RE: (erielack) Comet I cars- going, going...

[Michael Sheehy <njnyrr_@_optonline.net>]

As a daily commuter on the PV Line...don't get me started on the old Comet
cars.  If the car # doesn't start with 6000 when I see the 7:13 roll into
Park Ridge my heart sinks.  I love history and for those that have read my
postings for the past 7 years or so you know I do, you might know I have a
draft of a book on the PV Line to compete with Wilson Jones on file too, but
I will say that these cars as they stand today are sadly past their prime.
(Even more inexcusable are bundling the ex-Penn Central Arrows into
passenger trains on the Bergen Line but that's a different story) I am tired
of destroyed vinyl seats, smelly lavatories whose doors do not close
correctly and dirty cars that were overhauled 20 or more years ago.  Some
may remember the golden story of the 5 year old railfan that first
experienced NJDOT in 1979, back when there was an NJDOT arrow along with the
hallowed linked EL symbol on the Comet cars pulled by the U34CH's rolling
into Hoboken en route to the WTC PATH when there WAS a WTC and not a
"placename" or happy 9/10/01 memories of when I worked there or some figment
of future imagination that will fill that decrepit scar. 

But to answer you, YES the seats were 2x2 as I remember, reversible flip,
finished in a gray polyester cloth.  U34CH's pulled them an I could hear
them accelerate in my front yard, almost a mile away, not to mention the
whistle (If I heard the 11:35 in high school I knew it was DEFINITELY time
to roll over and sleep) and that electric bell that would ring as the train
rolled north to Montvale, if I was lucky enough to be at the station to hear
it.  The boxcars and resin covered hoppers at Burroughs and JP stealing the
DO NOT HUMP sign from a boxcar of bricks at Bratt & Doxey in 1990 and
hanging it over his bed will never be forgotten.




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