Enocell's Newark & Jersey City in the Conrail Era

[USRailFan]

I recently downloaded Enocell's Newark and Jersey City route, and it is an excellent route. As-is, I understand it is set in the early 70s, ie just before the great collapse in the northeast. Now, obviously all the railroads featured in the route, except the Hoboken Shore Railroad, folded into Conrail in 1976. The Hoboken Shore Railroad was abandoned in the late 70s, but how did the rest of the route evolve under Conrail? How much of the trackage featured in the route is still there today?

[CRQ5508]

little correction. the route is set more in the early 1960s ;) but looking at different Conrail route maps, and from google earth images and the such, a great deal of the track in that area is long gone.

[USRailFan]

Looks like a mix possibly... There is a sign that says "Hoboken Shore Railroad", and AFAIK the railroad got that name in the late 1960s. Also the World Trade Center is in place, and I think that was built in 1972?
So most of the track (other than the NEC...) is now gone, well, there goes my idea of "foredating" the route to Conrail days, not much fun if the majority of the track has long since been ripped up...

[Bulbous]

i would have to say about 75% is gone. sad times.

mike

[maiatcat]

Additionally, the route is not to scale in the sense track distances have been compressed considerably and simplified. For example, his representation of the Pennsylvania station amd its trackage in Newark is so simplified that, if it had not been labled so, that you would not recognize it as Newark. The route, however, does replicate the Newark docks and allows for some challenging switching exercises. To be sure, it is one of the best early routes available for the Northeast that is available for MSTS and inspired those of us who replicated the Newark trackage in the the PRR-ER.

[USRailFan]

i would have to say about 75% is gone. sad times.

Guess that goes to show just how overbuilt the rail network in the Northeast was, huh?

[maiatcat]

I would not say overbuilt... railroads were an important part of the transportation system until the 1970s for moving people. I would say railroading and trackage has withered.

[mnjrr]

Mai is right about the deterioration of the trackage. I could go on about stories and statistics about the sorry (or lament about the continued detteriorated state) of the infrastructure. We all know that by 1970s many lines in the Northeast United States experienced a substantial loss of passenger and freight revenue because of the obvious mentioned competition from cars and trucks. What is less known and accepted is that over-regulation by the government in not keeping up with the 21st century demands and economic concerns of railroads forced them to retain unprofitable business practices such as running commuter trains, in the case of the EL. I am not saying that regulation of railroads is bad.

USRailFan, you are right with mentioning overbuilt infrastructure within the context of the 1970s. However, I believe Mai is right that the infrastructure was not overbuilt within the context of the period before these lines such as the PRR and NYC merged in the 1960s. For example, we needed all of the railroads, their locomotives, a mobilized workforce and infrastructure to help transport U.S. troops during WWII. By the 1970s, railroads such as the the Lehigh Valley and CNJ, for example, had reduntant lines that competed for a smaller share of traffic. You can see this duplicity of infrastructure evident in Werner's Lehigh Valley route for MSTS. This is just a microcasm of the duplicate rail lines in river valleys accross America at the time. It became pertinant for these railroads, along with other carriers, to merge into what became Conrail and get rid of the lines that served the same communities and competed for the same traffic. I am reading an excellent book called "The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry," in which the author Rush Loving Jr. provides great analysis of this subject. Interestingly, the remaining duplicate (and even restructuring old lines) might play an important role as freight railroads and passenger lines are increasingly becomming a cost effective means of transportation with the high cost of gasoline today.

[USRailFan]

Yes, I meant that the infrastructure was overbuilt in the context of the situation in the early 70s - there were simply too many railroads and too little traffic. And of course most of the smaller railroads were depentendt on the colossus PC, and when that went bust much of the smaller roads' revenue evaporated...