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Main Line (NJ Transit)

New Jersey Transit line

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ6736006 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Main Line (or Erie Main Line) is a commuter rail line owned and operated by New Jersey Transit running from Suffern, New York to Hoboken, New Jersey, in the United States. It runs daily commuter service and was once the north–south main line of the Erie Railroad. It is colored yellow on NJ Transit system maps, and its symbol is a water wheel.

The Bergen County Line splits off the Main Line just west of the Secaucus Junction transfer station and rejoins it at Ridgewood. Trains on both lines are push-pull, powered by diesel locomotives (ordinarily on the west end of the train). These include not only the GP40PH-2s, F40PH locos, GP40FH-2s, and PL42AC locos but it also includes the dual mode ALP-45DP locomotives too, and consists range from Comet V cars to Multilevel Coaches while some trains may also use Comet IIM or IV cars on rare occasions.

History

The Erie Railroad's main line ran from Jersey City to Chicago via Binghamton and Jamestown, New York, Akron and Marion, Ohio, and Huntington, Indiana, with branches to Buffalo, Cleveland, and Dayton. The section in New Jersey and lower New York State saw frequent commuter service to the waterfront Pavonia Terminal, Jersey City, with connections to the Pavonia Ferry to Lower Manhattan.

The Erie Railroad's major long-distance passenger trains to Chicago, the Atlantic Express and Pacific Express, the Erie Limited, and the Lake Cities, ran along this section, through Passaic, Paterson, Ridgewood, on to Port Jervis, northwest to Binghamton, New York State's Southern Tier, Jamestown, and west to Chicago. The final long-distance train along this route was the Atlantic Express and Pacific Express in 1965.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Main Line (NJ Transit)” as new Jersey Transit line. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Main, Line and Transit.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Main, Line and Transit providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Main Line (NJ Transit)”, the useful work is to connect “new Jersey Transit line” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6736006. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1965.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Main Line (NJ Transit) primary sources, Main Line (NJ Transit) archive and Main research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Main Line (NJ Transit)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.