The Northern Branch is a railroad line that runs from Jersey City to Northvale in northeastern New Jersey, and formerly extended further into New York State. The line was constructed in 1859 by the Northern Railroad of New Jersey to connect the New York and Erie Railroad's Piermont Branch terminus in Piermont, New York, directly to Erie's primary terminal in Jersey City, initially Exchange Place, later Pavonia Terminal. In 1870 the line was extended to Nyack, New York, and continued to provide passenger service until 1966. After the Erie's unsuccessful merger with the Lackawanna Railroad to form the Erie-Lackawanna, ownership of the line passed into the hands of Conrail upon its formation in 1976 from a number of bankrupt railroads (including the E-L).
The line survives as two separate but connected sections. The Northern Running Track is an approximately two-mile-long freight railroad line in Hudson County, New Jersey. It runs from the Passaic and Harsimus Line at Marion Junction in western Jersey City north to the North Bergen Yard and the CSX Transportation's River Subdivision. North of the rail yard the Northern Branch diverges from the River Subdivision and continues north to the New York state line as a minor spur.
The Northern Branch Corridor Project is a NJ Transit proposal to restore passenger service on the line as an extension of the Hudson–Bergen Light Rail from the current Tonnelle Avenue terminus in North Bergen to Englewood.
History
Northern Railroad of New Jersey
The Northern Railroad of New Jersey was chartered in 1854. When it opened on May 28, 1859, it was the second railroad in modern Bergen County (following only the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad) with stage connections to Hackensack and other points. The northern terminal was Piermont, New York, on the New York and Erie Rail Road, which had opened in 1841. After running on the Erie for one mile, trains reached the Northern's own line at Sparkill, New York, and ran for 21 miles to another junction with the Erie at Croxton in Jersey City, New Jersey. From there trains ran on the Erie and the New Jersey Railroad for two and a half miles to the terminal later called Exchange Place. Passengers could continue by ferry to Chambers St in Manhattan. Because of its running over the Erie, the Northern was built to the same 6-foot broad gauge. By September 1859, there were three passenger trains in each direction, with one express running from Piermont to Jersey City in 70 minutes. Sometime in the 1860s the Northern began running service westward from Sparkill on the Erie's Piermont Branch as far as Monsey, New York.
The southern terminal was moved to the Erie's Jersey City Terminal late in 1868, about six months before the Northern Railroad's formal lease to the Erie. At that time the company had six locomotives, 21 passenger and baggage cars, and 30 freight cars. Not long after, a nominally separate company, the Nyack and Northern Railroad, built from Nyack south to meet the Northern at Sparkill, and from its opening in May 1870 Nyack became the northern terminal for most Northern Railroad trains. The Northern track was changed to standard gauge along with the rest of the Erie system in 1878.
For five miles in Hudson County, Croxton to Granton, the New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway ran parallel to the Northern Railroad. Joint stations were constructed between the railroads with platforms on each side. By the time the Susquehanna was leased by the Erie in 1898, the companies operated the parallel section as one multi-track railroad, with the Northern Railroad's tracks used mostly for northbound trains. Although the Erie lease ended in 1940, the track-sharing continued to the late 1950s.
The Northern Railroad was mainly a commuter and local line, with significant freight business only near its southern end. Business dropped off in the 1930s, and in 1942 the company's property was sold off to its long-term lessor, the Erie. From that time it was the Northern Branch.
Erie and Erie Lackawanna
By 1954, the Northern Branch had only three rush hour passenger trains each way. Between 1956 and 1958, the allied Erie and Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W) consolidated their diminishing passenger services at the Lackawanna's Hoboken Terminal. During transition Erie trains continued to use the Erie Pavonia Terminal for about an hour in each rush hour, to distribute the heaviest crowds. A Northern Branch train was the very last to leave Pavonia Erie Terminal in 1958. Two years later, the Pavonia Terminal was razed in 1961. The two companies merged in 1960 to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad.