@mlaughlinnyc posted:Any freight trains that you saw would have been to or from Oak Island Yard which is two miles south of the Newark station. There was no reason for a freight train to go north of that junction. Not likely that there would ever be a unit train on that part of the railroad because there were no appropriate destinations for a unit train.
BTW, after April 1, 1976, they were Conrail trains. PC was no longer in the railroad business.
Oak Island was a Lehigh Valley facility. Never had any catenary.
Electric hauled freight came off the corridor at Lane Tower at the south end of the former PRR Waverly Yard complex. From there it could go one of two ways. The first was was to pass under the massive LV bridge to skirt the north side of Oak Island on the P&H branch to Meadows Yard in Kearny. The other route skirted the south side of Oak Island through a facility called the Garden Yard, then joined the Lehigh Valley at the east end of Oak Island to cross the Upper Bay Bridge which crossed Newark Bay, to ultimately reach Greenville Yard and its carfloats. Both lines were electrified the whole way. After Conrail decided to route their trains off the Amtrak corridor, the former Lehigh Valley main became their main route into the area. That's when Oak Island became Conrail's main facility in the NJ/NY area.
Don't know of any unit trains per se, but GG1s definitely hauled Pennsy's crack "Trailer Trains" and also long strings of automobile racks.
