User:Kew Gardens 613/sandbox 9

This sandbox is for NJ Transit stuff.

= Orange Branch = In the mid-1890s, the Erie greatly expanded the infrastructure and service on the Greenwood Lake, taking over the Watchung Railway in 1895 and the Caldwell Railway and the Roseland Railway in 1897, the former becoming the Orange Branch and the latter two the Caldwell Branch.

At Forest Hill in Newark the Orange Branch split at OJ Tower, constructed in 1897. Orange Branch passenger service was discontinued on May 20, 1955, but freight service lingered until 1994 when the track was removed from White Street in West Orange to the Watsessing section of Bloomfield. A portion of track was used until 2010 by Norfolk Southern to serve the Hartz Mountain plant, which was shuttered that year. At one time the Orange Branch served many industries along its right of way. Some track remains today for the Newark Light Rail, including Silver Lake Station, which was a station on the branch. The station, today known as Walnut Street, was then known as Montclair-Erie Plaza to differentiate it from the nearby Montclair Lackawanna Terminal. The line also had an extension to Sterling Forest and Ringwood near the state line with New York.

A short segment of the Orange Branch was brought back into use for passengers as part of the Newark Light Rail, with stations at Silver Lake and Grove Street.

The current light rail station opened on June 22, 2002, as part of an extension of the Newark City Subway from nearby Branch Brook Park station to Grove Street in Bloomfield. The station uses former tracks of the New York and Greenwood Lake Railway's Orange Branch, which went from nearby Forest Hill in Newark to West Orange. Service on this line ended on June 20, 1955.

= Caldwell Branch =

Caldwell station opened with the construction of the Caldwell Branch of the New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad (a subsidiary of the Erie Railroad system). The original proposed service through Caldwell was the Caldwell Railroad, a company founded in March 1869 for the construction of a railroad between Montclair and Caldwell. Construction began in 1872 of the railroad. However, work on this route was suspended in 1872 due to the inability to complete a tunnel through Montclair and nearby Verona. About 2000 ft of the tunnel was left uncompleted.

The Caldwell Railway was built in 1891 as a short branch of the New York and Greenwood Lake Railway, with the route via Great Notch station in Little Falls. Service on the railroad began on July 4, 1891. Service, one year later, was extended to nearby Essex Fells.

When the rail line opened on August 3, 1891, the line served Verona along with Overbrook Hospital (at that point also in Verona) and the neighboring borough of Caldwell. The service on the Caldwell Railway was taken over by the New York & Greenwood Lake in 1896, which was leased by the Erie Railroad a year later.

Change remained slim from 1905 to 1960 in Verona with the daily commuter services from Essex Fells to Jersey City's Pavonia Terminal. By 1962, the station saw only two commuter trains to the new terminus, Hoboken Terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey. To add to the problem, the station lost all passenger service under the new Erie-Lackawanna Railroad on September 30, 1966 after the Interstate Commerce Commission approved services could be cut on the branches losing money. After serving passengers of Cedar Grove, Verona, Caldwell and Essex Fells for 75 years, the Caldwell Branch was reduced to a costly freight service for companies in Cedar Grove and Verona. In the summer of 1975, a major storm washed away the usability of the tracks of the Caldwell Branch, and although the New Jersey Department of Transportation was willing to put in money for a grant to get the tracks rehabilitated, a lack of interested corporations ended the investment. It ended up the branch would not be absorbed into the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) in 1975, unlike most of the Erie Lackawanna system. On April 1, 1976, the Erie Lackawanna system was absorbed into Conrail. In June 1979, the dormant tracks of the Caldwell Branch were removed from Essex Fells to Great Notch.

Service on the branch ended on September 30, 1966, when multiple branch lines of the Erie Lackawanna were discontinued.

History
Commuter rail operations under Conrail was short-lived, turned over to the New Jersey Department of Transportation for service in 1980.

Service was suspended at Grove Street and the nearby Ampere station on April 7, 1991, until ridership could be found.

Alt G
http://library.rpa.org/pdf/RPA-Building-Rail-Transit-Projects-Better-for-Less.pdf

In the 1990s, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), Port Authority, and NJ Transit collaborated on the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) study to build new tunnels under the Hudson River. From the start, the intention was to connect Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal (GCT) as part of ARC (Alternative G) to provide direct east-side access for trans-Hudson commuters. When Alternative

G was later dropped, the MTA proceeded with a separate project at GCT called East Side Access, building a new terminal below the existing complex for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), to be completed by 2022.

https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10929/37691/02.0%20Appendix%202%20-%20FEIS.pdf?sequence=69&isAllowed=y The lower number of peak hour trains for Alternative G was a result of the limited capacity of PSNY Tracks 1 to 5, the relatively slow operating speeds on the track connection between PSNY and GCT, and the capacity limitations resulting from bi-directional operations (NJ TRANSIT and Metro-North) between PSNY and GCT. The slow track speeds between PSNY and GCT were determined by the tight turning radius and the steep grade needed to pass under the Sixth Avenue subway and still connect to GCT. Also, the relatively short distance between PSNY and GCT, combined with the slow acceleration and deceleration of commuter rail, prevents high- speed operations. These findings were the basis for elimination of Alternative G in the MIS.

They did: that's Alternative G, connecting to Grand Central. The connection would pass hundreds of feet above the water tunnel, and would pose no risk to it. What would pose a risk is trying to continue the cavern's stub-end, which is at a much lower elevation; that's why Alt P has no tail tracks. (It does not need tail tracks, but the people who design train stations in New York design everything else with tail tracks and probably would this one, too, if they could.)

MIS determined it would cost the least to build and operate, attracted the most riders, diverted the most motorists

The National Association of Railroad Passengers is intensely frustrated that the documentation of this so-called “Alternative G” remains under wraps after five years. The only thing made public from the 2003 Major Investment Study is a 31-page

“Executive Summary.” We have tried and failed to get FTA (including at the Administrator level) to force NJT to release the full report, but the response is always “it is just a draft and not appropriate for release.” We have been told that this is a 1,600 page document and, despite application through New Jersey’s Open Public Meeting Records Act, have been unable to secure its release.

http://www.rrwg.org/njtpa.pdf

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ADdfS8HDZ3AJ:https://dspace.njstatelib.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10929/37691/ATTACHMENT%2520C%2520-%2520Response%2520to%2520Comments.pdf%3Fsequence%3D103%26isAllowed%3Dy+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

https://www.ble-t.org/pr/news/pf_headline.asp?id=7094