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From: Ed Montgomery etmontgomery46 AT gmail DOT com
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:36:04 -0500
Subject: Mountain View 1964
"EL_Mountain_View_RRE.jpg" - image/jpeg, 990x673 (24bit)

Found this picture showing the layout of Mountain View in the spring of
1964. I'm using the Argus C-3 to capture what I believe is a Railroad
Enthusiast excursion. There may have been some of you on this train. The
last car was an Erie "Parlor-Diner". I was standing on the now unused
signal mast that controlled movements over the Boonton Line Crossing. I
climbed up to the first platform. The PA's have just crossed Boonton Road
(Route 202). In the foreground is the crossover you saw in the last
picture intended for running the engines around the passenger consist to
head back to Hoboken. As I said previously, it was never used. EL
installed parking lighting on the cheap. They used some flood lights,
probably from a yard someplace and installed them on a high pole to provide
platform and yard lighting. The "station" was a long narrow aluminum
building with exterior lights on it to provide additional platform
lighting. There was a full-time agent here at the time. This train did
not pick up passengers at Mountain View so brakes are being applied to
negotiate the curve onto the Boonton Line, thus the brake shoe smoke.
Beyond the smoke you can see the colored light signals and an upper
quadrant semaphore. The semaphore governed the Greenwood Lake branch
trains off of the CTC. It was the last automatic signal for these trains.
Greenwood Lake trains would stop and register at the Mountain View
Station. The platform was rather narrow.

A couple of other interesting notes. The Lackawanna style wood relay box
at the left controlled the signal I climbed up to take the picture. It was
out of service and would soon be removed. I believe Lackawanna oversaw the
automating of Mountain View crossing, and did the new installation work.
Thus the Lackawanna relay box on Erie property. The metal relay box by
the third PA contains the circuitry for the Boonton Road railroad gates.
EL would soon move that to the left side of the tracks. In order to make
room for the new center platform, EL moved the Greenwood Lake rails 4'8
1/2" to the left. I have some pictures of that work taking place as well
if you would like to see it.

I wish I knew where the negative was for this but back then I wasn't really
taking care of things and just beginning to experiment with cameras that
actually focused on an image and had an f-stop adjustment. These were
experiments. But I'm glad they weren't lost. As the picture reveals, this
was an overcast morning but you do get an overview of what Mountain View
looked like just after the Boonton Line was cut.

I was told that EL had originally planned to take the wheels off a
Stillwell coach and mount it on concrete blocks to use as a station. Wayne
Township officials took exception to that idea so the long narrow aluminum
building was installed. EL found some long, old wooden waiting room
benches from some unused station and place them on each side of the
interior of the building. They used small electric heaters to keep it
warm. Obviously it lacked the character of the old concrete, stucco, tiled
roof Lackawanna station and the classic Erie station design formerly at
this site.

Ed Montgomery


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