The Northern Branch is a railroad line that runs from Jersey City to Northvale in northeastern New Jersey, and formerly extended further into New York State. The line was constructed in 1859 by the Northern Railroad of New Jersey to connect the New York and Erie Railroad's Piermont Branch terminus in Piermont, New York, directly to Erie's primary terminal in Jersey City, initially Exchange Place, later Pavonia Terminal. In 1870 the line was extended to Nyack, New York, and continued to provide passenger service until 1966. After the Erie's unsuccessful merger with the Lackawanna Railroad to form the Erie-Lackawanna, ownership of the line passed into the hands of Conrail upon its formation in 1976 from a number of bankrupt railroads (including the E-L).
The line survives as two separate but connected sections. The Northern Running Track is an approximately two-mile-long freight railroad line in Hudson County, New Jersey. It runs from the Passaic and Harsimus Line at Marion Junction in western Jersey City north to the North Bergen Yard and the CSX Transportation's River Subdivision. North of the rail yard the Northern Branch diverges from the River Subdivision and continues north to the New York state line as a minor spur.
The Northern Branch Corridor Project is a NJ Transit proposal to restore passenger service on the line as an extension of the Hudson–Bergen Light Rail from the current Tonnelle Avenue terminus in North Bergen to Englewood.
History
Northern Railroad of New Jersey
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thumb|250px|alt=Map showing Hudson River terminals ca. 1900|Passenger service shifted Exchange Place to Pavonia in 1860s and from Pavonia to Lackawanna (Hoboken) in 1950s
thumb|left| Single running track under the [[Pulaski Skyway connects to the Passaic and Harsimus Line at Marion Junction. ROW previously also connected to Bergen Hill Cut and Exchange Place]]
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The Northern Railroad of New Jersey was chartered in 1854. When it opened on May 28, 1859, it was the second railroad in modern Bergen County (following only the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad) with stage connections to Hackensack and other points. The northern terminal was Piermont, New York, on the New York and Erie Rail Road, which had opened in 1841. After running on the Erie for one mile, trains reached the Northern's own line at Sparkill, New York, and ran for 21 miles to another junction with the Erie at Croxton in Jersey City, New Jersey. From there trains ran on the Erie and the New Jersey Railroad for two and a half miles to the terminal later called Exchange Place. Passengers could continue by ferry to Chambers St in Manhattan. Because of its running over the Erie, the Northern was built to the same broad gauge. By September 1859, there were three passenger trains in each direction, with one express running from Piermont to Jersey City in 70 minutes. Sometime in the 1860s the Northern began running service westward from Sparkill on the Erie's Piermont Branch as far as Monsey, New York.
The southern terminal was moved to the Erie's Jersey City Terminal late in 1868, about six months before the Northern Railroad's formal lease to the Erie. At that time the company had six locomotives, 21 passenger and baggage cars, and 30 freight cars. Not long after, a nominally separate company, the Nyack and Northern Railroad, built from Nyack south to meet the Northern at Sparkill, and from its opening in May 1870 Nyack became the northern terminal for most Northern Railroad trains. The Northern track was changed to standard gauge along with the rest of the Erie system in 1878.
The Northern Railroad was mainly a commuter and local line, with significant freight business only near its southern end. Business dropped off in the 1930s, and in 1942 the company's property was sold off to its long-term lessor, the Erie. From that time it was the Northern Branch.
Erie and Erie Lackawanna
thumb|left|Before re-routing to Hoboken Terminal, Northern Branch trains passed under DL&W bridge near the western portals of the [[Long Dock Tunnel and later, Bergen Arches.]]
By 1954, the Northern Branch had only three rush hour passenger trains each way. Between 1956 and 1958, the allied Erie and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W) consolidated their diminishing passenger services at the Lackawanna's Hoboken Terminal. During transition Erie trains continued to use the Erie Pavonia Terminal for about an hour in each rush hour, to distribute the heaviest crowds. A Northern Branch train was the very last to leave Pavonia Erie Terminal in 1958. Two years later, the Pavonia Terminal was razed in 1961. The two companies merged in 1960 to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad.
The Northern Branch ran from Hoboken for only eight years. Operation was complicated by the lack of a direct connection. Trains leaving Hoboken had to run out over the new connection (1956) from the DL&W Boonton Branch to the Erie Main Line, pass a switch which would be thrown, back up about two miles on the former route toward the Erie terminal to where the Northern Branch joined the Erie Main, wait for another switch, and then proceed forward again into the Northern Branch. The move added 15 to 20 minutes to running time.
Because commuter services cost more to run than they earned in fares, the Erie-Lackawanna ended passenger service on several branches in 1966. On the Northern Branch, the entire railroad north of Sparkill was abandoned in January and passenger service on the rest of the branch was eliminated in October. The last timetable, April 24, 1966, shows three rush hour trains each way taking 60 minutes to run from Hoboken to Sparkill, only 10 minutes longer than 1954 schedules because of some station closings. Although freight service on the line continued, service into New York state stopped in the late 1970s after the Continental Can Company in Piermont closed. The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway begins at the Land Bridge Terminal, just north of Secaucus Road, and parallels the Northern Running Track, just to the west, all the way to its end.
The next three overpasses, over which pass the Northeast Corridor, Route 3, and Route 495, have never been grade crossings. The next overpass, Paterson Plank Road, opened on April 22, 2002.
The Northern Running Track ends at North Bergen Yard, at what has been called Granton Junction, and is now CP 2. From here, it splits into two CSX lines, the Bergen Subdivision (which was part of Conrail's River Line until most of Conrail's assets were split), and CSX's Northern Branch. The Bergen Subdivision soon becomes the River Subdivision, and leads along the west side of the Hudson River towards Albany, New York.
Beginning at CP 2, the CSX-owned Northern Branch is a lightly used freight spur that passes through eastern Bergen County, New Jersey, terminating at the state line in Northvale. The line's tracks have been removed beginning at the New York border. However, the right-of-way continues as a rail trail heading north as several names - the Joseph B. Clarke Rail-Trail to Piermont, the Old Erie Path to Grand View, and the Raymond G. Esposito Trail to Nyack. There are proposals to use the right-of-way north of Englewood, New Jersey the state line as a rail trail connecting to the Hudson River Valley Greenway.
Future passenger use
New Jersey Transit plans to restore passenger service over a portion of the CSX line between North Bergen and Englewood as an extension of the Hudson–Bergen Light Rail from Tonnelle Avenue, known as the Northern Branch Corridor Project.
See also
- Hudson Connecting Railway
- Timeline of Jersey City area railroads