Author Topic: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)  (Read 86470 times)

Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #30 on: August 30, 2010, 07:19:14 PM »
Your previous post in this thread agreed that the yard was down by River St. Are you now saying that the Hudson River Line had another yard just a couple of blocks to the west?

Assuming this new image IS the River St yard - a bad name for it since River St didn't exist when the yard did - my thought was that the tracks have just crossed the river from Bogota, heading west, and the offshoot tracks are going to the yard.

If that's accurate, the scene is looking west.



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Offline Editor

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #31 on: August 31, 2010, 03:38:10 PM »
Does this help?  I think those are train cars in the lower, center of the image. I re-scanned an old aerial at higher resolution here. This is much more detailed.  The image below is just a detail.

Bob's image for comparison:

« Last Edit: August 31, 2010, 04:00:20 PM by Editor »

Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #32 on: August 31, 2010, 07:01:10 PM »
I think those are train cars in the lower, center of the image.


You mean "train tracks"? They DO look like train tracks. The auction was for 4 different trolley-related photos, so I wonder if the seller got a train-related photo mixed in there by accident.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Group-4-old-B-W-Public-Svc-N-Jersey-trolley-photos-/160465630645?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item255c7f35b5

As for your aerial image..........I think you said that River St came about in the 50s? Trolleys were long-gone by then, so I don't think this image will help with that discussion.

However, I think I see something that could be trolley tracks that seem to come over from Bogota just north of the Susie-Q tracks (there's not enough picture to be sure of that) and they appear to take a very slight turn to the left right before River St.

This could be the old path of the Hudson River Line trolley and that dark patch that it appears to turn into might be the old trolley yard. In fact, something in that yard looks like an old trolley!

But the "trolley tracks" appear to end there instead of continuing to the left and then heading west up Mercer, so whatever's in that yard could just be a remnant of the trolley era - just waiting for progress to sweep it away.

Hey - continuing south on River St, there's a structure on the east side of the street - just past where The Record would be - that I'll bet is the old Municipal Bus Terminal.


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« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 01:59:49 PM by BLeafe »
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Offline Homer Jones

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #33 on: August 31, 2010, 07:46:13 PM »
You win the bet. That was the old Bus Transfer Station.

If you want to see something interesting that the oldtimers may remember, hop into your imaginary Olds Rocket 88 and make a left pulling out of the bus station. Drive down to South River Street and East Broadway and look at the Goldberg property as it was then. Most people will remember the old manufacturing building; but, few remember all the storage sheds that were located just to the north of the plant. Goldberg billed itself as The Worlds Largest Soft Sole Shoe manufacturing company. Manufacturing went on throughout the year and the products were stored in these sheds and others across South River Street until their busy season which was in the Fall when they began to ship their product to retailers for the upcoming holiday season.
As years went by, production at the site diminished as more of their product was produced outside the United States which allowed them to reduce the on site storage.

Offline just watching

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #34 on: August 31, 2010, 08:04:10 PM »

I went through all the old maps and images on this string.  The Editor posted on 6/28/2006 a map called "Local Car Lines, Hackensack 1900-1938", and it shows parallel rail/trolley lines between Union and State Streets.  As one looks east from mid-way between Union and State Street, the lines part slightly, one of them (evidently a trolley line) veers off to the right in order to link up with the end of Mercer Street. 

That trolley line junction is exactly what the last picture posted by BLeafe depicts.  The image caption is correct, it is looking east towards State and Mercer. This is pretty definitive. It would help to go back and look at that map posted in 2006.  This is good historic image for the archive records, for part of the block bounded by the Railroad, State Street, Trinity Place, and Union Street.

I also agree that there was a trolley yard on the east side of River Street between the Susquehanna and Midtown Bridge approach, and some of the other photos on this string accurately depict that trolley yard.  Nice work, guys.

Keep these tricky images coming, between all of us we can figure most of them out.

Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #35 on: August 31, 2010, 09:57:02 PM »
That was the old Bus Transfer Station.

Nomenclature question, Homer. You're referring to the old place shown below that was on the east side of the street and not the more recent one on the west side between River and Moore, right?

To me, the more recent one is "the Bus Transfer Station", but maybe the old place was also called that way back when.



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Offline Homer Jones

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #36 on: August 31, 2010, 10:28:11 PM »
Nomenclature answer. I was referring to the old "facility" shown on the photo which was on the east side of River Street. The new place on the west side of the Street is without question called the bus transfer station. I really don't remember whether the old "facility" from 70 or whatever number of years ago was called a transfer station or a terminal.
Maybe we can be real fancy and call it an intermodal transfer point where you could have taken the bus to said intermodal transfer point and walked to the train station at Mercer Street or vice versa.
As they used mto say in the old Wrigley gum commercial "Some people call it a spear and some people call it an arrow."
Whatever.

Offline Editor

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #37 on: August 31, 2010, 11:04:59 PM »
Bob- I meant "train cars", in the yard just east of River Street in the big image.  I think the tracks in your image could be from that yard, though I don't know the angle, - perhaps facing south.

I remember hearing that River Street was constructed in the 50's.  I think I'm wrong about that.  I'm looking for when the Fire HQ on State St. was demolished.  That would give us a "picture could not have been taken after...." date.

This the map JustWatching is refering to: http://www.hackensacknow.com/images/streetcar3.jpg. Image below. I don't think we know how far right the tracks veer.  They could stop shortly after the turn if this is a yard.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2010, 11:07:13 PM by Editor »

Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #38 on: August 31, 2010, 11:27:19 PM »
As they used mto say in the old Wrigley gum commercial "Some people call it a spear and some people call it an arrow."

“Certs is a candy mint."

"Certs is a breath mint."

"Stop! You're both right!”



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #39 on: September 01, 2010, 01:20:04 AM »
Bob- I meant "train cars", in the yard just east of River Street in the big image.

Sorry. For some reason, I thought you were referring to the eBay tracks image. Your train cars were what I guessed were leftover trolley cars.

Do we know if a train yard succeeded the trolley yard in that location?



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #40 on: September 01, 2010, 11:16:25 PM »
I just found a page - http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=300912 - that shows a trolley car in the "Hackensack Car Yard".

It also gives a date - August 4, 1938 - and mentions that it's two days before "abandonment of the Hudson River Line", so now we know when that major trolley line ceased to serve Hackensack.



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #41 on: September 02, 2010, 01:00:31 AM »
You know what I just noticed about that 1938 trolley car? It's the same car (#5218) in the same yard as the below 1934 car, which started the whole "yard" discussion!

I wonder if it was the yard's only tenant.



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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #42 on: September 02, 2010, 01:56:37 PM »
I decided to dig a little further into that railpictures site and found a few more interesting images.

I think this one is the prize (though it's not on Main St, as the caption would have you believe - it's on Mercer):

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Offline BLeafe

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #43 on: September 02, 2010, 03:23:56 PM »
In this trolley image, the poster doesn't know where it was taken, but thinks it has to be either Hackensack or Paterson.

I don't recognize the scene. Anybody got a clue?



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Offline Editor

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Re: Hackensack Street Cars/Trolleys (Photos)
« Reply #44 on: September 02, 2010, 06:39:24 PM »
I think this is 107 Main Street, corner of Atlantic. The original structure was demolished. In 1931, the National Grocery Company (seen in Bob's picture) and the Bergen County Third District Court occupied this space (Bergen County Historic Site Survey).  See Virtual Historic Walking Tour here.

If you asked me two weeks ago, I couldn't tell you.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 07:42:26 PM by Editor »