I’ve lived in NJ my whole life and have rarely used any line other than NEC. My kids have been asking where the other trains go and I thought it would be fun to start exploring that. Our home station is Newark Penn. Anyone have some fun ideas on where we should go? It can be just for sight seeing, out and back… If we get on a train with decent windows. 🙄 Or with a destination in mind. Thanks!
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A great trip IMHO is to take the NEC to Trenton and then to take the River line to Camden. The RL is very interesting line with unique sights along the way, including lots of single track, a section in Bordentown where the rail hugs a harbor complete with boat docks on one side and the station on the other, rail thru a swampy area that's actually a part of the Delaware Raritan canal that paralleles the Delaware River, street running sections that run in the middle of the street and various other sites (once saw a llama pen along this line) you could get off in Camden and then take the speed line into Philly and visit the many sites there and take the train from 30th Street station back to Trenton and the NEC I do this every few years to visit Philly because I like trains and the RL is a bargain RiverLine
Change at Secaucus and go to Port Jervis for a Saturday. Take #71 out and #78 or #80 back. There’s Moodna Viaduct, second only to the Poughkeepsie Bridge over the Hudson (now a path) for the longest/tallest trestle east of the Mississippi. There’s Otisville Tunnel, the Harrimans, and the Shewangunk Ridge of the Appalachian mountains.
The Hoboken Division single level cars are older but the glass is mostly clear. The kids might like the diesel engines too.
Other ideas are NJCL down to Bay Head, or NEC to Princeton and take the Dinky (when it’s not being bustituted).
Or get out to JC and take HBLR around for a bit, especially the street running areas.
North Jersey Coast Line to Belmar. Easy walk to Federici’s Pizza on 10th, it’s pretty good, close to train station. Esposito’s Pizza is very close to Manasquan train station, easy walk. On the way down to Belmar, they are building a new bridge over the Raritan, after the Perth Amboy station. It’s pretty cool going over the current railroad bridge and see the ongoing, parallel bridge construction. Going Southbound, sit on the right side of train to see the construction, coming back Northbound, sit on left side. Really amazing project.
If you want to take a train ride, some towns that I find interesting are as follows:
Raritan Valley Line: Cranford, Plainfield, Dunellen, Bound Brook, Somerville
North Jersey Coast Line: Woodbridge, Perth Amboy, Red Bank, Long Branch, Asbury Park, Point Pleasant
Northeast Corridor Line: Metuchen, New Brunswick
You might also want to consider bus rides. The advantage of buses is that you get a ground-level view of the town that you're passing through, and you can get off at the next stop if you see an interesting store, park, restaurant, etc Some interesting bus rides would be as follows:
21/41/44/71/73: Orange
59: Cranford, Plainfield, Dunellen
72: Bloomfield, Paterson (The Great Falls is within walking distance of the Broadway Bus Terminal)
76: Rutherford, Hackensack
11/28/29 (They go to/from Newark Penn after 7pm every day, and all day on Sunday...otherwise you can catch them on Washington Street): Montclair