Question about the Nellie Bly

Just posted this question on the PRR forum.

Why would anyone imagine that the PRR ever ran their Atlantic City service out of Jersey City? Or that they would make a corkscrew landing at Trenton? The train gate picture is at Penn and the engine change at Trenton consumed less than four minutes.

But you agree that the third pic is a puzzle? The one that seems to show a PRSL Baldwin, in what seems to be Newark?

Well considering the Nellie Bly was running as early as the famous wreck of 1901.........well before NYP....it obviously ran out of JC.

I can't offer much about the history of the Nellie Bly or the PRR, but I can say this much: I was in the cab of the GG1 in Trenton when they changed engines on the last run in 1961. My grandfather, Andrew J Kriscoe, was the engineer, and he retired the day "Nellie" did. My cousin and I rode from the station platform to the yard, then walked back and on to his retirement party. I was 10 years old and excited enough to not remember a whole lot about it other than my grandfather opening a door to expose us to the monstrously strong blast of the cooling fans.

Another memory of the Nellie Bly and my grandfather is waiting (scared to death) at Lawrence Crossing to wave as he threw out the Trenton Times. He claimed to be doing 90 through there, and I didn't doubt it. He had to throw the paper early and it flew next to the train a good way before landing in the stone roadbed. Much of it was unreadable, shredded from the landing. That grade crossing had a guard who waited in a little shack and came out to stop cars when the train was due. He showed us countless welts on his shins from the stones that were kicked up by the speeding train.

I have route "maps" that my grandfather studied. They were narrow rolls of paper like (or were) adding machine tape with all of the crossings and signals of the routes hand drawn on them. I'm sure he didn't need them by the time I was born, but my mother remembered him on his hands and knees on the living room floor with a roll stretching across the rug, memorizing each detail. He was 44 years with the Pennsy.

Did the Nellie Bly have to make reverse moves along it's route from Newark to Atlantic City? The route/s it took from Trenton on South/East? Did it make the turn East at Delair?

CarterB wrote:Did the Nellie Bly have to make reverse moves along it's route from Newark to Atlantic City? The route/s it took from Trenton on South/East? Did it make the turn East at Delair?

IIRC, the Nellie Bly diverged off the main at Trenton and ran down via Bordentown and Camden and Amboy Line.

I assume it required no reverse moves at Trenton (2 ways to get to the Bordentown line without directly) but how about further south getting onto the PRR line/s to AC? Was there an interchange that allowed such without a reverse move? Where?

CarterB wrote:I assume it required no reverse moves at Trenton (2 ways to get to the Bordentown line without directly) but how about further south getting onto the PRR line/s to AC? Was there an interchange that allowed such without a reverse move? Where?

Yes there was, and a train returning from Atlantic City to New York derailed on those curves about 1943. Southbound Camden & Amboy trains could bear Left at Delair to a wye to continue East to Atlantic City or West to Philadelphia on the Delaware River Railroad & Bridge Company's railroad. Northbound trains from Camden could only bear to their Left onto the bridge. The new connection to the Right, used by Mt. Holly freight trains, was built in 1964 because of P.A.T.Co. line construction.

JimBoylan wrote:

CarterB wrote:I assume it required no reverse moves at Trenton (2 ways to get to the Bordentown line without directly) but how about further south getting onto the PRR line/s to AC? Was there an interchange that allowed such without a reverse move? Where?

Yes there was, and a train returning from Atlantic City to New York derailed on those curves about 1943. Southbound Camden & Amboy trains could bear Left at Delair to a wye to continue East to Atlantic City or West to Philadelphia on the Delaware River Railroad & Bridge Company's railroad. Northbound trains from Camden could only bear to their Left onto the bridge. The new connection to the Right, used by Mt. Holly freight trains, was built in 1964 because of P.A.T.Co. line construction.

Coming from the north on the Camden and Amboy, the connection to the Delair Branch was not where the mains crossed (because of the elevation difference I guess). The connecton was from a spur of the Camden and Amboy which intersected the Delair Branch 500 (?) feet east of where the mains crossed.

When was this spur and the connections from the north taken out of service?

JS

In the Fall of 1964, when the new Northbound to Eastbound connection was being built at Delair, N.J., only one leg of the wye from the North remained, I forget which one. Thus, connecting curves to turn in all 4 directions did not exist at the same time.

It's interesting to poke around the Delair neighborhood where the connection used to be. The houses look to have been constructed just a few years after the track was removed, and there are still some substantial red sandstone retaining walls to be see here and there in the housing development. I wonder if anyone who lives there ever wonders what they were?:

The connection diverged from the current River Line south of the start of the Minson turnout that leads to the Pennsauken Industrial track, and headed southeast. The wye itself was on flat ground east of the crossing of the Atlantic City Line overhead of the River Line. As noted above, trains could turn either east or west, meaning that a train from Philadelphia could cross the Delair Bridge and then head north on the Bordentown Secondary.