Well today I took my first Railfan Trip of 2013, exploring more of the Raritan Valley Line and I now have photo essays of every station between Bridgewater and Newark. What made today more ridiculous for me (and a sign of NJ Transit’s strange fares where it can be cheeper to make a stopover) is that I did the entire day for less than the round-trip cost of a ticket to Bridgewater. Today’s round trip from Newark Penn Station cost $17.50 total on five different NJT tickets. A round-trip ticket to Bridgewater is $19.50. I also spent $4 for my Northeast Corridor trip from New York Penn Station to Newark and $1.70 for my ten trip SmartLink fare to get back to New York. Finally I walked a total of about 3.5 miles between stations in different fare zones on two different walks.
I Leave the house at 9:45, realing I’d be spending the extra $2.30 on an NJT train to Trenton that I need at 10:33 to connect to my Raritan Valley Line train. I get to Penn station at 10:15, stop at one of the few NJ Transit TVMs left in the Amtrak concourse by NJTs closed ticket windows and enter the clubAcela with ten minutes to wait before the track of my train is posted.
The friendly attendant says “All I Need to See is your card, not your ticket” and I grab some coffee and a blueberry muffin. I sit down for 10 minutes and have to glance at a departure monitor to notice my train is boarding. No announcements are made in ClubAcela directly, it has a separate PA system. I know now there will be many fewer tips out to Newark on PATH to board trains as I continue my photo essays of NJ Transit with ClubAcelas complementary processed muffins. I glance at the departure monitors in the ClubAcela at 10:25 and notice my train is boarding. I head down the upper level escalator to 10W to some arrowcars. We leave two minutes late because of a center door issue announced over the PA. The conductor comes and I get a quick ticket punch going through the Meadowlands.
I hear the Vermonter announced with the machine voice saying all the little stops in Vermont including Windsor twice without specifying the one in CT or VT. I go and get a photo of the flip board that lacks a display for St Albans so it’s the train from Washington to blank. I then boarded my Raritian Valley line train on track 5 with about 6 bilevels but only the last two open because there rebuilding the platform. I see the Vermonter stop in the station and notice it lacks a cab car, I guess there back to the two locos configuration after the engine change in New Haven.
My Raritan Valley Line train leaves at 11:05 and as we stop at Union Station I notice that all the regular schedules except a faded one at the end of the platform have been replaced with advisories that the line is operating on a modified schedule and to call or use your mobile device. I step off at Cranfood. This station can accommodate a ridiculous six tracks although just two are in service. The ticket office is still open (and I am happy to see is now open 2:00pm, not closing at 12:40). I get my photo essay and walk down to Garwood that has quite infrequent service. There I get the next hours two trains in each direction passing each other and bypassing the station shrotly after 12:20. I keep walking and end up at Westfield with modern high-level platforms and the waiting room still open but the ticket office closed with the staff gradually closing up. They are quite friendly as I snap my photo essay of the interior.
Single-tracking on the Raritan-bound track is happening due to construction work on an overpass near Plainfield. I photograph a Newark-bound train arriving and departing on Track 1 before my Raritan-bound train arrives. This train, headed all the way to High Bridge has its PA system messed up and it keeps emitting sounds that make a horn is being played. This train leaves at 1:27 and I ride out to the extremely unique, located at a junction of two railroads Bound Brook Station.
This station I spend quite a while at getting a photo essay and photographing a Raritan-bound train. Its then a short walk beneath a highway but with a sidewalk to TD Bank Stadium. The home of the Somerset Patriots, an independent Atlantic League baseball team. There I walked through the parking lots, with a confusing sidewalk to the tiny Bridgewater Station with two very short platforms and no real building. I get on the 2:52 Newark-bound train and take it just two stops (for $2.25) to Dunellen for a 50 minute photo stop at a rather boring and ‘modern’ station. I get back on the 3:53 train to Roselle Park and have the same trainset with the odd horn noise where I arrive at 4:22.
At Roselle I have just half an hour and realize that the simple 1960s station is one I might have to revisit. Not one but two Norfolk Southern Freight trains pass by in my just half-hour visit along the gauntlet track. Both times I’m away from the platform getting photos from the street. Since its the dead of Winter dusk comes early and I’m on the 4:53 in the dark heading back to Newark.
I got off my Raritan Valley Line train on Track A and walk down to the main concourse and up the escalator to Track 1. Here I heard the doors close for PATH to track 2, tapped my SmartLink card and hopped on the next PATH train leaving for WTC. It’s an uneventful ride until Journal Square were I get off deciding to see how the trains to 33rd Street are doing. I watch to terminating trains come in on the other platform to discharge there tracks and another WTC-bound train enters as my train to 33rd Street comes in. We make a cross-platform connection before my 33rd Street train comes first. Its a stop and go ride back to 33rd Street where I get off, and use the exit platform to slowly leave the station.
I decide I’m too tired to walk the two blocks over to 8th Avenue to get the A train and will do the B/D to the A. I go down the southern entrance to the D train platform and the platform seems packed, I slowly walk up to the front of the train and hear that B service is suspended because of a broken rail. Since I have my monthly Unlimited in my pocket I decide I might as well walk the two blocks over to the A train at Penn Station and exit at 35th Street to dash the two blocks over and go in that entrance to be at the front of the A train.