As it has done for many years, the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey held its “Railroad Museum [for a day]” event at its facility in Boonton on Sunday, September 29. This year, NJ Transit allowed nonmotorists as well as motorists to reach the event by running special trains every 2 hours (4 round trips). The location was the old Lackawanna Railroad freight house, about a 10-minute walk from the Boonton Station, which normally has service only during peak-commuting hours on weekdays. It has been decades since Boonton Line trains ran on weekends on Lackawanna rails west of Mountain View.
The agency ran its most-historic locomotive, GP-40PH-2 unit #4109, which was built in 1968 for the Central Railroad of New Jersey and repainted in that railroad’s blue and yellow livery. It pulled a five-car train of Comet V cars. A similar unit was also on display, sporting the Erie Railroad black-and-yellow paint scheme. The special trains connected with the Morris & Essex Line at Denville Station slightly east of the junction where the M&E and Boonton Lines meet on the way to Dover, so the 2 lines have separate platforms. About 60 riders were on the first train, which left Denville at 9:47 a.m. There were 33 on the 12:50 p.m. departure from Boonton, and there were two more trains after that one.
The URHS collection includes locomotives and passenger cars from NJ Transit and its predecessor railroads, including the only surviving U34CH, built in 1971 and sporting the two-tone blue colors of the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT). An NJ Transit news release promoting the event said, “Railroad Museum [for a day] tells the story of NJ TRANSIT and its predecessor railroads through a large array of historic railroad equipment mostly donated by the agency.” In previous years, the event could be reached only by automobile, since there are no local buses in Morris County on a Sunday, and the Denville station is more than 5 miles away. The Boonton Day street festival, with a street fair on the town’s historic Main Street, also took place at the same time. The town ran a shuttle van between the 2 events.
The Lackawanna Coalition praised the special trains, calling them “A Model Service.” In a statement delivered at the agency’s Board meeting on October 10, Coalition Chairperson Sally Jane Gellert said, “This is a great example of a public agency working with a grassroots organization to support local events. The shuttle enabled nonmotorists and rail enthusiasts to attend the . . event, as well as the Boonton Day festival, without an automobile. We’d like to see more of such collaborations.”
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