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Paterson is a
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 ...
commuter
railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...
located on an elevated viaduct above Market Street in
downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...
Paterson, New Jersey Paterson ( ) is the largest City (New Jersey), city in and the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.double track A double-track railway usually involves running one track in each direction, compared to a single-track railway where trains in both directions share the same track. Overview In the earliest days of railways in the United Kingdom, most lin ...
ed, for north and south traffic on the NJT
Main Line Mainline, ''Main line'', or ''Main Line'' may refer to: Transportation Railway * Main line (railway), the principal artery of a railway system * Main line railway preservation, the practice of operating preserved trains on an operational railw ...
.


History

Paterson station has always only served one railroad line: the Main Line of the Erie Railroad, along with its successors, the main lines of the
Erie-Lackawanna Railroad The Erie Lackawanna Railway , known as the Erie Lackawanna Railroad until 1968, was formed from the 1960 merger of the Erie Railroad and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad. The official motto of the line was "The Friendly Service Route" ...
(EL), Conrail legacy EL division (operated under NJDOT), and finally the present-day New Jersey Transit Main Line. However, the Main Line itself has changed substantially over the years, leading to significant changes in usage, destinations, and connections. Originally a single track at
grade Grade most commonly refers to: * Grade (education), a measurement of a student's performance * Grade, the number of the year a student has reached in a given educational stage * Grade (slope), the steepness of a slope Grade or grading may also ref ...
, the elevated station was built between 1924 and 1930 when 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 ...
eliminated street level crossings on its Main Line in Paterson. The Erie Main Line ran from
Jersey City Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
via
Binghamton Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...
and
Jamestown, New York Jamestown is a city in southern Chautauqua County, in the U.S. state of New York. The population was 28,712 at the 2020 census. Situated between Lake Erie to the north and the Allegheny National Forest to the south, Jamestown is the largest pop ...
,
Akron Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...
and
Marion, Ohio Marion is a city in and the county seat of Marion County, Ohio, Marion County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in north-central Ohio, approximately north of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus. The population was 35,999 at the 2020 United S ...
, with major branches to Buffalo and
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
. Major long-distance passenger and freight trains passed through this section of track, and many of those passenger trains stopped at Paterson. The ''
Erie Limited The ''Erie Limited'' was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Erie Railroad between Jersey City, New Jersey (for New York City) and Chicago, Illinois via the Southern Tier. It operated from 1929 to 1963. After the merger of the Erie an ...
'' and the '' Lake Cities'' served passengers heading toward Chicago. The station received eastbound passengers from the '' Atlantic Express.'' This situation was stable from the inception of the station until the early 1960s, when the Erie Railroad was in major financial difficulties. Due to the financial issues, the Erie merged with the Lackawanna in 1960, to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, or EL. The EL immediately looked to reduce costs by eliminating redundant lines and consolidating passenger train routes. The ''Erie Limited'' and the ''Lake Cities'' were rerouted away from Paterson and instead over the Lackawanna
main line Mainline, ''Main line'', or ''Main Line'' may refer to: Transportation Railway * Main line (railway), the principal artery of a railway system * Main line railway preservation, the practice of operating preserved trains on an operational railw ...
through northwest New Jersey and the Poconos. The #21 train made a stop ''en route'' to Binghamton, where passengers could switch to the ''
Phoebe Snow Phoebe Snow (born Phoebe Ann Laub; July 17, 1950 – April 26, 2011) was an American roots music singer-songwriter and guitarist, known for her hit 1974 and 1975 songs "San Francisco Bay Blues", "Poetry Man", "Harpo's Blues", and her credited g ...
'' after a layover. The discontinuing of the ''Atlantic Express'' (1965) marked the end of direct long-distance passenger service through Paterson. The #21/22 Hoboken-Binghamton trains continued another year to connect to the ''Phoebe Snow'' in Binghamton.'Official Guide of the Railways,' December 1966, Erie Lackawanna section, pp. 201-5. Serendipitously, four government agencies had been developing plans that, to succeed, required changes or destruction to sections of the Erie Main Line: * The city of Passaic wish to remove the Main Line grade trackage from the city's primary business district. There was no viable rerouting available pre-merger, and so negotiations never went through. * Further east along the line, the state of New Jersey wished to extend State Route 21, but the Main Line was in the way, including its bridge over the Passaic River. Once more, the Erie had no viable options for rerouting the Main Line * In Paterson itself, the state and Federal governments wished to use the Lackawanna Boonton Branch right of way at Garret Mountain to build what would become
Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one o ...
. This would have required difficult rerouting of that line for the Lackawanna Railroad. With the 1960 EL merger, the legacy Lackawanna lines were now available to create a new Main Line, and the legacy Erie lines were available to create new routes for the Boonton line. Acceding to the above government requests became possible, with the triple benefit of removing government pressure, eliminating redundancy in the lines and schedules, and reducing costs for maintenance, capital, and taxes with the abandonment or sale of rights of way. The Route 21 and downtown Passaic plans required severing the entire Passaic portion of the Main Line, and stranded adjacent sections in Clifton, and Paterson and beyond. Included in this stranded section was the Paterson station. To fix this problem, a connection from the Boonton Branch was built. This allowed the Main Line to realign on a parallel route, with minimal construction, running trains from Hoboken (instead of Jersey City) through the Boonton Branch stations that had previously provided minor competition to the Erie stations. Once these trains reached Paterson, they used the new connection to continue on the original Main Line tracks, including service to Paterson Station. The connection was single-tracked for many years, but double-tracked in 2002. The remainder of the Boonton Branch, also severed at I-80, was realigned to continue on the old Erie Greenwood Lake Branch. The EL went bankrupt in the early 1970s.
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 ...
took over its operations, but the Main Line did not fit Conrail's plans, since the realignments were much less efficient than the original Main Line and Boonton Branch for straight freight traffic. The severing of various freight lines and the new connections required to create a contiguous east–west line through New Jersey to Pennsylvania was circuitous and involved fairly steep ruling grades. As a result, Conrail wished to abandon all freight operations on the former E-L lines. The
State of New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware Ri ...
agreed to take over the "E-L" commuter lines from Conrail. The Main Line saw little to no freight traffic after this transfer. Some maps still list the trackage as Conrail or Erie-Lackawanna.


Station layout

The Paterson station consists of a high-level island platform spanning from Market Street to Ward Street in downtown Paterson. Handicapped passengers must access the station via an elevator located on Ward Street. The station is located in an area of Paterson near
Center City Mall Center City Mall is a shopping mall in Downtown Paterson, New Jersey. Built at a cost of over $100 million, the space opened in 2008 in the heart of the city's central business district. It is located with the city's urban enterprise zone, wh ...
, the Passaic County Courthouse and county government offices, and the Paterson campus of
Passaic County Community College Passaic County Community College (PCCC) is a public community college in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. Campuses PCCC has four campuses located throughout the county it serves. The main campus is located in Paterson, New Jersey, and ...
where several city and county roads intersect with Market and Ward Streets. The station now only serves commuter traffic, with no full service/long-distance passenger traffic. It has direct service to Hoboken over the current Main Line, over the legacy Boonton Branch connection mentioned above. Heading north, service goes to Port Jervis and Suffern, a joint service of New Jersey Transit and
Metro-North Railroad Metro-North Railroad , trading as MTA Metro-North Railroad, is a suburban commuter rail service run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a New York State public benefit corporations, public authority of the U.S. state of New Yor ...
. Previously, service ran through to the Erie
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 ...
in Jersey City, and to locations in New York state, Northwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Chicago via the Main Line and various branches. This included both commuter and conventional passenger trains. In addition, for a brief period after the Main/Boonton realignment, additional service along the
Newark Branch The Newark Branch was a branch of the Erie Railroad in New Jersey, United States, running between Jersey City and Paterson with stops in the Broadway Section in North Newark. Inaugurated in the 1870s, the line was last used for passenger serv ...
was available from Paterson, through
Clifton Clifton may refer to: People *Clifton (surname) *Clifton (given name) Places Australia * Clifton, Queensland, a town **Shire of Clifton *Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong *Clifton, Western Australia Canada *Clifton, Nova Scotia ...
, Nutley, Belleville, northern
Newark Newark most commonly refers to: * Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States * Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area Newark may also refer to: Places Canada * Niagara-on-the ...
, and then going east through Kearny. EL abandoned that branch in 1966.


See also

*
List of Erie Railroad structures documented by the Historic American Engineering Record This is a list of Erie Railroad structures documented by the Historic American Engineering Record. Structures References External links * * * {{HAER list, structure=railroad *HAER *List *List *List *X . . Erie Railroad Erie Railro ...


References


External links

* *
Market Street entrance from Google Maps Street ViewWard Street entrance from Google Maps Street View
{{Erie Railroad New York Division stations Buildings and structures in Paterson, New Jersey Historic American Engineering Record in New Jersey NJ Transit Rail Operations stations Railway stations in the United States opened in 1832 Railway stations in Passaic County, New Jersey Former Erie Railroad stations Transportation in Paterson, New Jersey 1832 establishments in New Jersey