Northern Branch (Conrail)

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A map of the Northern Branch and surrounding railroads. The Northern Branch is the line running almost straight from near the bottom of the map towards the top.

Conrail's Northern Branch runs from their Passaic and Harsimus Line at Marion Junction in western Jersey City, New Jersey (via a short connection known as the Marion Running Track) north to a junction with CSX's Bergen Subdivision and Northern Branch at CP 2 in North Bergen, New Jersey.

Recently, the line was improved to handle traffic that had formerly used Conrail's River Line on the east side of the New Jersey Palisades, which is now used for the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. New Jersey Transit paid for the project, which included double-tracking the line, changing Marion Junction and Bergen Junction, and building overpasses on Secaucus Road and Paterson Plank Road.

Because of these recent changes, the Northern Branch now serves as part of a major CSX rail corridor from Upstate New York to the rest of the country. CSX's Northern Branch (which was owned by Conrail until the 1998 split) continues north to the New York state line, and is a minor spur. Through traffic moves onto the Bergen Subdivision (formerly Conrail's River Line) at CP 2.

1 Conrail's Marion Running Track
2 Conrail's Northern Branch
- 2.1 History
3 CSX's Northern Branch

[edit] Conrail's Marion Running Track

The Marion Running Track is a short elevated track connecting the Passaic and Harsimus Line towards Kearny with the Northern Branch. It was built around 1994; prior to its opening, trains accessing the Northern Branch had to go to Journal Square and reverse direction, and the connection included a grade crossing of Newark Avenue (which the new connection overpasses). For these reasons, most freight trains instead used the River Line, passing through the Palisades in tunnels twice.

[edit] Conrail's Northern Branch

Another grade crossing still exists at Saint Paul's Avenue, under the Pulaski Skyway and Truck US 1-9. This is now the only grade crossing on the Northern Running Track. Just north of this crossing, a second track begins; the line is double-tracked from here to the north end.

North of there, the line passes under the old Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad and its Boonton Branch, now owned by New Jersey Transit, in the middle of West End Junction. These bridges were built in 1908 or 1909, before which the tracks crossed at grade.

Just north of the NJ Transit overpasses, the line enters Bergen Junction, and two tracks split to the west. The western one again splits in two; one of the tracks merges with New Jersey Transit's Bergen County Line, and the other passes under the first and heads west under the old DL&W Boonton Branch, merging with what had been New Jersey Transit's Boonton Line until 2002, when the Montclair Connection opened.

The other track that splits north of the Boonton Branch underpass proceeds up a grade and over a bridge, merging back into the main line after the bridge. Under this bridge is another track splitting west from the main line, which heads northwest to Norfolk Southern's Croxton Yard. Before this split, the line coming through the Erie Railroad's old tunnel (now the Nave-Croxton Running Track, leading to the National Docks Secondary) merges with the line. Until the recent rebuilding, the overpass was the only way to continue north; trains from the south not using it were forced onto the track to Croxton, while trains from the north were forced onto the National Docks.

Soon the line passes over County Road on a rather old bridge. It then passes under Secaucus Road, whose bridge opened on May 20, 2002.[1] 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.[2]

The Northern Branch 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 the Northern Branch, which ends at the New York state line, and was also a Conrail line until recently. The Bergen Subdivision soon becomes the River Subdivision, and leads along the west side of the Hudson River towards Albany, New York.

[edit] History

The part of the line from Marion Junction to Croxton Yard was part of the original Paterson and Hudson River Railroad, later the Erie Railroad's mainline, built in 1833. From Croxton north to North Bergen, the line was the Northern Railroad of New Jersey, built in 1859 and run by the Erie. The overpass connecting the two sections was originally part of the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway, which now ends north of there.