Good evening, y'all got time for a couple stories?
Probably more than fifty years ago now. We walked to the Elizabethport station from my grandparents apartment. Took the train across the bay as part of a trip to New York City. I think it was a solid blue engine with green cars, could have been a Trainmaster. It was definitely not an F-unit. I sat by the window. Went over that bridge mentioned earlier. Scared me quite badly. I could see sections of the track and deck plates to my right were missing and I could see water thru the missing sections! After the train we took a ferry boat to the south end of Manhattan Island. We walked past a huge hole in the ground that my parents told me was going to be the world's tallest buildings someday. I'm guessing it was the foundations for the WTC twin towers. I remember climbing a bunch of stairs to get to the platform. Elizabethport had two platforms like this as I recall with tracks on each side of the platform. There was a crossing track just to the west that paralleled the Jersey turnpike. I think a RDC crossed it heading towards Newark while we waited. I don't remember the trip back to Elizabeth from NY. The other trips later in life to New York City we took the bus in and back.
In all likely hood the CNJ is probably how my grandparents moved fron E'port to the Scranton area in the 1920's and back to Elizabethport in the 1940's. They were about a block farther from the station the first time. Part of the coal docks and car yard, now long gone, would have only been a couple blocks away.
When my local hobby shop in North Carolina closed up a few years back I picked an SD35 in Jersey Central colors. 2504 I think. It doesn't go with my midwest theme at all but the sentimental value is there. Eventually I found a Conrail shell. Since Conrail eventually did get to central Illinois via the old Peoria and Eastern I now have a plausible reason to have it appear on the layout. I hear the SD35s went west but I can't confirm how far west.
Back to the original story. A few years later my grandparents moved to a high rise senior home, right across from downtown Elizabeth. There outside their widows six floors down was a four track electrified main with trains going past every few minutes. The Pennsylvania RR. the next trip to New Jersey I was a teen maybe 14, and would sneak up to the roof to follow the trains as far up as Newark. I wasn't a train fan as such then. If only I would have taken pictures back then. GG1's (I know that now) constantly passed by as did "Metroliners", as my cousins from Linden called them.
OK a late addition here. I just saw the weekend update. Both streets my grandparents lived on are on the map! My grandfather worked at the E'port Singer plant What is shown as the car yard was a parking lot when I was little. I walked along the edge of that lot down to the water to watch the oil tankers go by to Esso's Linden Refinery. (now Exxon) My grandparents lived about where the top of the 4 is on Inslee Place. It was pretty much a Polish neighborhood up until the late 60's.
All for now.
Bobster
