Sunday, September 28 was Boonton Day, with a street fair on Main Street and, perhaps more important to rail fans, the United Railway Historical Society (URHS) held their annual “Railroad Museum for a Day” event at their yard and shop facility in town. The event is normally accessible only to motorists, because NJ Transit’s Boonton Line runs only on weekdays, just at commuting times, and there are no local buses in Morris County on Sundays.
Last year, for the first time, NJT ran a special shuttle train (also known as a “scoot”) between Denville on the Morris & Essex (M&E) Line and Boonton for the event, pulled by historic locomotive 4109, repainted in its original livery from the Central Railroad of New Jersey. This year, the agency ran special trains for the event, but there was no connecting service on the M&E, which had been knocked out of service because of a derailment at Summit. So the special trains ran, but the “regular” hourly service on the M&E that connected with it did not.
Some work cars derailed late Friday night; that knocked out service on the M&E and Gladstone lines for the entire service day on Saturday and into Sunday. NJT reported that a crane had to be sent from Maryland to clear the track as part of the repair effort, so the Boonton events were essentially limited to motorists. Rail fans who are also motorists showed up in significant numbers, according to Coalition Secretary Daniel D. Chazin, who told the Railgram: “I was surprised to find at least 50 passengers aboard each of the trains that I rode, despite the lack of connecting service from New York. It seems that many rail fans wanted to start their day visiting the rail museum by riding a real train!” Chazin also said that an NJT manager told him that this year’s ridership exceeded last year’s, even without transit access to the scoots.
The usual fleet of historic URHS equipment was on display, and Gary R. Kazin, a longtime Coalition member, noted that NJT went all out to display its units painted in “heritage” colors from predecessor railroads and agencies. He told the Railgram: “I saw 4101, the NJ DoT unit, on the first round trip and 4210, the Erie unit, on the second. Daniel rode the 4210 trip to Boonton and said his return trip had Metro-North engine 4900, which is not a ‘heritage’ unit, as that’s the normal paint scheme. 4208, the Conrail unit, was on display” (emphasis in original). Kazin also said that it was possible to get to Boonton by taking a Lakeland bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City and walking ¾ of a mile, but that information was not widely disseminated.
As for access to the event for non-motorists and motorists alike, as many Mets fans say: “Wait until next year!”
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