page_title: Newark Light Rail
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Newark Light Rail / Newark City Subway / History
caption_attribution_description: English: A Roger Puta photograph
context_page_description: The Newark Light Rail is a light rail system serving Newark, New Jersey and surrounding areas, operated by New Jersey Transit Bus Operations. The service consists of two segments, the original Newark City Subway, and the extension to Broad Street station. The City Subway opened on May 16, 1935, while the combined Newark Light Rail service was officially inaugurated on July 17, 2006.
context_section_description: The line opened in 1935 along the old Morris Canal right-of-way, from Broad Street (now known as Military Park) to Heller Parkway (now replaced by the nearby Branch Brook Park station). Works Progress Administration artists decorated the underground stations with Art Deco scenes from life on the defunct Morris Canal. The southernmost part, south of Warren Street, was capped with a new road, known as Raymond Boulevard. Only one grade crossing was present on the original subway; the line crosses Orange Street at grade so it can pass over the below-grade Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (now NJT Morristown Line) immediately to the north.  The original Newark City Subway line had its own right-of-way and did not share city streets with local traffic, except at the Orange Street grade crossing. 
  Operation of the complete subway to the newly built Penn Station was delayed until 1937. The terminal below Penn Station has five tracks, two incoming and three outgoing, connected by two loop tracks. This part of the subway included a grade-separated junction with a connection to the lower level of the Newark Public Service Terminal that was used for only a few months (June to September).
  An extension to a wooden station at North 6th Street or Franklin Avenue was opened in 1940, located north of the present Branch Brook Park station. In 1953 the line was cut back about one block to accommodate construction of a turning loop, and a new station, still called Franklin Avenue, was opened adjacent to Anthony Street. The station was enlarged in 2002 and renamed Branch Brook Park.
  The subway was operated by Transport of New Jersey (formerly Public Service Coordinated Transport) as its No. 7 line. Other streetcar routes used parts of the subway, reaching street trackage at the locations shown below, ending as each route was closed and replaced by bus service:
  Public Service Terminal connection (and Cedar Street Subway), 1937 only: #13 Broad, #17 Paterson, #27 Mount Prospect, #43 Jersey City
  Warren Street ramp, 1935–1951: #21 Orange—West Orange via Market Street
  Central Avenue ramp, 1935–1947: #23 Central
  Orange Street crossing, 1935–1952: #21 Orange—West Orange via Orange Street
  Bloomfield Avenue ramp, 1935–1952: #29 Bloomfield
  Until June 5, 1952, the Roseville Car House, on the south side of Main Street (on the No. 21 line) near the eastern city line of East Orange, was used for the No. 7 line. From that time until 2002, Newark Penn Station was used for storage and maintenance. A new shops and yard complex opened at the end of the extension to Grove Street.
  Starting in January 1954, 30 PCC streetcars bought from Twin City Rapid Transit provided all service on the route. They were single-ended, requiring construction of a new turning loop at the Franklin Avenue terminal. The cars had been built 1946–1949 by the St. Louis Car Company and were sold by TCRT when that system went through a conversion to buses. Four cars were scrapped over the years, and two were sold to Shaker Heights Rapid Transit in 1978.
  New Jersey Transit took over operations in 1980.
  In 2001, new light rail cars built by Kinki Sharyo in Japan in 1999 replaced the PCCs.  The last day of PCC service was August 24, 2001.
  Some of the PCCs are stored in the Newark City Subway shop.  Eleven were sold in 2004 to the San Francisco Municipal Railway for use on its F Market heritage streetcar line. One PCC, #15, was delivered to the Connecticut Trolley Museum in 2013 for restoration and display.  One of the Shaker Heights cars has been restored by the Minnesota Transportation Museum, which operates it on a short stretch of track in western Minneapolis.
  In 2005, eight PCCs were given to the City of Bayonne to be rehabilitated and operated along a proposed 2.5-mile (4 km) loop to serve the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor, formerly Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne (MOTBY). The proposed line would be connected to the 34th Street station of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail.
  On September 4, 2004, Broad Street Station was renamed Military Park Station, to avoid confusion with the termina
caption: Newark City Subway at the Franklin Ave. Station, 1965
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