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The Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal in Jersey City was one of five passenger railroad terminals on the Hudson Waterfront during the 1800s to 1900s. Hoboken is the only one of the five still in use today.  The Jersey City, or Communipaw, terminal was built in 1889 and operated through 1967.

A friend and I attended a Park historian presentation on the Blue Comet. The Blue Comet was a luxury passenger train at affordable prices. It operated between 1929 and 1941 from the Jersey City terminal to Atlantic City.

In those days, Atlantic City with its beach and boardwalk was a fashionable vacation destination. The Blue Comet offered passengers the opportunity to travel in a reserved seat with amenities at regular open seating prices. Putting an experience normally reserved for the wealthy within reach of the average person made the line successful initially.

But after the country was plunged into the Great Depression, business dwindled.  The schedule was reduced to one round trip per day by 1933.

Though the Blue Comet did not have a long run, its memory has endured. Thanks to the Central Railroad of NJ’s clever advertising, the train had a following that persisted as time passed. The historian showed us a clip from The Sopranos episode where one of the mobsters gets into an altercation over the last Blue Comet in a model train store.

Location: 1 Audrey Zapp Dr, Jersey City, NJ 07305

Designation: State Park, NRHP

Date designation declared: 9/12/1975 NRHP

Date of my visit: 10/23/2019

And the tie-in to today’s WordPress prompt, ‘Song’, is the song that played on the credits of The Blue Comet Sopranos episode, Running Wild by Tindersticks: