Public Service of New Jersey

Newark Division, 1947:

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:

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.

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?

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!)

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! [+o(]

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.

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

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.

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!)

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&#

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.

From from Overmod’s URL, Neumman Histarical photos:

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…

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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