Here, the track parallels Berrys Creek and eventually crosses it just before passing below Route 3.īeyond Route 3, the landscape changes to industrial. For the next two miles, the train crosses the Meadowlands, under the New Jersey Turnpike western spur with the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford visible in the distance to the right. Soon the train joins the old Erie Main Line right-of-way and crosses the Hackensack over HX Bridge, a two-track bascule draw. A former station, Harmon Cove, was located nearby along the old Erie right-of-way and served the high-rise apartments nearby between 19. During this stretch and traveling westbound, the Hackensack River is to the left, while industrial plants on Meadowlands Parkway are to the right. West of Secaucus Junction, the Bergen County Line tracks diverge from the Main Line over a new right-of-way opened on December 15, 2003, connecting the Main Line with the Bergen County Line. A curving track was built between the HX Draw at Hackensack River and the Main Line west of Secaucus Junction to allow Bergen County Line trains to use Secaucus Junction. Prior to the opening of Secaucus Junction in 2003, Bergen County Line trains used a longer stretch of the old Erie Main Line in Secaucus, extending south to Croxton Yard and a merge with the former Lackawanna Boonton Branch. The old Main Line east of Rutherford was now exclusively part of the Bergen County Line. This was caused by the abandonment of the Main Line section through downtown Passaic and construction of Interstate 80 using the old Boonton Branch right-way in Paterson. In 1963 the Lackawanna Boonton Branch up to Paterson (with a small portion of the Erie's Newark Branch) became the new Erie-Lackawanna Main Line. Until the late 1950s, the main function of the Erie's Bergen County Cutoff was as a freight (and long-distance express) bypass of the at-grade Main Line through Passaic.

The rest of the line, from East Rutherford north to Glen Rock, opened in 1881 as the Bergen County Railroad. This portion was opened in 1833 by the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad and leased by the New York and Erie Rail Road in 1852. Share of the Bergen County Railroad Company, issued 1 February 1883įrom a point in Secaucus, just south of the Hackensack River bridge near the former Harmon Cove station, to a point in East Rutherford north of the Rutherford station, the Bergen County Line uses the former Erie Railroad Main Line.

Nj transit train map