Great Notch station

Great Notch station was a small New Jersey Transit facility in the Great Notch section of Little Falls, New Jersey. The station was served seven times a day, three inbound morning trains to Hoboken Terminal and four outbound evening trains from Hoboken by the Montclair-Boonton Line from Monday to Friday. Located at the intersection of Notch Road and Long Hill Road, it was the second of three stations in Little Falls, the other two being Montclair State University and Little Falls, and was the first on the line to be strictly served by diesel trains. However, most trains bypassed this station and continued on to Little Falls (westbound) and Montclair State University (eastbound). The station was served by a single track with an unused side track. The last trains stopped at the station on January 15, 2010, at 7:41pm.

Great Notch
The station on December 19, 2009, a month prior to closing.
Coordinates	40.8738°N 74.2058°W
Owned by	New Jersey Transit
Platforms	1 side platform
Tracks	1 track, 1 siding
Connections	NJT Bus: 191, 195, and 705
Construction
Platform levels	Ground
Parking	15[1]
Bicycle facilities	No
Other information
Station code	1747 (Erie Railroad)[2]
Fare zone	7[3]
History
Opened	January 1, 1873[4][5][6]
Closed	January 17, 2010[7]
Rebuilt	1905,[8] 1988
Electrified	September 30, 2002
Previous names	Caldwell Junction[9]
Key dates
June 20, 1891	Caldwell Branch service began[10]
February 18, 1966	Station agency closed[11]
April 17, 1988	Depot caught fire[12]
Passengers
2009	2286[13]  87%
Former services
Preceding station NJ Transit Following station Little Falls toward Hackettstown Montclair-Boonton Line Montclair State University toward New York Penn Station or Hoboken Preceding station Erie Railroad Following station Little Falls toward Wanaque–Midvale or Sterling Forest New York and Greenwood Lake Railway Montclair Heights toward Jersey City Cedar Grove toward Essex Fells Caldwell Branch Terminus

Train service at Great Notch originated in 1873, as part of the Montclair Railway. Service to Caldwell began in 1891, when the Caldwell Railway opened, serving Great Notch, Overbrook Hospital, Verona, and Caldwell. The station at Great Notch was first constructed in 1905 as a double station building for the Erie Railroad. The station was a green and red building serving the New York and Greenwood Lake Railway, along with the Caldwell Branch. The station also used an old boxcar as a tool shed for maintenance. By the early 1970s, the station had fallen into disrepair, and by 1974, was repainted Erie Railroad-style red with the tool shed box car removed. The station was abandoned when the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad went out of business and was later picked up by New Jersey Transit. After making deals with the mayor of Little Falls, New Jersey Transit gave the station a one-year "trial" to attract ridership. Ridership went down, however, and so the trial was canceled on December 18, 2009. The town of Little Falls was contacted by New Jersey Transit at that time, reporting that the Great Notch station would be closed on January 17, 2010 due to the "anemic" ridership at the station.

History

Train service at Great Notch originated with the introduction of the Caldwell Railway, a service that went from the community of Caldwell, New Jersey to the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway. Twelve trains a day served Caldwell, Verona and Overbrook Hospital. The station at Great Notch was deemed Caldwell Junction, inferring the junction between the two railways.[9]

Great Notch Station circa 1912

The Great Notch station depot was built in 1905 for the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway, a subsidiary of the Erie Railroad. The station was built as a green-red "type five" frame structure. While the main building was 12' × 28' × 18' in size, the station also included an old boxcar used as a tool house. The box car was only 12' × 45' and served the station for several decades. The station was just east of the "GA" signal tower, which was built in 1900 to serve the junction of the Greenwood Lake Railway and its Caldwell Branch, heading eastward for the communities of Cedar Grove, Verona, Caldwell and Essex Fells. The station also served a local yard for train storage for the branch line via a wye.[8] At Essex Fells, connections could be made for train service to Morristown via the Morristown and Erie Railroad. The Caldwell Railroad diverged from the current New Jersey Transit line about .25 miles (0.40 km) west of the New Jersey Transit Great Notch station and followed its own route to Caldwell.[14] The station at Great Notch was more than just a building for people at the railroad. The station had a large water tower next to GA Signal and a potbelly stove. The station was tended by a husband and wife combination, serving the locals their daily newspapers and their mail. Great Notch did not receive mail delivery until the mid-1950s.[15]

By the early 1970s, the Great Notch station, which was falling into disrepair, received a new paint job, changed from the red-green colors for the Erie Lackawanna to a new all red Erie Railroad paint scheme. The abandoned tool shed made out of the old wooden boxcar was also removed. Due to the removal of the tool boxcar, the propane tanks that heated the station building were also made visible.[8] After the ending of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad in 1976,[16] the Great Notch station lay abandoned. In June 1979, the State of New Jersey began to remove the tracks for the Caldwell Branch, which also lay abandoned at Great Notch.[17] Currently, what was the track leading to the Caldwell Branch is a siding. On April 16, 1988, the newly rehabilitated station building was destroyed by fire. The burned out structure was razed on April 23. New Jersey Transit, who owned the station depot, replaced it with glass structures to seat 90 people.[12]

During the construction of the Montclair Connection in 2001, the adjacent Great Notch Yard received a major upgrade, becoming a new state-of-the-art yard with new trains storage facilities.[18]

Closure

The station looking towards Hackettstown prior to closure

When Montclair State University station opened in 2004 [19] and the Wayne Route 23 Transit Center's train platform opened in 2008,[20] this made Great Notch one of three stations in Little Falls, and it did not nearly have the ridership either of the other two stations had. The opening of Montclair State University Station helped to pull away commuters from Great Notch due to its location very near it. The small parking lot facing the station had very little room for cars and a parking lot on the opposite side of the single tracked station was isolated from it by fencing. Further exacerbating the problem was that the small lot abutting Notch Road was not marked specifically for train passengers only. Great Notch had (and still has) a bus stop on the corner of Notch and Long Hill Roads that serves buses headed for Port Authority Bus Terminal, and commuters using the bus would park in the train station's parking lot (and still do, as it was never blocked off) and catch the bus up the street.

In January 2008, without knowledge of the township council, New Jersey Transit announced further and drastic service cuts at Great Notch. The only train to serve outbound customers was a train leaving for Hoboken Terminal in the morning, and two trains from Hoboken would serve the station at night.[21]

The site at Great Notch station in July 2010, six months after the closing of the station by New Jersey Transit

The future of the 103-year-old station was placed into further jeopardy on August 12, 2008, when New Jersey Transit announced to the community of Little Falls that they would possibly close the station as early as October 2008.[22] A few days after the announcement, rebuttal by the community began to appear, with a public hearing was announced for September 3 to work on plans for Great Notch.[23] The service with only one inbound train (to Hoboken) and two outbound trains (from Hoboken) was canceled on April 1, 2009. On that day, New Jersey Transit announced it would add two more trains in each direction on April 16 as a "one-year trial" for station ridership. The town hoped to get the then 67-person a day average to 100 people using the station by April 1, 2010, when the trial was set to expire. The mayor of Little Falls, Michael DeFrancisci, urged people to use the station more.[24] However, by December 2009, ridership had declined to 9 per day.[13]

On December 18, 2009, New Jersey Transit contacted Little Falls and said that the station would close in January 2010, three months before the year-long trial period to build ridership was set to end. The transit authority cited continued low ridership, as on average nine passengers a day boarded the train at Great Notch.[7] On December 21, 2009, New Jersey Transit announced the closure stating that the "anemic" ridership had remained at Great Notch, with only an average of 9 boardings a day, compared to 203 at the local Little Falls station and 597 at the Montclair State University Station.[13] The last train to depart Great Notch was the 6:51pm train from Hoboken Terminal on January 15 leaving Great Notch at 7:41pm, as weekend trains do not run on this portion of the Montclair-Boonton Line.[3]

See also

• Caldwell Branch to Essex Fells

Bibliography

• Baxter, Raymond J.; Adams, Arthur G. (1999). Railroad Ferries of the Hudson: And Stories of a Deckhand. Fordham, New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823219544.
• Catlin, George L. (1873). Homes on the Montclair Railway, for New York Business Men. A Description of the Country Adjacent to the Montclair Railway, Between Jersey City and Greenwood Lake. New York, New York: Montclair Railway Company.
• Whittemore, Henry (1894). History of Montclair Township, State of New Jersey: Including the History of Families who Have Been Identified with Its Growth and Prosperity. New York, New York: The Suburban Publishing Company. Retrieved February 6, 2020.

References

1. "Park & Ride Guide - Great Notch". Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit Rail Operations. 2010. Missing or empty |url= (help)
2. "List of Station Names and Numbers". Jersey City, New Jersey: Erie Railroad. May 1, 1916. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
3. "Montclair-Boonton Line Timetables" (PDF). Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. November 8, 2009. p. 2. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
4. Catlin 1873, p. 33.
5. Whittemore 1894, p. 47.
6. Baxter & Adams 1999, p. 147.
7. "Today's News". Little Falls, New Jersey: Township of Little Falls. 2009. Retrieved December 19, 2009.
8. Yanosey, Robert J. (2006). Erie Railroad Facilities (In Color). 1. Scotch Plains, New Jersey: Morning Sun Books Inc. pp. 74–75. ISBN 1-58248-183-0.
9. Jaeger, Phillip Edward (2000). Images of America: Cedar Grove. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. p. 27. ISBN 9780738504520. Retrieved August 31, 2010.
10. "Eagle Feathers". The Madison Eagle. June 26, 1891. p. 3. Retrieved March 11, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
11. Hordiuk, Bohdan (February 21, 1966). "End of Another Era". The Herald-News. Passaic, New Jersey. pp. 35–36. Retrieved March 15, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
12. "Going Down [Photo]". The Bergen Record. Hackensack, New Jersey. April 21, 1988. p. B3. Retrieved January 29, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
13. "New Jersey Transit Announces Closure of Great Notch Station". Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. December 21, 2009. Retrieved December 21, 2009.
14. Map of Erie Railroad Stations (Map). Cartography by Erie Railroad. Erie Railroad. 1920.
15. "Historic Little Falls" (PDF). Little Falls, New Jersey: Little Falls, New Jersey. January 2006. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 9, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2009.
16. Grant, H. Roger (1994). Erie Lackawanna: The Death of an American Railroad, 1938-1992. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804723572. OCLC 246668407.
17. "Old Caldwell Branch at End of the Line". The New York Times. June 10, 1979. pp. NJ25. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
18. "Introducing The Midtown Direct Montclair" (PDF). Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit. September 2002. Retrieved October 11, 2009.
19. "Montclair State University Station and 1,500-Spot Parking Deck Officially Opens: "See More Spots" marketing campaign begins". New Jersey Transit. October 20, 2004. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
20. "New Wayne/Route 23 Transit Center Opens January 12, 2008". New Jersey Transit. January 2008. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
21. "Letter To The Editor". The Record. January 20, 2008.
22. "Save Great Notch". Little Falls, New Jersey: Little Falls Transportation Committee. August 25, 2008. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
23. "Public Hearing Notice - Proposed Closing of Great Notch Rail Station". New Jersey Transit. August 25, 2008. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
24. Cunningham, Jennifer H. (April 1, 2009). "Great Notch Riders Get Wish: More Trains". The Herald News. Retrieved October 10, 2009.

External links

• Overhead view of the station via Bing Maps