Main Line/Port Jervis Line To Port Jervis
Posted: December 16th, 2025 | Filed under: Out Of TownThe Main Line tracks — the reason Secaucus Junction is a junction — travel below the Northeast Corridor tracks there, where one switches to the Main Line out to Port Jervis:
The Moodna Viaduct trestle bridge is 3200 feet long and rises 193 feet above the valley below, making it the second-highest, second-longest trestle bridge east of the Mississippi River (second, that is, to the Poughkeepsie Bridge, otherwise known as the Walkway Over the Hudson):
I’m fuzzy when it comes to railroad minutiae but it says the Port Jervis line was once the Erie Railroad, and the Erie Limited was a fairly big time passenger route running from Hudson County across from Manhattan to Chicago. This charming old station served as the passenger stop for Port Jervis (the current Metro-North station is much more modest):
The Erie Hotel and Restaurant:
We happened upon this wonderful little caboose in the parking lot of a Family Dollar store:
The picturesque Laurel Grove Cemetery sits on a finger of land between the Delaware and Neversink Rivers:
At the tip of the peninsula is the Tri-States Monument, which is the exact spot where the borders of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania intersect:
A nearby stele “witnesses” the marker and provides details . . .
The 115-foot-long Erie Turntable dates to 1927 and was part of the railyard at Port Jervis; turntables are used to turn locomotives around where there is not a lot of space for a turnaround:
We visited in 2022, just before the Port Jervis Transportation History Center was to have opened. Sadly, it seems that the city of Port Jervis is evicting the organization that runs the center and the historic trains at the site are going to be moved (the fate of the historic turntable itself is unclear) . . .
Finally, back through New Jersey on the journey back home:
