I do not know who the photographer of this image is. The picture is one of the very few I’ve ever seen of a railway in Paramus NJ, in this case the Public Service trolley on the Hudson River Line. The image is dated August 1938. This service was abaondoned August 5, 1938.
Thanks for sharing this, Charlie! A lot of the right-of-way is still used by Public Service power lines. I’ve always been fascinated by this service.
I lived down the road from you in Ho-Ho-Kus. We had one of the last vestiges of the old Public Service trolley route in our town, in the form of rails that were still embedded in the sidewalk where the line had crossed Race Track Road.
The sidewalks were redone about 10 years ago, but I think the town kept at least one of the rails and put up a plaque about the trolley.
If I recall my history, there was a deadly cornfield meet that basically put the service into financial peril. It never recovered.
Thanks for again for the photo! Nice to know there are a few other Bergen County rail historians on here.
Glad to meet a fellow Bergen County historian myself! Thanks for the post.
Your mention that much of the ROW survives as an electrical transmission line brings up another question for me. About thirty years ago or so, my father told me that he had stumbled across some tracks at a machine shop (garage business) south of the Garden State Plaza.
He felt that the location of the tracks (I think he just saw rail, as it was embedded in the dirt, macadam, or concrete there) indicated that it was a spur off the Hudson River Line. But this confused him greatly, as he didn’t think there would be a spur off the line, so he also posed the theory that the structure was built on the ROW.
I know I’m not giving enough information to really pin this down (I didn’t see this, my late father did), but does anyone know what this vestigial rail sighting may have been?
You’e stumped me there, Charles. But it sounds like that may indeed have been the Public Service right-of-way.
That’s how your post caught my eye. Railroads in Paramus, I wondered. Could it be?
If you use Route 4 as a marker, the first rail line east of the mall is the Pascack Valley line by North Sackensack station. West of the mall, the first line you cross is the Bergen County Line in Fair Lawn.
Since this is my home area I guess I’ll chime in. Yes, it’s true, despite it’s size and notability for the huge shopping malls that can’t open on Sundays, Paramus isn’t served by any rail lines. The area by the Garden State Plaza is all redone so I don’t know if any of the lines people found would still be around. If somebody could be more specific I could try to investigate.
The rails were still in the sidewalk last my friend and I checked, as a matter of fact you can follow most of the right of way except for a few areas where it was built over, notably highways like 17 & 208. The terminal for this line, called The North Jersey Rapid Transit Company I believe, was in East Paterson, now known as Elmwood Park, which is where I live. I have reason to believe it was close to my house but it is all obliterated on this end. This is a shame as the line went right past the High School in Ridgewood, and I work right up the road. How convenient this would have been! The crash site was between Glen Rock and Ridgewood, and the area is right by a road called Prospect Street which connects all these towns. I pass it fairly regularly and try to picture what it was like back then. The one thing that is gone that you wouldn’t believe was ever there is the huge viaduct over the Bergen County Line in Glen Rock. Though the land is all there there is no sign this structure ever existed, but pictures revealed it to be quite imposing. Thsi line was gone long before the others, early 20s I believe, but several of the streets around the library I am currently using this computer in are named for people from this line.
As to the Paramus track, I’m sorry but the details I have are too sketchy to help much.
It was a machine shop (in a garage like building) near Garden State Plaza Way. As this was thirty years ago, it’s entirely possible that whatever it was is gone now itself too.
My dad had said he would show me where, but we sadly never got around to it.
Regarding those two Erie lines… yes, I rode my bike to both of them at least a hundred times each while growing up in Paramus. Wish I’d taken more pictures.
I liked the pic,it’s a shame that all these lines are gone now and we’re spending MILLIONS to bring them back…It’s also a shame that hindsight is better that foresight…
Take the Texas Electric Rwy for instance,It ran for some hundred miles thru Dallas and FT Worth,Tx. to points south to Waco,one could ride from Waco to Dallas making several stops and still be in Dallas in 2 hrs or less…ITs at least a 2 hr drive now if theres no wrecks or contruction going on [sigh]
…Somehow, I missed the photo before of the trolley…What surprises me is the fact it has two headlights…Most trolleys I saw in my lifetime in operation had a headlight, but had just a reg. looking bulb in a less than shiny reflector. These two seem to be equipped with really shiny looking reflectors like they were capable of putting out some useful light.
And of course the black and white sure conveys a “real” trolley image…
Looks like the light on top was added later (in fact, it obscures the car number). I wonder if that was done to all of them, or this was a stopgap way to fix a problem with the lower lamp.