Starting out this project is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Harsimus Branch. This line was one of the main inspirations for starting this site.
General overview
According to Rick James’ 1999 nomination for the State & National Register of Historic Places, the Harsimus Branch was constructed by the PRR between 1901 and 1905. Branching off from the Pennsylvania’s main line at Waldo Avenue, the line took a slight turn towards the north along the south end of the Jersey City Cemetery. The line then traversed a viaduct from the eastern edge of the cemetery to Brunswick Street. After crossing Brunswick St, the Harsimus Branch ran on an embankment parallel to 6th Street until it reached Henderson Street (the present-day Marin Boulevard). On the east side of Henderson St, the line curved slightly towards the south and sprawled out into a massive yard at Harsimus Cove. Starting out as a simple double-tracked branch off the main, it sprawled into a 7 track “mouth” for the yard on the embankment, before narrowing back to 5 tracks as it crossed Henderson St. It then re-expanded into the aforementioned yard, which spanned from Pier Six in the north to just north of today’s Christopher Columbus Drive (which used to be the PRR main line to the waterfront terminal at Exchange Place). On the southern end of the yard, the aforementioned main line (intended only for passenger operations) had a connection that allowed trains to enter or exit the yard on either the Harsimus Branch or the main line. The main line to Exchange Place will be covered in a future post.
Post-opening developments
As part of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s extensive overhead electrification program of the 1930’s, the Harsimus Branch received 11-kilovolt 25-hertz overhead catenary electrification. According to pages 165-166 of “The Port Of New York” by Professor Carl W. Condit, the Harsimus Branch can be inferred as being electrified on January 16, 1933 with the rest of the PRR’s Philadelphia-New York section of the main line. Electrification of the branch (specifically the embankment portion), while disputed by other sources, is evidenced by photos depicting electric operations bound for the branch, along with some showing catenary equipment on the branch well over a decade after any alternate electrified route into the yards was abandoned.
After passenger service to Exchange Place was discontinued on November 17, 1961, the main line and its connection to the south end of Harsimus Cove Yard were torn out by the PRR by December 1963. Strangely enough, a two-track stub of the connection to the main line on the yard’s south end remained intact until at least 1979. These stub tracks continued to run on an embankment and over a bridge crossing Washington Street until their demolition. All of this considered, the Harsimus Branch became the only line providing access to the yard.
As part of the removal of the Exchange Place terminal and the lines leading up to it (and its vicinity), the Pennsylvania Railroad decided to downsize Harsimus Cove Yard as well. The southernmost yard tracks were curtailed from being directly adjacent to Exchange Place passenger terminal to a point a few hundred feet towards the north in 1963. This enabled the construction of Pearl Street (completed sometime between 1966 and 1969), which ran directly alongside the new southern end of the tracks until the yard’s closure. The program of downsizing continued throughout the 60s. A set of tracks used to serve a warehouse that exclusively received boxcars, crossing Washington Street at-grade, was removed sometime between 1966 and 1979. Topographical maps from 1982 show this warehouse trackage as extant, though a 1979 aerial shows a parking lot occupying the former warehouse space. The changes can be seen in the two aerial photographs of the area shown below.
The line fell into the hands of the Penn Central in 1968 after the PRR and its main competitor, the New York Central, combined to form the PC. Financial troubles had plagued both railroads, effectively forcing the merger.
The PC couldn’t overcome the financial troubles carried over from both of the railroads (or those of the New Haven railroad, which joined the PC in 1969). The US government-formed successor to multiple bankrupt northeastern railroads (including the Penn Central), the Consolidated Rail Corporation, gained ownership of the line upon its formation in 1976. Both the Penn Central and the Consolidated Rail Corporation, better known as Conrail, maintained freight operations over the branch for many years.
Sometime between 1968 and 1979, either the Penn Central or Conrail removed a few hundred feet of the original PRR alignment between its junction with the main line at Waldo Ave and the eastern edge of the Jersey City Cemetery. A new alignment was created which also branched off from the former Exchange Place alignment near Waldo Ave (this spot became known as Control Point Waldo, or CP WALDO), making a slight turn towards the north. It rejoined the original alignment at a new junction with the former New York Central West Shore line, better known as the River Line. This new alignment was single-tracked, and as part of its construction, the double-track viaduct which carried the branch between the new junction and the start of the embankment was reduced to a single track.
The end of operations
In 1981, Conrail discontinued the use of electric locomotives entirely. Diesel locomotives would fully take over whatever operations were left along the Harsimus Branch. In order to cut costs and streamline operations, Conrail began to consolidate operations into just a few yards. All the lines that once competed with each other to reach the same general market – in this case, the New York City metro area through yards in northern New Jersey – were now under the Conrail umbrella. It didn’t make sense to spend money on all the pre-existing yards when it could expand larger yards in the same area to take on the traffic of several yards. This was the case for Oak Island Yard in Newark, which got a massive expansion in 1981 (pages 94-95 of “Conrail” by Scott-Doherty and Solomon). It seems that traffic massively decreased after 1981, with most major road trains being rerouted to terminate at the aforementioned Oak Island Yard.
In a 2019 post on the railroad.net forums, user JasW recounts a story that suggests the last train on the branch ran in the early-to-mid-1980s.
In the time-honored tradition of responding to years-old threads — sometime in or just before 1985, which is when CR sold the property. In 1986, I moved to Third Street in downtown JC, just 2-3 blocks south of the Harsimus embankment, and I remember my landlady telling me that runs over the embankment had only stopped within the previous couple of years.
JasW, “Re: PRR Harsimus Cove Yard”, railroad.net forums, April 2, 2019
A quick look at historical aerial images shows the yard full of cars and seemingly in full operation in 1979, with the next aerial available from 1985 showing an empty lot on the former site of the yard. This is further confirmed by another aerial from 1987.
Brian Solomon of Tracking the Light has posted some wonderful archival photos of Harsimus Cove Yard and its surroundings, taken in February 1983 with the help of his father Richard. According to his site, the photo above was taken near the exit to Harsimus Cove Yard just beyond the Henderson Street (now Marin Boulevard) bridge.
Richard and Brian Solomon’s photos are the latest-dated material Lost Railroads of Jersey City currently has of the branch in operation. In conjunction with the 1985 aerials, this narrows down the end of the yard’s operations, along with the removal of its tracks, to between March 1983 and March or April 1985 (the aerials were dated as taken between March and late April).
On May 12, 1985, the New York Times contained a story written by Anthony Depalma about upcoming development plans for Harsimus Cove. In the article, Depalma insinuates that the Harsimus Branch was still carrying freight in a limited capacity.
The railroads are now mostly gone and the sparse operations that remain, like the Conrail spur through the cove, are expected to close soon.
Anthony Depalma, “A $700 Million Plan for Jersey City’s Shore”, New York Times, May 12, 1985
The 1985 aerials, which are listed as captured between March 16 and April 29, are not very clear when viewed close-up. They definitively show the majority of the yard being turned into an empty lot, with no visible tracks in most spots. However, traces of tracks can still be made out along the embankment and some of Pier Six. Unless the Times was referring to the formal abandonment process (which was not initiated until 2009), infrequent use of the Harsimus Branch might have continued for some time after the yard closed. A 1987 aerial no longer shows tracks on the branch beyond the bridge over Brunswick Street. As such, any operations over the embankment toward Pier Six would have ceased by this time, if they had not already ceased by early 1985.
The only remaining trackage of the branch by 1987 was the shared alignment with the River Line from CP WALDO (Waldo Ave) to the eastern edge of the cemetery, along with a single-track stub that ran on the once double-tracked viaduct to where the embankment began at Brunswick Street. This stub track, along with its elevated structure, was removed sometime between 1987 and 1997.
The new single-track alignment between CP WALDO and the eastern edge of the cemetery continued to carry freight trains running on the River Line until CSX rerouted its traffic over the Northern Running Track in 2000.
Post-closure
Further analysis of historical aerial imagery shows that the lot that once contained Harsimus Cove Yard remained mostly empty until the mid-1990s. A 1987 aerial shows preliminary construction on two major roads approaching the borders of the former yard. The first clearing work for Thomas Gangemi Drive is present along the former north edge of the yard, taking the place of the tracks that ran out to Pier Six. Progress on Washington Boulevard (which, by this point, had already cut across the former sites of the yards surrounding the Erie’s Pavonia Terminal and the Lackawanna’s expanded yard at Hoboken Terminal) is seen at what would become its intersection with Thomas Gangemi Drive, just about to cut across the yard towards the south. At the south end of the plot, north of Pearl Street, massive parking lots took over the areas formerly occupied by the yard tracks. The former warehouse tracks, along with the leftover stubs from the connection to the main line (severed in 1963), were removed and replaced by One Evertrust Plaza in 1986.
By 1994, the first building to be constructed on the site of the yard after its closure was completed in the form of a warehouse along 2nd Street (nowadays the BJ’s Wholesale at 396 Marin Blvd). By 1997, development increased significantly. A ShopRite, the Avalon Cove apartment complex, and multiple parking lots had joined the warehouse on the yard’s former site within the 3-year span. Development continued into the new millennium, with more of the yard space being redeveloped as the years passed.
The branch today
The site of Harsimus Cove Yard is home to many different things today: extensions of streets that once ran to its borders, grocery stores, apartment buildings, office buildings, parking lots, and hotels just to name a few.
The elevated embankment portion of the line continues to sit undeveloped. Conrail, along with its successors CSX and Norfolk Southern (cooperating as Conrail Shared Assets Operations) never officially filed for abandonment of the Harsimus Branch with the Surface Transportation Board until 2009. A legal battle has been ongoing (as of 2024) between groups of residents advocating to save the historic embankment (now commonly referred to as the Harsimus Stem Embankment) and real-estate developers looking to build high-rise condo complexes on the former right-of-way.
Brian Solomon revisited what he believes to be the site of the February 1983 photo his father Richard took in 2015. On his blog, Tracking the Light, he noted the differences between the Harsimus Branch of 1983 and the remains of the Harsimus Branch of 2015.
I made some cheap copies of the 1983 photos and started exploring Jersey City. While I’d expected to find the 1983 site covered with modern development, I was surprise that the nearest location of our locomotive photo remained undeveloped, albeit surrounded by modern buildings. Is this the exact spot where we made our photos in 1983? I’m not sure, but when I climbed up the embankment it seemed very familiar, although the setting has been transformed.
Brian Solomon, “JERSEY CITY 1983 AND 2015, DRAMATIC CHANGES AND COMPARISONS IN TIME AND PLACE.”, Tracking The Light, December 18, 2015
To be continued…
Special thanks to Brian Solomon of Tracking the Light, and his father, Richard Solomon, for allowing Lost Railroads of Jersey City to display their photography of the Harsimus Branch.
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