Re: (erielack) Musings on a 1962 employees timetable

[Erie910` <erie910_@_fastmail.fm>]

JG,
You commented on the Newark Branch disconnection at South Paterson. You 
are correct in how trains ran on the Newark Branch. I was a high school 
student who commuted by bus from Passaic to Paterson, and could see one 
of the trains waiting at South Paterson, just east of Main Street. I did 
also have a notice to passengers which said that there was a bus 
connection between Market St. station and South Paterson until the 
construction was complete. I assume that there was a way to run around 
the consist someplace near South Pasterson.


Ken Bush

JG at graytrainpix wrote:

> The 1962 employee’s timetable that I won thru eBay showed up in my 
> mailbox yesterday (NY Division # 4, Oct. 28, 1962). As advertised, it 
> was signed by the late, great EL / Erie tower operator and dispatcher, 
> Charlie Howells. But aside from that bit of historical significance, 
> the timetable brought up a variety of other interesting issues. Since 
> there hasn’t been all that much written about EL operations during the 
> early 60s, I thought I would share some stuff that I noticed.
>
> First off, you can tell that this timetable is a mix of pre-merger 
> Erie NY Division pages and Lackawanna M&E Division pages, with just a 
> few post-merger changes. The typefaces and printing styles change 
> somewhere in the middle, with former Erie schedules and special 
> instructions seperated from former DL&W material. In fact, there 
> wasn’t even a unified rulebook yet; the timetable points out that 
> former Erie rules remained in effect on the Erie side, and the former 
> DL&W book still ruled on the old Lackawanna.
>
> The DL&W portion of the timetable is admittedly more informative and 
> organized. You have to search around for times when towers and block 
> stations are opened and closed in the Erie section. And not all manual 
> grade crossings (having gatemen) are listed either. You search in vain 
> for info about Park Avenue in Rutherford and Central Avenue in East 
> Rutherford along the Bergen County Line. Since these gatehouses were 
> closed at night and on weekends, you would think that the Erie would 
> have provided train crews with an easy way to find out when someone 
> would be on duty. However, the gatehouses on the NJ&NY and the Orange 
> Branch are listed, along with their on-duty times. But these listings 
> show up in odd places: for one line, near the station listing; for the 
> other, in the line’s special instructions. Not until EL employee 
> timetable number 1 in October 1964 was this cleaned up.
>
> Speaking of gatehouses, the timetable cleared up a minor mystery 
> presented by John Henderson on page 38 of his great book “Four Great 
> Divisions” (no pun, that book is worth the price alone for the 
> centerspread on p.48 and 49 of the board at Grove Street Tower on the 
> former Erie in Jersey City). Henderson tells of how he hired on as a 
> New York Division tower operator in 1961, and was given his first 
> assignment at the Watchung Avenue block station and gatehouse in 
> Montclair (on the Greenwood Lake line). What? OK, I knew that prior to 
> the big 1963 line rearrangement, the Greenwood Lake line did not have 
> automatic signals west of Orange Junction (Forest Hills, Newark) and 
> was run by block operators and rules. OK, you can see the block 
> semaphore in the picture of the gate shanty that Mr. Henderson 
> provides on p. 38. But anyone familiar with Watchung Avenue in 
> Montclair knows that it was very unlikely that there was a grade 
> crossing at that station in 1961. The “Lake” goes over Watchung Avenue 
> on a trestle and the landscape is generally depressed from track level 
> on both sides of the station.
>
> Despite the inelegance of how block stations are listed in the Erie 
> section of the timetable, I finally found a reference to “North 
> Fullerton Ave. Block Station” in Montclair. OK, that makes sense out 
> of Mr. Henderson’s words and picture. North Fullerton Avenue is a 
> level grade crossing about ½ mile to the east of Watchung Avenue 
> station, near the center siding that NJ Transit still uses 
> occasionally for maintenance equipment. But wait, a new mystery 
> arises: North Fullerton was staffed as a block station from 11:30 AM 
> to 7:30 PM. What about the morning rush hour? Perhaps North Fullerton 
> was a westbound block station only. The Erie station at Walnut Street, 
> about a ½ mile to the east, was open from 6:30 AM to 3:30 PM – which 
> would cover all of the morning rush hour, but not the evening commute. 
> Perhaps Walnut Street then served as an eastbound block limit, and 
> North Fullerton served as a westbound block station. Fine, but one 
> more thing. Who operated the gates at North Fullerton Ave. during the 
> morning rush hour? Another wild guess, maybe a regular gateman manned 
> the shanty from 7 to 11 (and didn’t touch the block signal lever or OS 
> trains, since gatemen weren’t paid to do that), then spent another 4 
> hours later in the day at one of the gatehouses on the Orange Branch.
>
> Speaking of block operation, there is also the Newark Branch, which in 
> this timetable has been temporarily disconnected from the Erie Main 
> Line through Paterson. Why? Because the Branch through South Paterson 
> was being elevated as to become the connector between the Boonton Line 
> at Paterson Junction and the Erie Main at XW Tower (under Route 80 
> today), as part of the closure of the Main Line thru downtown Passaic. 
> Henderson describes this on pages 56 and 57 of Four Great Divisions. 
> Instead of originating and terminating at Waldwick and Paterson 
> Station Lower Level, the 3 daily Newark Branch trains now deadheaded 
> from Hoboken in the AM and deadheaded back there in the PM via the 
> Boonton Line, then started or ended their Newark Branch runs at South 
> Paterson. I’m going to guess that an old low-speed freight track 
> connection between the DL&W Paterson City Spur and the Erie’s Newark 
> Branch at Paterson Junction was used, and that the elevated stretch of 
> “New Main Line” from Paterson Jct. (former DLW Boonton Line) to XW 
> (Erie Main) was still under construction in October 62.
>
> XW Tower was not shown as a train order office in October 1962, so I’m 
> guessing that it had been closed just a bit earlier in the year, once 
> the work on the Newark Branch elevation began. But as with WR Tower in 
> West Arlington, which was closed in the early 70s, XW probably was 
> opened as needed for work trains needing access to and from the 
> elevation area, and for single track passenger train moves on the Main 
> due to that work (Henderson describes this also on page 57; he was 
> assigned as a temporary operator in early 1963 at the crossovers just 
> east of XW and Paterson Yard, to allow work on the track rearrangement 
> at XW).
>
> Quick digression on XW: Len Allman asked the other day about plans for 
> those unique Erie towers constructed of block having 2-sided, barely 
> slanting roofs covering 2 opposing faces of the structure, and zig-zag 
> parapets towering over the roofline at the other 2 faces. I wouldn’t 
> know where to find plans, but there are a number of photos available 
> of this style of tower. OS Tower can be clearly seen in Trackside with 
> Bob Collins and Route of the Erie Limited, HB Tower (NY&NY Jct. 
> Rutherford) is seen in Pascack Valley Line, Cass Street Hornell 
> appears in EL in Color 4, SN Levittsburg OH is seen in EL in Color 1 
> (and probably other places). Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any 
> good pics of XW, which was also of this style. Hope I’m wrong about 
> that, or that an upcoming book will soon change that. You can barely 
> make out XW in the distance in Henderson’s pic on p. 58 (of the 
> commemorative last train down the Erie Main Line thru Passaic).
>
> Back to the Boonton Line for a second. In October, 1962, train 15 (the 
> Owl mail train for Buffalo) was still scheduled on the Boonton Line, 
> with first stop at East Stroudsburg. Its eastbound equivalent, number 
> 10 the New York Mail, ran via the M&E with stops in Dover and Newark. 
> Interestingly, the late night Erie mail trains had the same pattern: 
> westbound number 7 (the Pacific Express) ran as an express via the 
> Bergen County Line, first stop Middletown, while eastbound number 8 
> ran the Erie Main with stops in Ridgewood and Paterson. Hmmm, perhaps 
> there was enough time in the evening to gather mail from northern New 
> Jersey locations and take it all down to Hoboken for westbound 
> shipment at midnight; whereas coming east, the Post Office wanted the 
> mail dropped off at local stops as to give enough time for local 
> street sorting. That might better allow eastbound mail to be ready for 
> daytime delivery in New Jersey. Again, just a guess. As to number 15, 
> it was put back on the M&E thru Summit after the big rearrangement in 
> 63. I gather that a through mail train would have difficulty making 
> good time on the Greenwood Lake portion of the “revised Boonton Line”, 
> given the speed restrictions at DB and WR Draw (20 mph), the grades up 
> to Great Notch, and the curves from there to Wayne.
>
> One final passenger train point: I never knew that 21 and 22 (the 
> Delaware Division connections for trains 1 and 2, which in 1962 were 
> still called the Erie-Lackawanna Limited) were scheduled thru to 
> Hornell. Unfortunately, my timetable (or really Charlie’s timetable) 
> only shows the schedule to Port Jervis, but the train destination is 
> clearly marked as Hornell. A note says “no passengers west of 
> Binghampton”. Hmm, wonder if 21 and 22 thus became the Buffalo 
> connections at Hornell, i.e. trains 31 and 32. As such, they would 
> really be operated as thru Hoboken to Buffalo runs, perhaps for 
> purposes of handling thru mail and express cars to and from Buffalo 
> (without burdening 1 and 2 with extra switching in Binghampton and 
> Hornell).
>
> Just some musings on an old timetable, I'm ready for any and all 
> corrections to my guesses.
>
> Jim Gerofsky
>
>
>
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