Great Notch (NJT station)

Great Notch

The Great Notch Station on December 19, 2009, a month prior to closing.
Station statistics
Lines
  Montclair-Boonton Line
Connections NJT Bus: 191, 195, and 705
Levels Ground
Platforms 1 side platforms
Tracks 1 track, 1 siding
Parking 15[1]
Bicycle facilities No
Other information
Opened 1905[2]
Closed January 17, 2010[3]
Rebuilt 1970s
Electrified September 30, 2002
Code 1747 (Erie Railroad)[4]
Owned by New Jersey Transit
Fare zone 7[5]
Formerly Caldwell Junction[6]
Traffic
Passengers (2009) 2286[7]  87%
Services
Preceding station   NJ Transit Rail   Following station
Montclair-Boonton Line
closed
Preceding station   Erie Railroad   Following station
New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad
toward Sterling Forest
Terminus Caldwell Branch
Cedar Grove
toward Essex Fells

The Great Notch train station, formerly known as Caldwell Junction,[6] was a small New Jersey Transit facility in the Great Notch section of Little Falls, New Jersey. The station was served seven times a day, three inbound morning trains to Hoboken Terminal and four outbound evening trains from Hoboken by the Montclair-Boonton Line from Monday to Friday. Located at the intersection of Notch Road and Long Hill Road, it was the second of three stations in Little Falls, the other two being Montclair State University and Little Falls, and was the first on the line to be strictly served by diesel trains. However, most trains bypassed this station and continued on to Little Falls (westbound) and Montclair State University (eastbound). The station was served by a single track with an unused side track. The last trains stopped at the station on January 15, 2010, at 7:41pm.

Train service at Great Notch originated in 1891, when the Caldwell Railway opened, serving Great Notch, Overbrook Hospital, Verona, and Caldwell. The station at Great Notch was first constructed in 1905 as a double station building for the Erie Railroad. The station was a green and red building serving the New York and Greenwood Lake Railway, along with the Caldwell Branch. The station also used an old boxcar as a tool shed for maintenance. By the early 1970s, the station had fallen into disrepair, and by 1974, was repainted Erie Railroad-style red with the tool shed box car removed. The station was abandoned when the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad went out of business and was later picked up by New Jersey Transit. After making deals with the mayor of Little Falls, New Jersey Transit gave the station a one year "trial" to attract ridership. Ridership went down, however, and so the trial was canceled on December 18, 2009. The town of Little Falls was contacted by New Jersey Transit at that time, reporting that the Great Notch Station would be closed on January 17, 2010 due to the "anemic" ridership at the station.

Contents

History

Train service at Great Notch originated with the introduction of the Caldwell Railway, a service that went from the community of Caldwell, New Jersey to the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway. Twelve trains a day serviced Caldwell, Verona and Overbrook Hospital. The station at Great Notch was deemed Caldwell Junction, inferring the junction between the two railways.[6] The Great Notch station depot was built in 1905 for the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway, a subsidiary of the Erie Railroad. The station was built as a green-red "type five" frame structure. While the main building was 12' x 28' x 18' in size, the station also included an old boxcar used as a tool house. The box car was only 12' x 45' and served the station for several decades. The station was just east of the "GA" signal tower, which was built in 1900 to serve the junction of the Greenwood Lake Railway and its Caldwell Branch, heading eastward for the communities of Cedar Grove, Verona, Caldwell and Essex Fells. The station also served a local yard for train storage for the branch line via a wye.[2] At Essex Fells, connections could be made for train service to Morristown via the Morristown and Erie Railroad. The Caldwell Railroad diverged from the current New Jersey Transit line about 1/4 mile west of the New Jersey Transit Great Notch station and followed its own route to Caldwell.[8] The station at Great Notch was more than just a building for people at the railroad. The station had a large water tower next to GA Signal and a potbelly stove. The station was tended by a husband and wife combination, serving the locals their daily newspapers and their mail. Great Notch did not receive mail delivery until the mid-1950s.[9]

By the early 1970s, the Great Notch station, which was falling into disrepair received a new paint job, changed from the red-green colors for the Erie Lackawanna to a new all red Erie Railroad paint scheme. The abandoned tool shed made out of the old wooden boxcar was also removed. Due to the removal of the tool boxcar, the propane tanks that heated the station building were also made visible.[2] After the ending of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in 1976,[10] the Great Notch station laid abandoned. In June 1979, the State of New Jersey began to remove the tracks for the Caldwell Branch, which also lay abandoned at Great Notch.[11] Currently what was the track leading to the Caldwell Branch is a siding. On January 20, 1988, the newly rehabilitated station building was destroyed by fire.[9] During the construction of the Montclair Connection in 2001, the adjacent Great Notch Yard received a major upgrade, becoming a new state-of-the-art yard with new trains storage facilities.[12]

Closure

Due to the opening of the Wayne-Route 23 station in 2008,[13] along with the presence of the nearby Montclair State University station (opened in 2004),[14] New Jersey Transit had put into doubt the future of the station at Great Notch. Now one of three stations in the community of Little Falls, the use of the station had gone down considerably. The station had little parking to begin with, a problem exacerbated by people taking advantage of the free spaces as a bus park and ride, as they would park in the train station lot and ride the bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York at the station's bus stop (as bus service to New York was much more frequent than train service at Great Notch). More ridership was lost when a parking lot near the station was isolated from it by a fence. The station received a cut in service in January 2008, due to "anemic" ridership at the station, which was never announced to the community before occurring. At that point, Great Notch station only received one morning train towards Hoboken and two evening trains from Hoboken.[15]

The future of the 103-year old station was placed into further jeopardy on August 12, 2008, when New Jersey Transit announced to the community of Little Falls that they would possibly close the station as early as October 2008.[16] A few days after the announcement, rebuttal by the community began to appear, with a public hearing was announced for September 3 to work on plans for Great Notch.[17] The service with only one inbound train (to Hoboken) and two outbound trains (from Hoboken) was canceled on April 1, 2009. On that day, New Jersey Transit announced it would add two more trains in each direction on April 16 as a "one-year trial" for station ridership. The town hoped to get the then 67-person a day average to 100 people using the station by April 1, 2010, when the trial was set to expire. The mayor of Little Falls, Michael DeFrancisci, urged people to use the station more.[18] However, by December 2010, ridership had declined to 9 per day.[7]

On December 18, 2009, New Jersey Transit contacted Little Falls and said that the station would close in January 2010, three months before the year-long trial period to build ridership was set to end. The transit authority cited continued low ridership, as on average nine passengers a day boarded the train at Great Notch.[3] On December 21, 2009, New Jersey Transit announced the closure stating that the "anemic" ridership had remained at Great Notch, with only an average of 9 boardings a day, compared to 203 at the local Little Falls station and 597 at the Montclair State University Station.[7] The last train to depart Great Notch was the 6:51pm train from Hoboken Terminal on January 15 leaving Great Notch at 7:41pm, as weekend trains do not run on this portion of the Montclair-Boonton Line.[5]

See also

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References

  1. ^ "Park & Ride Guide - Great Notch". Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit Rail Operations. 2010. 
  2. ^ a b c Yanosey, Robert J. (2006). Erie Railroad Facilities (In Color). 1. Scotch Plains, New Jersey: Morning Sun Books Inc.. pp. 74–75. ISBN 1582481830. 
  3. ^ a b "Today's News". Little Falls, New Jersey: Township of Little Falls. 2009. http://www.lfnj.com/news.asp. Retrieved 19 December 2009. 
  4. ^ "List of Station Names and Numbers". Jersey City, New Jersey: Erie Railroad. May 1, 1916. http://www.jon-n-bevliles.net/RAILROAD/erie_docs/erie-losn16.html. Retrieved November 23, 2010. 
  5. ^ a b "Montclair-Boonton Line Timetables". Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. November 8, 2009. pp. 2. http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/rail/r0030.pdf. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  6. ^ a b c Jaeger, Phillip Edward (2000). Images of America: Cedar Grove. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. p. 27. http://books.google.com/books?id=idNR781uzYwC&pg=PA3&dq=Images+of+America:+Cedar+Grove&hl=en&ei=xIJ9TOClC8GBlAfmhNDwCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Caldwell%20Junction&f=false. Retrieved August 31, 2010. 
  7. ^ a b c "New Jersey Transit Announces Closure of Great Notch Station". Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. December 21, 2009. http://www.njtransit.com/tm/tm_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=PressReleaseTo&PRESS_RELEASE_ID=2574. Retrieved 21 December 2009. 
  8. ^ Erie Railroad (1920). Map of Erie Railroad Stations (Map). Cartography by Erie Railroad. 
  9. ^ a b "Historic Little Falls". Little Falls, New Jersey: Little Falls, New Jersey. January 2006. http://www.lfnj.com/pdf/0601_Jan_06/jan_06_newsletter_p7.pdf. Retrieved 21 December 2009. 
  10. ^ Grant, H. Roger (1994). Erie Lackawanna: Death of an American Railroad. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. ISBN 0804727988. 
  11. ^ "Old Caldwell Branch at End of the Line". The New York Times. June 10, 1979. pp. NJ25. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30910F63C5A12728DDDA90994DE405B898BF1D3. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  12. ^ "Introducing The Midtown Direct Montclair". Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. September 2002. http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/montclair_boonton_brochure.pdf. Retrieved October 11, 2009. 
  13. ^ "New Wayne/Route 23 Transit Center Opens January 12, 2008". New Jersey Transit. January 2008. http://www.njtransit.com/sa/sa_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=CustomerNoticeTo&NoticeId=1997. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  14. ^ "Montclair State University Station and 1,500-Spot Parking Deck Officially Opens: "See More Spots" marketing campaign begins". New Jersey Transit. October 20, 2004. http://www.njtransit.com/tm/tm_servlet.srv?hdnPageAction=PressReleaseTo&PRESS_RELEASE_ID=1526. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  15. ^ "Letter To The Editor". The Record. January 20, 2008. 
  16. ^ "Save Great Notch". Little Falls, New Jersey: Little Falls Transportation Committee. August 25, 2008. http://localism.com/nj/little_falls/great_notch. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  17. ^ "Public Hearing Notice - Proposed Closing of Great Notch Rail Station". New Jersey Transit. August 25, 2008. http://www.railfan.net/lists/erielack-digest/200808/msg00599.html. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 
  18. ^ Cunningham, Jennifer H. (April 1, 2009). "Great Notch Riders Get Wish: More Trains". The Herald News. http://www.railfan.net/lists/erielack-digest/200904/msg00015.html. Retrieved October 10, 2009. 

External links