn't they?  The buses were an 'improvement' on trolleys as far back as All Those ASVs ... Perhaps especially the last experimental GM with separate engine-driven-hydraulic and overhead-electrical transmissions for fleet continuity...

I cannot imagine a 'trolley' equivalent of the Lincoln Tunnel counterflow lane, or safe operation at current speeds up or down the Seven Sisters (let alone Rt. 5).  But we had one of the more advanced and effective networks of service anywhere, and why should it be surprising to see those routes running the same places?

[gregc]

i thought they still had the trolley cars when i went to NJIT ~1980.   we'd take them to PATH to get to NYC

[Overmod]

gregc

I thought they still had the trolley cars when I went to NJIT ~1980.   We'd take them to PATH to get to NYC

Just so... with PCCs, and you still can using the LRV replacements, now pushing 20 years old.

In fact, about 15 years ago the 'subway' was extended to the ex-Lackawanna Broad Street Station, and plans -- still under wire as far as I know, but it would likely be a fine service for hydrogen/battery trains  -- are to extend it to "Elizabeth" (functionally Newark/Liberty Airport); I get the impression, far from New Jersey as I am, that this is less significant a service than it was before the 'monorail' link to service on the NEC   (and thence via connection at Secaucus Junction aka Lautenberg) was provided there, but it's still interesting (and if the Cutoff is ever reactivated would open up interesting options for access!)

[Flintlock76]

Overmod

Flintlock76 The ironic thing is NJ Transit buses still follow the routes of those long-gone trolleys. Why wouldn't they?

Of course they would, there were very logical reasons to!

In my mind, the irony comes from replacing those clean, non-polluting, electrically powered trolleys with those smelly, noisy, diesel buses!

Remember getting caught behind one of those things?  I do!

GASP!  COUGH! WHEEZE!   

I know Public Service had their reasons, probably good ones too, but you call that progress?  

Oh well.  At least I've got a souvenir rail fragment from the P-S Hudson River line.  A nice artefact.

[mvlandsw]

When the Fineview trolley line in Pittsburgh was busalized the buses had to use a different route because they were not able to climb the hills that the trolleys could.

Mark Vinski

[daveklepper]

Still needs some more repair work, but an idea of what the Hoboken Elevated looked like is overdue.  The car is on the Jackson line, from the D&LW Honboken Terminal elevated loop trolley terminal to Summit.   The ramp to surface tracks is jusr over the Hoboken - Jersey City line, and the car will stop at an off-street loading area above the Hudson and Manhattan Journal Square station on its way to Summit/  I wonder if the area exists for buses above the PATH station today.

[Flintlock76]

Hoboken elevated?  I had no idea!

Time to break out my Public Service trolleys in New Jersey book!

(Serves me right for being fixated on Bergen County!)

[Overmod]

Hoboken elevated:

https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/PSNJ_Hoboken-Jersey_City_Elevated

Lots of pictures, lots of links.  

I first came upon this driving south, I think on Palisade Avenue, while I was still in high school.  This was not long after I first saw Metropolis, and the viaduct is every bit something from that movie.  At that time it was a two-lane road and I drove it in the Thunderbird with the top down.  Here is a link that contains a picture from 'the other side' showing how it didn't go all the way up; apparently you changed to a north-south line to get over to Five Points

https://jerseydigs.com/streetcar-stories-history-north-hudson-railway-company/

Here is a picture of it being built:

https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?145616

And this is what they used before it was built (note cable plane on the Wagon Road, another interesting technical achievement).  Observe the claim that there were 17,000,000 fares up and down by 1894.  I believe the 14th St. Bridge, shown as a trestle here, was recently rebuilt as a modern concrete structure.

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/sthudnj.Html

I can't help you with the bus link, but you can find what was there before:

https://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/sanborn/hudson/jersey-city.html

https://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/sanborn/hudson/hoboken.html

For some reason I can't find any pictures of the Lackawanna Terminal end of this, other than a couple of blurred pictures with Lackawanna electric cat bridges showing underneath and right facing the river.  There is also a picture from below the viaduct in almost the same spot as Mr. Klepper's picture, with a car passing, but I can't figure out how to get it into the thread.  Pity Mike no longer posts here...

[Flintlock76]

Great stuff Mod-man, thanks!

Makes you want to weep for what's been lost, doesn't it?

Was it a saner time back then? Or do we just think it was so?  Hard to tell.

[daveklepper]

From from Overmod's URL,  Neumman Histarical photos:

[Overmod]

I think that's the precise picture I was trying to post, but couldn't.  If it is not, it has the same light-colored car posed the same way from a slightly more head-on angle...

[daveklepper]

Journal Square, 1948.  In addition to the Jackson line from Hoboken to Summit looping through this off-street area, the Federal line, a WWII combination of part of the old line to Newark and some ex-CofNJ freight trackage, began here and ran to the Western Electric factory.

 

[daveklepper]

Weehawken - Hoboken Line (used the east-west portion of the Elevated and noy yjr morth-south portion):

[Overmod]

daveklepper

Weehawken - Hoboken Line

Does anyone have pix of the heroic elevator that connected the route to the actual Weehawken passenger terminal?  (you can see the altitude difference in the background...)  I see reference to such a thing in one of the accounts of trolley service -- was there a different line serving the Weehawken terminal that had it?

[daveklepper]

Rode the line and do not recall an elevator. The ramp extended all the way down to a paved area south of, and adjacent to the West Shore passenger terminal building. where the loop was in pavement  --if memory is OK.

[daveklepper]

Photo of the loop area.  Also used by PSNJ bus to the amusement park and Fort Lee.

[daveklepper]

Downtown Union City.  Appparantly, 2806 developed a sagging front platofrm.

 

[Goodtiming]

delete

 

[Flintlock76]

I don't remember if I posted this in the past, but here's a neat video of Public Service trolleys in Hudson County and Essex Counties.

There's views of Hoboken, Weehawken, and the Newark and Essex Divisions.  Interesting stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZraaMXh3WS8  

[daveklepper]

An Oakland (Street?  Avenue?) car about to leave Palesades Avenue and climb the incline to the Elevated to run north and then east to the Hoboken Terminal.  The operator was either lazy or forgetful regarding the rear destination sign, which is incorrect.  The car on the Elevated is a Jackson car from the Hoboken Terminal (called Hudson Place by PSNJ) headed to Summit via Journal Square, Jersey City.

 

[Flintlock76]

Overmod

Does anyone have pix of the heroic elevator that connected the route to the actual Weehawken passenger terminal?

Could this be it?

https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10929/24664/Wagon.jpg?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Or maybe this?

https://www.hrmm.org/history-blog/historic-news-getting-on-top-of-the-palisades-elevators-in-1891

That's all I can find so far.

[Overmod]

Note the reference to the construction of the Ninth Avenue 'suicide curve' to 8th Avenue at 110th.  I believe this was that fascinating Phoenix Bridge rapid-construction method that was really the last extreme lightweight material-saving approach in the rapid-transit building boom in New York at the end of the 19th Century...

[Overmod]

Interesting parallel between the wagon elevator in Weehawken and the one in Jersey City adjacent to the viaduct we discussed earlier.

I was astounded to find how much of it survived to five years ago!

http://streettotheleft.weebly.com/blog/category/palisades#:~:text=Wagon%20Elevator%20and%20100%20Steps%2C%20West%20Hoboken%2C%20N.J

If you were wondering about the somewhat cryptic reference to racetracks and amusement parks, consider where the car line from that Eldorado Elevator ran.  (Why this was big news in Lewiston, I'm not quite sure, but I'm glad it was!)

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9M4gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=u2oFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5705,469078&hl=en

For many years the Castle at Nungesser's was the only real place you could get those little square hamburgers; it is still the only place I saw demonstrated the old time and motion study that was done to exploit the 'design features' that made White Castle cutting-edge in fast food without recourse to hotlights.  

Mike needs to research the Eldorado next.  It appears there was a hotel first, likely incorporated into the amusement park... and a housing development afterward...

https://images.app.goo.gl/S5YwjAFV6rWyd4kM6

http://www.hiddennj.com/2012/03/lost-city-of-gold-in-weehawken-eldorado.html?m=1

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/7Y3H1-Z6ZUGFLs7FXoPT5O_gNkJeMrOt_XcTEccK2FWK4c7rKJHf2jrMzMmbNluSWCRAE_ANTHxeHOsBxzRAnD77FVubfBUx_qbec2DxWigl-g7DKtjPh9-TKQ

You can appreciate why trolley lines winding up the Palisades might not have been as effective as that triple big elevator arrangement...

[Flintlock76]

The mention of the El Dorado amusement park triggered a memory.

There was another Weehawken oddity I saw mentioned in "Weird New Jersey" magazine several years ago called the Grauert Causeway, a monster of a staircase that rose from the Hudson River up to where the El Dorado used  to be.

The "WNJ" article's not available for download (Too bad, it was classic!) but I did find this:

https://www.facebook.com/WeehawkenSociety/posts/to-some-weehawken-is-a-town-of-stairs-people-have-been-climbing-the-cliffs-here-/363276397183372/

[Overmod]

Story of the Grauert Causeway and its replacement (to Port Imperial) here, with cites for a magazine story:

https://archive.hudsonreporter.com/2010/04/29/dont-try-this-at-home-2/

Note the reference to Pershing Blvd, once an integral part of the 'good roads' Lincoln Highway (up to the opening of the Holland Tunnel and Pulaski Skyway in 1927).  It appears that Public Service ran multiple lines to the Weehawken Terminal on this road: lines 19 Union City; 21 West New York; 23 Palisade; and 25 Weehawken.  I'm not particularly a trolley guy but this should open the floodgates for Mr. Klepper and other 'usual suspects'...

 

Better I love the rivers side,
Where Hudson’s sounding waters glide
And with their full majestic tide,
To the great sea keep flowing;
		
WEEHAWK, I love thy frowning height
Since first I saw with found delight,
The wave beneath thee rushing bright
And the new Rome still growing.

 

[Flintlock76]

Right, I found that Hudson Reporter article during my search for any kind of pictures of the Grauert Causeway.

Should you care to, the WNJ magazine with the Grauert Causeway article is still available as a back order.

https://weirdnj.com/   Click on "Store" and then "Back Issues," the one you want is Issue #34.

Lady Firestorm and I love  WNJ magazine!  Local legends of haunted houses, abandoned insane asylums, "Midget albino cannibals that live under the George Washington Bridge,"  real high-school stuff!  It's a riot!  

[Overmod]

There were apparently more dramatic steps in Weehawken: