I need to begin this post back on a day in early July that I never wrote a posts about of still unreleased stations which I spent by taking PATH to Hoboken, doing a station-to-station of the Newark City Subway (not including the downtown light rail), and once I ended up at Grove Street going on a long 5 mile walk to get photos of every station on the lower reaches of the Montclair Branch. That day I visited Watsessing Avenue, Bloomfield, Glen Ridge, Bay Street, Walnut Street, and Watchung Avenue before hopping on a train at that station back to Penn.
Today’s goals were to continue and get more stations along the Montclair-Boonton Line. To put in context the way I started I need to discuss the fares to Upper Montclair:
Penn Station $6.75
Hoboken $5.25
Newark $2.25
When I saw just how much a premium Penn Station costs, although Hoboken is only $1.50 less, (less than PATH fare, which at this point I’m always happy to ride to get on different stations I still haven’t used (at this point 14 St and Christopher) along 6 Avenue, its current fare is $1.75 going up to ), and looked at a map realizing that Newark Penn Station and Newark Broad Street are only a mile apart along the New Downtown Light Rail the decision was made.
The day started off slowly at 10:00am on the A train to the D train to Herald Square where I walked up to street level and down 6 Avenue to the secondary entrance at 30 Street, just missed the Journal Square Train, which I uneventfully took their, had to wait far to long for the Newark Train (apparently there were issues with the Hackensack River Lift Bridge, that is by far the least reliable PATH line) and finally arrived in Newark at 11:55 so I would definitely miss the 11:58 train I was originally planning to catch.
This turned out to be absolutely fine, I had a wonderful walk getting more photos of the Newark Light Rail and being leisurely getting my photo essay of the spectacular Newark Broad Street station that I if only I had visited five years ago before the high platforms project they did do a good job in keeping the historical elements and themed canopy.
Next it was a relaxing but slow 22 minute ride, due to all the stops) to Upper Montclair where I had an uneventful walk through town to Mountain Avenue, Montclair Hieghts and through MSU to Montclair State University at Little Falls. Next was the more ambitious walk to the abandoned and fenced off Great Notch Station where I made the mistake (thought the shoulder would be wider) of walking on Route US-46 for half a mile after what I thought was a cleared PATH from the satellite image had no trespassing signs. I ended my long walk of 5 miles at Little Falls.
Little Falls is on the Boonton Line (a former separate branch before the Montclair Connection in 2001 but at this point basically after electrification ends at MSU) that is NJT’s only service that runs peak direction (5 in the AM inbound, 10 in the PM outbound) rush hours only. So I decided to end my day by taking the second trip of the PM peak outbound further (I had missed the first one), first we passed through Wayne which has been devastated by flooding, it looked absolutely awful from the train houses up to their porches, streets coned off, the entire train looked up from their reading material to look, even heard the conductors comment. Good thing I didn’t plan a walk there I almost did and will sometime soon. I took this train to Denville where it terminated and some wondered across the parking lot (its a split station just before the lines rejoin). I considered buying a ticket to Dover so I could get this ‘free’ layover photo stop but didn’t want to.
To complete one of two NJT service loops (the other is the Main and Bergen County Line if they count) instead I walked the half-mile south to Mount Tabor which is a tiny little platform and I had a personal stop for the 5:25 train to Hoboken walking out onto a wooden bridge to reach the far track. For this train my original plan was to transfer and take a midTOWN direct train from Newark-Broad Street when I looked at the fare table (I needed to get back relatively quickly and didn’t want to do the half-hour walk or light rail ride) I noticed a reverse of this mornings observations: New York – $14.00, Hoboken – $10.75, how strange for close-in stops its not cheeper to take PATH to Hoboken, for farther away ones it is, I like the LIRRs method Penn Station (off peak at least) is always a subway ride, $2.25 more than Jamaica. So I stayed on the train through to Hoboken knowing time would be almost even and getting home for $3.72 when I factor the 7% MetroCard bonus (just 47ยข more than a trip through to Hoboken).
Here is a teaser photo from the day as these will just be added to my huge archive and to-do list until the New York City Subway is finished:
