Talk:New Jersey and New York Railroad

Deletion
I feel this article should be combine with the Pascack Valley Line article. There is more information about the NJNY Railroad in that article than this one. Connscan145 (talk) 02:57, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The real solution is to move material from the PVL article to this one. It does deserve a separate article, as it was a separate company, at least until the Erie bought them out. Then again, a three way merger of the PVL, NJ&NY and Hackensack and New York Railroad articles might make sense, if only to prevent the issue wherein some of the PVL station articles seem to muddle up the succession of companies that owned the line. The short version: Hackensack & New York (to Hackensack) -> New Jersey & New York (to Nanuet w/extension to Haverstraw) -> Erie (as paper subsidiary leased for 99 years) -> Erie Lackawanna (merger, Haverstraw extension abandoned) -> Conrail (may not have actually owned, as NJDOT bought it somewhere in there) -> NJ Transit) oknazevad (talk) 18:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

route map
In lieu of a system map illustration here on wikipedia, here is a possible route map for the line that follows the "north is up" (for the most part) convention used by NJTransit-Pascack (and not followed by NJTransit-Pascack-infobox). The station names were taken from Henry J Sundermeyer's site along with the notion that the line was double tracked from Oradell on southward. The double tracking is also shown on Sundermeyer's source, namely George Elwood's site. I noted with some discomfort that Elwood's 1914 Erie system map image here mentions in the key in the lower right hand corner: "The New Jersey & New York Railroad (controlled by ownership of over a majority of the stock and operated independently) is shown in blue character lines" and in that key he notes other Erie-leased lines are shown in a color other than blue. Hence, according to Elwood, as late as 1914 the Erie simply owned a controlling portion of the securities issued by the NJ&NY and had not leased the line as is often stated in several wikipedia articles.

Among other concerns I have is that this route map tries to use contemporaneous names (e.g. "Williams Avenue" instead of "Teterboro", "Central Avenue" instead of "Center Street", "Woodridge" instead of "Wood-Ridge", "North Hackensack" instead of "New Bridge Landing", etc.) but also uses the pink color to indicate the closure of the Haverstraw and New City lines (which did not happen until mid 20th century). I was split over the issue of what to call the Erie and decided to label the excerpt portion from Piermont to Suffern the older "New York & Erie" or simply "NY & E", but I labelled the line joined in Rutherford "Erie". I'd be pleased to here suggestions on how better to represent the route south of Carlstadt.

Admittedly some of the extra information, such as closures or burnings, might better be left in a table of station stops, but I find such tables hard to discern routes as well as a map or a route map can convey. If a table is also presented in the article then extra text details could then be removed from the route map and placed into the table. I'd like to leave this proposal here on the talk page for a few days, after which I will copy the route map to the article. 67.86.74.73 (talk) 04:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

By the way, Jones is cited several times in this route map.


 * Most impressive work. The only 2 things I would not is that your concern about the accuracy of the 99 year lease is unneeded; the source for that is the Jones book, an excellent resource that includes numerous images of historical documents as well. It is likely the other website mentioned made a distinction on paper that didn't really exist in practice.


 * The second is that the Piermont Branch name for the original Erie Line is of early enough origin that using it instead of the NY & E name here is easily acceptable.


 * That's the hard part of doing route diagrams for historical eras of rail lines. The question of exactly when to depict is never satisfactorily answered, especially for a line that changed over it's lifetime. oknazevad (talk) 10:08, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the compliment. This route map is taken from a source that showed the lines as they were in 1914 (except for the pink colour of the lines that are now closed &mdash; that I decided to add as a bit of an anachronism, but I think do a better job of portraying "current line status").  As such I'd do well to use the 1914 name of the Erie, which was Erie Railroad from 1896 on (particularly since Piermont Branch is not an article now, and even if used here might misleadingly convey the notion that there was an NJ&NY ownership of the "branch" line).  I have made the "NY&E" -&gt; "Erie" change to the proposal.


 * Thanks also for verifying the 99 year lease. As might be evident by now I do not (yet) own a copy of the Jones book. I may try to obtain or borrow one though. 67.86.74.73 (talk) 02:38, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * As someone who wrote a massive portion of the history in a sandbox (still working on it), I've made changes. I like it very much good sir, good work. Now I just made some edits, but you're good to go :). I will give you more years as I can get them.Mitch32(Transportation Historian) 17:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * One other thought, about the bottom end. Pascack Junction is, as always has been a one way junction, towards Hudson County, not a wye, so I'm thinking that the end should depict that. To that end, I don't think the Rutherford station, which is on a separate line, needs to be depicted, nor even mentioned. I'd make the edit, but I'm pretty lousy about editing these templates. oknazevad (talk) 00:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * OK &mdash; I've removed Rutherford station from the template proposal. I had placed it there since the station was close to Wood-Ridge (only about 4000 feet away) and due to the fact that both this article and the article on the Hackensack and New York Railroad mention: The railway ran from Rutherford, New Jersey to Hackensack, New Jersey.  It appears that both articles are misleading, and possibly erroneous.  Both articles might need to refrain from mentioning Rutherford (unless the geographic extent of Rutherford was much larger, before "borough fever" struck perhaps(?)). I've found that Bianculli's book mentions: In 1856, the Hackensack and New York Railroad was chartered, and two years later it began operating between Hackensack and Jersey City.  After it was granted permission to build northward, it reached Hillsdale in 1869 and was aquired by the Erie Railroad. After the Erie's bankruptcy in 1882, the road became the New Jersey and New York Railroad (NJ&NY), although it was still controlled by the Erie. ... In 1969, timetables began to identify the NJ&NY as the "Pascack Valley Line," a name that continued after NJ Transit became its operator.  I will browse the icons on commons to see if there might be a better way to depict the 45 degree junction between the NJ&NY and the Erie down there.


 * By the way, I also found that the photo poster placed by NJ Transit on the Hillsdale Station house claims it was built in 1872, in other words 2 or 3 years after rail service to Hillsdale was established. Hence I'll edit the caption of the photo in the infobox for this article. 67.86.74.73 (talk) 02:24, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I managed to find some junction icons that now seem to depict the southern junction towards Hudson County a bit better.
 * Not inaccurate or misleading, as Pascack Junction is in Rutherford, but there's no H&NY/NJ&NY/PVL station in the town; the first station was in neighboring Carlstadt, with Wood-Ridge as the closest station currently open. Such is the life of a branch line.oknazevad (talk) 04:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your constructive comments Oknazevad and Mitchazenia. I have posted the route map into the article. Further edits to it would best be carried out in the article (instead of here on the talk page).  (I might consider adding a gallery of the old postcards from the 1900s and 1910s to this article to temporarily compensate for its current dearth of text).  I will be posting another route map proposal at Talk:Hackensack and New York Railroad sometime in the next few days as well. 67.86.74.73 (talk) 03:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

\Gla to be of help. I made one tiny correction, but it looks great.oknazevad (talk) 18:55, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction. I had visited Spring Valley and thought I saw shiny (not rusty) rails extending westward, but I clearly did not venture far enough to the west.  I've added the gallery to serve as a temporary space filler until more text can be added to the article.  I'll remove the ref tags and reflist template from this section of the talk page (since I think they are frowned upon, and they could interfer with other potential discussions). 67.86.74.73 (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

dates of operation
According to the List of New Jersey railroads article the dates of operation of the railroads of interest to the history of the PVL were given in a table. With some modifications the data in that article's table might more succinctly be expressed as follows, with hopefully more accurate sources cited for dates. I'd like to use these to update the dates presented in this and the H&NY articles. 67.86.74.73 (talk) 04:36, 23 November 2010 (UTC):