You Jerseyfolk are reminding me of the South Park episode!
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I think you can see some of the 'political' boundaries in the route map visible by clicking 'show map' on this page:
https://www.njtransit.com/rg/rg_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=TrainStationLookupFrom&selStation=64#
You will be able to zoom in and see familiar detail or get to Street View by 'dragging Pegman onto the map' or whatever ...
(Incidentally, on the current version of the map, if you pan over to Waldwick on the curve, there's an interesting train.)
I think her house was actually in Ridgewood, but her husband (a Princetonian) used the Ho-Ho-Kus stop as he claimed it was closer and thus more convenient. Not sure if that was really true, as he was a bit of a rake - cad - Lothario - Don Juan - letch (covering most of the old bases in one swell foop).
charlie hebdo I recall watching some trains at the station in my aunt's town, Hohokus. Would that have been the Erie?
Soytinly!
Ho-Ho-Kus is one of the more scenic Erie stations, on a long curve, with a convenient grade crossing at one end where you can set up to watch. I've spent several happy hours watching there.
One stop past Ridgewood, above where the Bergen County line rejoins the old main line.
All a very interesting set of railroads (Erie, Lackawanna, LV, NH, etc.) at least to a Chicagoan.
As a 7-year old boy, I recall watching some trains at the station in my aunt's town, Hohokus. Would that have been the Erie?
MidlandMikeJust a geo-quibble, the Palisades are actually a sill formation.
You know, this is the first time I've ever heard this, and I grew up and went to school on them for nearly 20 years. Wouldn't be the first time that conventional 'wisdom' reinforcing itself in print and fable was based on a fundamental mistake! (In partial defense... the formation does become a dike when it turns west at Haverstraw...)
It's going to be hard to unlearn 'volcanic dike' when I think about them now. That alliteration was pretty good.
Erie didn't get to Grand Central Station in Chicago for a variety of reasons. Its entry into the Chicago area was too far south (Erie also served Crown Point IN) and it needed a joint terminal road (a 20% interest in CWI) to get into Chicago. Dearborn Station was the Chicago terminal for CWI's owners plus ATSF as a tenant.
NYC certainly wasn't going to allow a competitor to use La Salle Street. NKP got there only because the Vanderbilt interests owned it for a while.
The Phoebe Snow and the longer-lasting Lake Cities could have run in and out of Grand Central, Grand Central, Chicago, that is. But they did not. The Erie, and then the Erie-Lackawanna, ran in and out of Dearborn Station. Both were just-south-of-the-Loop Chicago terminals, along with La Sall (Sp?) Street.
When I saw the title of your new thread, CGT-Chicago is what I thought you meant.
There might have been a way, at one time, to route Erie and Lackawanna trains into Penn Statioln, NY, as was done for the B&O during WWI.
Overmod...northeastern New Jersey, at which point they encounter a relatively wide and high volcanic dike formation (the Palisades)...
Just a geo-quibble, the Palasades are actually a sill formation.
In a little more detail: both the Erie and Lackawanna lines run to northeastern New Jersey, at which point they encounter a relatively wide and high volcanic dike formation (the Palisades) immediately adjacent to a wide river which by law is kept open to large ship navigation. On the other side is Manhattan, extensively developed on a ground-level grid.
Meanwhile, Grand Central is served by a railroad that runs north-south along the opposite bank of the river, then curves further east at Spuyten Duyvil to approach Manhattan from the north. Even if EL traffic could have been directed up the Northern branch and then the valley occupied by Rt 4 (subsequently massively cut away for the highway approaches from highways I-80 and I-95) across the George Washington Bridge, and the track there built to appropriate clearance and standards for EL passenger equipment of the time, there is an enormous vertical distance (as well as an effective right angle) between the approach to Grand Central and any conceivable railroad grade from the east end of the bridge; the real-estate requirements just to accommodate that would probably be greater than the whole improvement budget available to EL for decades.
A logical alternative (if you 'had' to find a way to run into GCT) would be to bridge the river at the old Piermont, where the original Erie first terminated (with fast and effective river access south to many points on Manhattan!) and where, indeed, the Tappan Zee Bridge crossed the Hudson at its namesake point of minimal current (and its replacement was designed to have a heavy-rail-capable track). A similar approach grade to that from the current River Line up to the B&A/Castleton Cutoff could be built on the east side of the river, and trains then directed south to enter Grand Central relatively easily ... with one proviso.
All trains into and out of Grand Central have, certainly since passage of the Kaufman Act, been required to operate under electric power. Sometimes this was 'bent' a bit, when trains nominally equipped with third-rail compatibility were "allowed" to operate their combustion motors (FL9s and the TurboTrain being two that periodically did this) but it was never 'normal'. In those days EL did not possess the necessary power to take its long-distance trains into Grand Central (and would almost certainly have to acquire or lease them from a railroad that did have such power -- probably the New Haven) and would have to make arrangements for engine change *somewhere* (certainly no closer than Mott Haven, I'd think) or else equip much of its power with similar arrangements to what was used on the FL9s ... not something, I think, that EL ever had either the money or the inclination to bother with.
A bit more likely would be for EL to find a way to connect with the PRR -- which is, of course precisely what was implemented in Secaucus for the "Midtown Direct" trains that are served in part by those dual-modes -- and get the same kind of permission to use Penn Station that the B&O enjoyed to 1924 and that LV used for its New York connection via Hunter Tower. That this was not done should give you some idea of EL's priorities in operating its 'name train' passenger service in that very lean time after formation of the merged railroad after 1961.
There is no direct route between New Jersey and Grand Central Terminal. GCT is oriented north-south and the nearest rail crossing of the Hudson River on NYC is near Albany.
I ask because the Phoebe Snow, EL's flagship train, ran from Hoboken, NJ to Buffalo.. why not out of Grand Central?
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