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(erielack) Coach Yard At OS to the South of the Archway ramp

wasn't the coach yard *north* of the Erie trackage around OS Tower?
like, between OS and and the "south connection"?

dave g

Dave,

The Monmouth St. coach yard between Erie Grove St. Tower and the freight 
tunnel east end was to the south of the ramp to the Archways.  Get out 
Trackside With Bob Collins and check out the shots of the evening (w/b) rush 
hour on the Archways ramp. Two or three shots clearly show coach tracks to 
the right (south) of the ramp.  Another shot shows a string of Stillwells 
passing OS Tower going under the ramp.  It doesn't look as though there 
could be a yard north of the ramp, as the big Seaboard Terminal building was 
located quite close to the freight tracks.  I believe that the "final"  
Bigmap more or less outlines the Monmouth St. yard arrangement (not 
precisely according to every track, of course; for that you need Bill 
Sheppard).

At the passenger terminal, east of (Erie) Grove St. Tower, there in fact was 
a coach yard north of the main line tracks into the station.  I didn't 
detail the old Erie Terminal on my map, but if you want to see a good map of 
the Erie Terminal between Grove St. and the Hudson River, check out:

http://raildata.railfan.net/erie/homeerr.html

Also, in Four Great Divisions, Henderson describes how the Erie coach 
storage operation from Hoboken worked in the early EL years.  During the AM 
rush, an Erie passenger train would back out of Hoboken Terminal after 
detraining its passengers.  (DLW) Grove St. Tower would line the train up on 
the North Connection -- (does anyone remember the North Connection's bridge 
over Newark Ave., which had the big Erie diamond in the middle?).  The empty 
passenger train would back up on to the Weehawken Branch, get the switch, 
then run engine-forward towards OS (which was now controlled by Erie Grove 
St.).  It would be lined up thru OS to cross the freight line from the 
freight tunnel, then duck under the Archway ramp, then pull into the 
Monmouth St. coach yard.  At the east end of that yard, the engine would cut 
off, then proceed thru Grove St. interlocking into the engine service area 
(very near the old terminal tracks). You should be able to make that out on 
the Bigmap.  Reverse the sequence for the evening rush hour, except the 
locos have to go up a lead to the west side of Monmouth St. yard.  This of 
course was the pre-push/pull era (and a glorious era it was).

All this helps to explain why the EL had the Northern Branch trains make 
that back-up move over the High Line from BR (Bergen) Tower to (Erie) Bergen 
Jct.  Had they gone east thru the freight tunnel in the AM after coming off 
the Northern, they could have been lined up onto the Weehawken Branch at OS, 
then run up the South Connection, where DLW Grove St. Tower could have put 
them on a passenger track to Hoboken Terminal - straight move, no backup.  
However, you had the empty coach trains backing up in the other direction 
from the North Connection at the same time of day.  The EL would have needed 
more controlled signals (and probably switches) on the Weehawken Branch to 
have kept everything safely separated; not worth the investment for 3 trains 
a day (that they wanted to get rid of anyway).

There's a rather good rail map of the overall area today on the Wikipedia at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Running_Track_(Conrail)

There's also a pretty nice little article on the EL in the Wikipedia, if I 
do say so myself (I contributed a few sentences to it).  See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Lackawanna_Railroad

Jim Gerofsky



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