2024 – Ridin’ the Rails for Free! (Part 2 of 2)
…………………………………………….(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on September 7, 2024)
(NOTE: whenever you see the word “PANO”, click the image once or twice to fully-enlarge it)
You may recall this Pascack Valley Line map from the end of Part 1:
…and that – after that trip, I got the urge to do it again, but go a little bit further this time.
I had gone as far south as Secaucus Junction and was under the impression that to take it to the very end – Hoboken Terminal – a change of trains would be necessary and that – going both ways – would have added too much time to the whole trip.
It turns out that the train DOES go straight through to Hoboken and if you want to continue to Manhattan, THAT’S where the change of trains occurs.
On the last day of NJ Transit’s Freebie Week, I decided to go to Hoboken, take some pictures and come right back. Despite Hoboken’s great music scene back in the day, I never really went there because shooting in clubs is a pain (and so was parking in Hoboken)…………..
(Actually, I DID shoot a video for a band at Boo-Boo’s Bar in Hoboken in 1992:
“Dirty Deed” on the bottom is an AC/DC reference because the song the band played was one of theirs.)
………..but my point is that I was pretty unfamiliar with Hoboken and it might be nice to do a photo-walk there while I wait for the return train home.
I had also never been to Hoboken Terminal before, so maybe there’d be something interesting there to shoot.
Speaking of which – and jumping ahead of myself – there WAS something later on that caught my eye that was large, but a little too distant to make out any details, so I shot it blindly and never got to see what it actually was until I got home and downloaded the images.
OK – quick guess…….what is this?:
It wasn’t this dark, but if I lightened it here, it would be highly identifiable because it’s zoomed in. All I saw was this shape, albeit much lighter and much farther away.
We’ll come back to this later.
So I’m on the southbound train and it’s as jammed as the one in Part 1:
And almost all of the windows are just as useless – visibility-wise – as the ones on the previous trip:
(are all NJ Transit train windows this bad?)
Luckily, I had my choice of almost every window on this car.
We’re now approaching the terminal:
Near the middle in the distance is the Empire State Building.
Still within view of the ESB, we passed by this colorful TGIV train car, but it’s hard to read what those letters stand for:
Fortunately, I got a better shot of it on the way home (PANO):
Look at all the wires and tracks…….this must be some major-league station:
The ESB gets closer:
Speaking of closer……….
Finally we’re inside and next to a train that’s about to head north to Suffern, NY in Rockland County;
Shoutout to Sylvester the Cat:
(look it up, kids)
So, lots of trains here…….this place is bigger than I thought (PANO):
The first order of business is to find out what time my return train leaves and from which track. Here’s the where and that’s the train (PANO):
I’ll be making a beeline for car 6055.
So that gives me about 45 minutes to find something interesting to photograph. This is a large PANO of the terminal interior and the first outside area, which looks a bit industrially junky (PANO):
So what’s the first scene I see?
Wow! And look at that sky!
And the second and third things?
The Verrazano Narrows Bridge is in the distance. Much closer is……..that thing that I couldn’t identify until I got home (remember: it’s heavily-zoomed in here). Recognize it?
Here’s a closeup:
It’s called “Water’s Soul” and is 80 feet tall. I think I recall seeing something about this on TV when it debuted in 2021, but nothing since.
So what is she doing out there?
Shushing Manhattan!
Continuing my stroll around the Terminal’s water side:
(it’s what’s up top that counts) (PANO)
You can see most of “Lackawanna” on the tower (the terminal’s formal name is the Lackawanna Railroad Terminal).
This is the rest of the rather anti-climactic terminal grounds (the first two are PANOs):
That letter on the door needs to be enlarged because it’s the official word from NJ Transit about the one-week “Fare Holiday”:
Time to turn our gaze to what’s happening on the Hudson River:
……….and in the air:
Lotsa metal in this WTC view:
Let’s take a walk…………I have no idea what this is:
Now I do……………
South view from the terminal area:
The view from a little further west:
I’m not alone:
A very wide PANO showing the tower and terminal on the left, Manhattan in the middle and back to NJ on the right:
A train PANO:
A REALLY wide PANO showing both:
All in all, not a bad haul for 45 minutes of work (he says modestly).
Time to head back to the train (and car 6055):
Leaving the terminal grounds (PANO):
A little under-the-overpass graffiti (don’t ask me what it says) (PANO):
One last chance to get a good American Dream Mall shot (fail):
Same for MetLife Stadium and the mall (so-so):
Yak, yak, yak……………
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzGokZPqiJg
One last Wood-Ridge station (and a photographer) shot, courtesy of the wonderful windows (PANO):
(Please, NJT – think about replacing them. It would really improve the quality of the trip.)
One thing I mentioned in Part 1 was that I can see and hear the trains from my kitchen window, which is almost 4 blocks away, so as we were pulling into my stop – the Anderson St Station – I tried to take a picture of my building. It’s actually a passable shot, considering that the train was still moving:
My 6-story building begins with the red brick you see on the left and continues straight across. On top of THAT is another structure that covers the southeast quadrant of the building. It contains the elevator room, my apartment and the stairwell that gets me there (the elevator only goes up to 6).
This is why I’m the 7th-floor tenant in a 6-story building. Who else can say that?
Anyway, the green circle is around part of my kitchen window. Notice that the roof edge is sort of orange.
That’s important because I later took the reverse shot from that kitchen window early one morning (sun is reflecting off one of the cars):
You’ll notice that a double-topped chimney on a house is visible in both photos and you can’t miss the orange-ish roof edge. My watermark is on a roof vent.
How many people can photograph their home from a train AND the train from their home?
SO…………in closing, I’m really glad I took advantage of this rare freebie (thank you, Governor Murphy).
Let’s do it again sometime.
LAST PIC: The back end of car 6055 as the train leaves the Anderson St Station (and as I wait for the gate to rise on Anderson Street so I can cross the tracks and go home):
Total time: 2 hours
Free is great but I wonder if they offer significantly reduced fares for seniors?