Pavonia Yard

(The red arrow points at Pavonia Yard.)

There it is, good old Pavonia yard (“puh-VOWN-eee-uh”) north of Camden in south Jersey on maps of remaining Conrail facilities.
Conrail still exists, as “Conrail Shared Assets.” Terminal facilities were so complex in north and south Jersey, and Detroit, they couldn’t be equally divided when the rest of Conrail was broken up and sold.
Those terminal facilities would remain Conrail, yet be accessible to both Norfolk Southern and CSX.
North Jersey is across from New York City and heavily-developed with freight-sources. South Jersey is across from Philadelphia, and Detroit is heavily developed.
Conrail was constituted from many railroads with competing lines, especially in north Jersey.
If all the lines in south Jersey had become CSX or Norfolk Southern it would have been unfair to the line shut out. Detroit was similar.
North Jersey also has a Chemical-Coast. Ceding it to one railroad was unfair.
I’m sure there was plenty of haggling. “Conrail Shared Assets” is the result.
Conrail Shared Assets also applied to lines around Philadelphia.
Pavonia goes back a long way. It was opened by Pennsy in 1888.
I remember crossing it in the late ‘40s, and it had already been there some time.
I don’t know if it was actually in Camden, but just north it served the Camden area as well as south Jersey.
It was probably built because railroad facilities in Camden were cramped, and had become congested.
Pavonia was near Delair Bridge.
Delair Bridge was built in 1896 to get Pennsy free of ferry-crossings. Pennsy’s first yards in south Jersey were at Cooper’s Point in north Camden, location of an early ferry-slip, if not the first.
The Cooper’s Point ferry was first to abandon.
There were other railroad-yards in Camden, particularly Reading’s (“REDD-ing;” not “REED-ing”) Atlantic City Railroad. Their yard was Bulson Street, not as cramped as Cooper’s Point.
Pavonia Yard was along Pennsy’s Bordentown Branch, which I think was the original Camden & Amboy, one of the earliest railroads in the nation.
Camden & Amboy connected Philadelphia to New York City, but ferries were at each end.
New York City is still cut off from direct railroad railroad-service from the west, although New York Central served New York City from the west.
But now that line is Metro-North.
But no longer is New York dependent on rail-ferries. Freight arriving in north Jersey can be transferred to trucks for delivery into New York City.
The main road from my paternal grandparents in north Camden out to our house in the south Jersey suburbs was Marlton Pike (“MARL-tin”).
It crossed Pavonia yard at grade. Doing so was a bumpy mess — a shock-killer.
You were crossing at least 10 tracks protected by an elevated watch-tower that could lower the gates.
Every switching-move had to block the highway.
I’m sure this was a bottleneck. And Pennsy probably hoped the state Highway Department would put in an overpass. But that didn’t happen until the late ‘50s or early ‘60s.
The Bordentown Branch was also the route Pennsy’s flyers from New York City used to get to Atlantic City. There were also trains from New York to Camden.
Everyone in my family hated crossing Pavonia Yard but me, the railfan.
Crossing 10 tracks was dreadful, but there were trains galore.
And in the early ‘50s steam-locomotives were still in use.
Old 2-8-0 Consolidations were still assigned as switchers, or I might see a B-6 0-6-0 switcher with its slope-back tender.

A Pennsy B-6 switcher.

And there was also a chance some flyer might come through on the Bordentown Branch.
I’m sure I saw the Nellie Bly, Pennsy’s premier New York to Atlantic City train before it started going to Philadelphia.

• “Nellie Bly” was the pen name of journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, famous in the late 1800s for two feats: -a) an around-the-world trip to emulate “Around the World in 80 Days” (she did it in 72 days); and -b) faking insanity to report on life in an insane asylum. She became so famous, the Pennsylvania Railroad named its premier New York to Atlantic City passenger-train after her. (In 1901 it suffered a fatal crash.)