Marion Junction is a

railroad junction A junction, in the context of rail transport, is a place at which two or more rail routes converge or diverge. This implies a physical connection between the tracks of the two routes (assuming they are of the same gauge), provided by ''points'' ( ...

in western

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

's River Line (via

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busin ...

Northern Branch The Northern Branch is a railroad line that runs from Jersey City to Northvale in northeastern New Jersey. The line was constructed in 1859 by the Northern Railroad of New Jersey to connect the New York and Erie Railroad's Piermont Branch ter ...

) to

's Passaic and Harsimus Line. The two lines merge towards the west, allowing through trains from upstate New York to continue towards the rest of the country. The track actually making the connection is known as the

Marion Running Track Marion may refer to: People *Marion (given name) *Marion (surname) *Marion Silva Fernandes, Brazilian footballer known simply as "Marion" *Marion (singer), Filipino singer-songwriter and pianist Marion Aunor (born 1992) Places Antarctica * Mario ...

History

The

New Jersey Railroad The United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company (UNJ&CC) was a railroad company which began as the important Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), whose 1830 lineage began as one of the eight or ten earliest permanent North AmericanList of Earliest Am ...

(NJRR; later part of the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

, PRR) and

Paterson and Hudson River Railroad The Paterson and Hudson River Railroad was a railroad that operated in New Jersey and connected the cities of Jersey City and southeast Paterson. The railroad was started in 1833. The company was the first in the United States to build moveable ...

(later part of the

Erie Railroad The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in the northeastern United States, originally connecting New York City — more specifically Jersey City, New Jersey, where Erie's Pavonia Terminal, long demolished, used to stand — with Lake Erie ...

) both built their lines to this point in 1834 and November 28, 1833, respectively. It took four more years for the NJRR to cut through

Bergen Hill Bergen Hill refers to the lower Hudson Palisades in New Jersey, where they emerge on Bergen Neck, which in turn is the peninsula between the Hackensack and Hudson Rivers, and their bays. In Hudson County, it reaches a height of 260 feet. Rail ...

, or the lower

New Jersey Palisades The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson River Palisades, are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey and Southeastern New York in the United States. The cliffs s ...

; prior to that, passengers and freight transferred to horse-drawn carriages over the hill. The junction was a simple one, with both lines merging towards the east, allowing both railroads to access the east side of the Palisades and the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. In 1861, due to congestion on the PRR cut, the Erie built the

Long Dock Tunnel The Long Dock Tunnel is a freight rail tunnel in Jersey City, New Jersey that is part of the North Jersey Shared Assets Area and used by CSX Transportation on the National Docks Secondary. The single track (formerly dual track) tunnel runs throu ...

through

and Marion Junction became a minor transfer point. In 1873 the newly opened

New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway The New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway (or New York, Susquehanna and Western Railroad and also known as the Susie-Q or the Susquehanna) is a Class II American freight railway operating over 400 miles (645 km) of track in th ...

(NYS&W) and Montclair Railway (later New York and Greenwood Lake Railway, NY&GL) began using

trackage rights Railway companies can interact with and control others in many ways. These relationships can be complicated by bankruptcies. Operating Often, when a railroad first opens, it is only a short spur of a main line. The owner of the spur line may con ...

over the Erie route to Marion Junction in order to reach the PRR cut. NY&GL rerouted passenger trains to the Erie's

Pavonia Terminal Pavonia Terminal was the Erie Railroad terminal on the Hudson River situated on the landfilled Harsimus Cove in Jersey City, New Jersey. The station opened in 1861 and closed in 1958 when the Erie Railroad moved its passenger services to nearby ...

about 1890, and NYS&W did the same in 1911. NYS&W continued to maintain a freight house at Marion Junction. With the decline of the passenger railroads in the mid-20th century, Marion Junction lost much traffic. Facing east, it was not in the best alignment for freight traffic between upstate

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and points south. Around 1994,

New Jersey Transit New Jersey Transit Corporation, branded as NJ Transit, and often shortened to NJT, is a state-owned public transportation system that serves the U.S. state of New Jersey, along with portions of New York State and Pennsylvania. It operates bu ...

paid to modify the junction to point west, as part of moving the River Line to the west side of the Palisades, clearing the east side for the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. This made the junction the preferred (and in some cases the only) route for freight traffic.

References

{{Reflist Rail infrastructure in New Jersey Transportation in Hudson County, New Jersey Rail junctions in the United States

History

See also

References