Completely enjoyed your presentation as a younger train enthusiast like the way things were simpler and people were nicer I was 8 y/o when conrail took over I miss the l v

Excellent! I'm a former Greenwood Lake Branch commuter between Hoboken & Little Falls before the Montclair Connection and the extension of the Newark City Subway. I rode past the Orange Branch junction and the Tiffany building.

Great video guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I grew up in West Orange and live there for 29 years. Did a lot of railfanning in the South Plainfield area on the Lehigh Line.

Awesome!!! Joe Fagan is a friend of an old boss of mine. Great guy and extremely knowledgeable about West Orange history. Great job!!

Great presentation, but the assertion of the 120-foot cut as the deepest east of the Mississippi is incorrect. By 1963, the Southern Railway had constructed cuts of 140-160 feet deep on its Cincinnati-Chattanooga mainline in Kentucky and Tennessee. I grew up there and lived in New Jersey, too, actually twice.

Thank you- grew up in Madison, NJ - never saw the GG1- so close yet so far!!

Excellent presentation. I was a Project Engineer for Amtrak 1976-1980, the dust the Metro kicked up at Waverly was probably after my tie renewal and surfacing gang's work. All of the photo's on the mainline were very familiar, good memories, I do have color photo's of the G's at many of your locations, no where near the number you recorded. Nice work !! I road a G only once, Trenton to Penn, the engineer was a ex-steam veteran, he pegged the speedometer at the pin on the 11 mile straightaway through Princeton, I believe that was well over 100 mph. Thank you for your contribution. RR

Really fascinating presentation! I remember seeing the GG1s when I was a kid. A truly iconic memory!

A great presentation and a wonderful story. GG-1s were definitely iconic!

great video

Hello I would like to know if anybody knows what is happening on old CNJ line in Cranford. WHen you drive GSP North and look towards the bridge you can see new sidings and rails are being installed behind the plastics company that was a customer and was getting train load until about 10 years ago. It was all overgrown but now its cleared up and new work is being done. I was just wondering what are they doing there?

great video ! love that Tony / red baron scheme on the engines. Thanks !

I grew up in Cranford and spent hours up on the passenger platform watching the freight and passenger runs go by. That was when they had 6 tracks although I rarely saw them use the outer tracks for anything but the Scoot.

I lived in NJ 1982-4 and one of my great regrets is that I never got to see what was then left of the RVRR. However, my O-scale line has a Thomas 2-8-0 numbered "13" and two passenger cars built from Railchief kits and lettered "Rahway Valley".

Great stories, particularly those about Garwood my little town at 33 minutes.

Thanks for sharing this great presentation covering the phenomenal photos by Donald W. Furler -> and thanks for Collins (aka Hoffman's) Curve "steam-era" pictures. I lived in Waldwick in the early sixties and fondly remember the many trains passing through the famous S curve. In particular, on hot summer nights with my window open, I remember hearing the diesel locomotives hi-revving to make the grade out of Ho-Ho-Kus with their freight trains.

Brick Church? One of the major stops ! Restricted too. Unless the dispatcher ordered it. No passengers on the Morristown Electric line could ride it., You could if you had a Blairstown ticket. Plus Lackawanna was all about New Jersey NOT New York City. It was very heavy loading at New Jersey stations to go to and from the west! The business was from New Jersey suburbs west. Newark was heavy loading from Pennsylvania RR passengers from the south. It saved hours going west , not to have to go to NY first! Then up around the Hudson River at Albany on the NYC or south to Philly and west on the Pennsy!

Fun! I got to do a bus trip through many of these sights! Thanks

great stories !

Good show. Thanks for sharing.

Jump ahead to about 7 minutes for start of program.

What a great video. I grew up in Riverdale with the Greenwood Lake branch just beyond our back fence. We moved there in 1957 when there were still a few mid day trains and the local freight. When the sand trains were running it was a real thrill seeing f7's in an ABBA set pulling south past our yard. When the big wreck occurred a huge crane passed by southbound, I assumened it was routed via the NYS&W to Pompton Junction. Great days for a young railfan. The book is great and this presentation adds to it.

One suggestion for the host or speaker: please repeat questions from the audience.

I enjoyed this and several other of your lectures. The early photos are amazing. Thanks for sharing!

I just stumbled on this. What a great video. I grew up in Riverdale with the Erie's Greenwoood Lake branch in my back yard. It did not take me too long to discover Pompton Junction and the Susquanna. My friends and I sometimes walked to Pompton Lakes via the Erie and NYS&W tracks, hoping for a train. Seeing and hearing 5 rs 1's passing by Federal Hill was also a great thrill. Standing at the crossing near the Pompton Lakes station the first time we Saw the GP 18's was a great surprise.n Thanks for bringing back some great memories.

Nice photos and presentation, thanks for sharing! Are there any photos of the roundhouse? coal tower?

Great presentation. Thank you.

Awesome presentation! Thanks for sharing it!

watched this last night live, the interpretation of the images giving them a place within the overall context of the moment, great storytelling. thank you.

Is that a GG1 I see?

Thank you for including these photographers in your programming!

The CSX local on the Newburgh branch is approaching the crossing on Route 300 in Vail's Gate. Good stuff ! Thank you for posting this. Be well, VZ

Funny coincidence: last summer I was getting orthotics at West Orange and I see the end of this line was at back of the parking lot of the building I was in.

great video i am a erie fan grew up in pompton plains one block from the greenwood lake line spent hours at the pompton plains station during the 1960"s

Great!!

Thank you for sharing.👍

Great presentation, but we need to revisit the pronunciation of ‘Appalachian.’ Signed, an Appalachian.

The old timers called it the "L&H." Sterling presentation, Alan!!

A little birdie told me you worked for Hawk Drilling in Jersey for a bit. Let me know if I'm wrong. I grew up I'm Union down the street from the "trussell"

I really enjoyed this program to the point I could listen to it all over again. I was a model railroaded from my earlier teams up to the present and belonged to the Cayuga Valley Modell R R Club, which used the Leigh Valley as their prototype. Freewill spike my interest having a 5 sided station and an angled "y". I did get a chance to photograph it before it was removed although my photos have disappeared over time. But, I did get to enjoy a piece of railroad history. I never worked for a railroad directly, but I did work for ALCO in management.

Fantastic stories. Yeah, how kids were raised back then was a different life. We were too busy being scared by Communist Take Over and Atomic Bombs. Although there were enough stories about strangers to be wary of, for the most part, we weren't afraid of the world in general like they are today.

What an amazing story. Reminds me somewhat of my experience hanging around the Harlem Division of the NYC back in the 1960s. I, too, was planning on working on the railroad, but being nearsighted, I knew I would be rejected due to that fact, so I never applied.

Perhaps some energy should be made to restore the Train Sheds at the Central Railroad Terminal in Jersey City before they are lost forever.

HI! My name is Jason Fennimore. I am writing a book, not so much on 'the Cut-Off', but all of the shady stuff that is going on around it. Circumstances have also forced me to start a local newspaper called 'The Northwest Jersey Times', which (hopefully) will be in print early next year. As you know we don't currently have a real local paper. I will try and be brief, but I don't think I can be..... Some of, if not most of those kids on dirt bikes that you talk about at 13:35 have been repeatedly exposed to Toxic Waste on the Cut-Off. In February (2023) I was riding my bicycle on Byram Trail in Byram, NJ. I got to the top of the hill and cut across the 'Cut-Off' (and through a thick fog) to Brooklyn Road. I rode about a half-hour away and got violently ill, started to lose my vision and almost went blind. I felt like I was going to die. It took me many weeks to realize what had happened. It turns out that there is a Superfund Site in Byram on the side of the 'Cut-Off' and Toxic Waste runoff has been spilling onto the 'Cut-Off' since at least the seventies. In the "Waltz & Reese Cut". The 'Cut-Off' in that section is so polluted with Toxic Waste that there is no way they can ever clean it up. It is so polluted with Toxic Waste that you can see the pollution from outer space. Check out page 101 of 162 (figure 4 Plume Map) in this EPA report.... semspub.epa.gov/work/02/541229.pdf I realized after getting poisoned that all of those kids on dirt bikes on the Cut-Off were being exposed to lethal Toxic Waste. Chuck Walsh is an evil person that knows all of this and suppresses this information. Chuck Walsh's Cut-Off grift is over. I made 240 signs, laminated them and stapled them to trees all along the Cut-Off. These signs say "Warning Dirt Bikers" and show the EPA's maps that show where the toxic waste on the 'Cut-Off' is. Also some of these signs have a picture of "Choo-Choo" Chuck Walsh and it has his contact info and tells everyone how he knows that kids are getting poisoned on the Cut-Off and doesn't care. If you don't believe me, take a walk on the 'Cut-Off'. I must have put 10 or 20 signs on the track (and connecting trails) right behind Greendell Station. Go look. I don't know any of you but I would like to think the best of people I don't know. I am trying to get this information out in any way I can. Now that I have stopped the Dirt Bikers from riding through the Toxic Waste by putting up the signs, I am notifying the public as I think the dirt biking kids' parents would like to know they are splashing around in Toxic Waste runoff. Please keep this comment public. It won't look good if you don't. Ask Chuck. I have been posting this in the comments of "Choo-Choo" Chuck's KZbin page all year. He suppresses the information. Go look at those signs on the 'Cut-Off'. Do you think that's a good look? By the time I am done with Chuck, he won't be able to show his face in Northwest New Jersey. You have to understand that Chuck is a very bad person and he did all of this to himself. I have proof of Chuck committing serious crimes. I told him that I was going to report him to the authorities and coincidentally (?) he took his family on vacation... a short drive from the Mexican Border. For real. He stopped making KZbin videos and nobody knew where he went. Watch his latest video. He talks about his abrupt disappearance and tries to explain it. Please keep this comment public as I don't want to make more signs. Those 3 'disconnected tracks' "Choo-Choo" Chuck talks about at 1:30:50,... one of those disconnections is a road. The other gap is because NJ Transit is so shady that they stopped the tracks on 1 side of the 'Toxic Distal Plume' and then started the tracks back up on the other side of it. This whole operation is sloppy. They are so incompetent, they can't even do criminality correctly. When I was laminating the signs at the main Sussex County Library in Newton, I was also making copies of the first draft of my book to send to my publisher. One of the librarians was reading the draft. She said; "You know what I think? I think they all hate you because you caught them all red-handed!!"...... Librarians know what's up. By the way, you did a good job on that station! I like the little lights going across the roof. I would definitely go to that museum. I love local history. That is what the 'Cut-Off' is; history. They are never going to run trains on it again. I guarantee it. If you knew all I know, you would agree!

The deaccessions to Steamtowns roster would be an ABSOLUTE blessing. Todays world. Be nice to reacquire a G5 pacific for Carbondale trips.

As an interesting sidenote, there was a PSE trolley that ran up South Michigan Ave from Westfield Av(Rt 28) to Michigan Blvd (not sure where it terminated at). The trolley operated until approx1924 when it was shut down due to the conductor strike. The tracks remained in South Michigan Ave for another approx 10 years. Had your Milepost 0.87 photo been taken 10-20 years earlier, it would have captured the diamond where the Rahway Valley would have crossed the trolley line.

I worked for tyburn when 400 was still in service! I remember when they had the one motor rebuilt. Took forever. Was under power with both engines for a little while until the traction motors went. She was a powerful bird!

Fantastic you guys wrote books!

Fantastic presentation by Mr. Nemeth, especially with the stories and historical information! These recorded meetings are great for members like myself who can't make it across the river to visit. Thank you to Tri-State for all that you do!

Very nice! Thank you.