Ten Years Ago...

With all this talk about "Ten years ago," ramping up to the tenth anniversary of this, I figure I'd share with you some pictures of what I did ten years ago today, September 8th.

On the morning of Saturday, September 8th, 2001, I attended the Try Transit Festival at Hoboken Terminal. The event was put on by New Jersey Transit, and included several vintage (and not-so-vintage) trains on display.

Car #6 was one of many PCC cars which until 2001 operated on the Newark City Subway (now known as Newark Light Rail). Car #6 is shown in an older Public Service Coordinated Transit paint scheme. Many were painted in a more modern New Jersey Transit paint scheme. During the transition to more modern light rail cars to replace the PCC fleet, the PCC cars were fitted with pantographs.

PATH PA-4 car #810 is not lost. The car is another car on display, this time on one of the tracks of the main terminal. The PA-4 fleet, along with the rest of the old PATH fleet, is retired now.

 The interior of an ACELA express train. It kinda reminds me of an airplane interior, except for the larger windows.

Next to the ACELA train, there's one of New Jersey Transit's track inspection cars.






The Try Transit Festival wasn't the only thing going on that day. The New York City Subway was doing a test run of a new service pattern involving the F train running via the 63rd Street tunnel, the G train being cut to Court Square, and a new subway line, known as the V train filling the F train's spot in the 53rd Street tunnel.
At the time, I shot in film so I was conserving film at Hoboken for a chance to take some shots of the V train. I also had a Saturday class to attend at Queens College, so I had to go that way anyway. I had an exit strategy in place for this: leave Hoboken, take a PATH train to 33rd Street, catch a V train at 34th Street, and take it to Woodhaven Boulevard for the Q88 bus.
Once I reached "Go Time," I went down to the PATH station, and got there just in time… to see the 33rd Street train pull out of the station.

The next train to leave was the train to World Trade Center, so I got on that, heading up to the front car as I normally do. After riding to World Trade Center, I rode the long escalators up to Path Square, then walked through a relatively empty World Trade Center shopping center (many of the stores there catered only to the Monday-to-Friday crowd, and were closed on Saturdays) and down into the E train station, took an E train to Roosevelt Avenue, where I hopped aboard a V train waiting across the platform, and took that to Woodhaven Boulevard for the Q88 bus.

That would be my final time going through that area as it was, with the exception, of course, of the area outside the E train station's entrance from the concourse. I passed through there many times since the area re-opened, and that area remains practically untouched to this day. This photo is from 2003. The sign on the column reads, "These signs and floors below are part of the surviving structure of the World Trade Center."


 After class, I took a few pictures of the new V trains, consisting of mostly trains of R32 and R40 cars, and went home.

One of the things I picked up in Hoboken was a card holder for a then-upcoming PATH event, billed as a "Customer Appreciation Day." It was to be held at the World Trade Center PATH station… On September 13, 2001.

Needless to say, but due to the events which occurred on the Tuesday following that Saturday 10 years ago today, that didn't happen.


Anyway, If you want to see all of the photos from that day, I have a gallery up on Picasa. There, you can also see some pictures of the V train's first "unofficial" day of service.

Like I said before, I was shooting film back then. Oh, if only digital photography were as ubiquitous then as it is now…