Railroad Frequencies in Northern New Jersey Made Simple

[cr8054]

I know that I have received help here with Oakland PD radio so I wanted to give some help to anyone who is new to railroad radio in North Jersey
For CSX:
160.980 Road channel for the River and Trenton Subdivisions. This is where most radio communication is done. Repeaters are in Bogota, NJ and Nyack, NY
160.620 Dispatcher channel for the River and Trenton Subs. This is the channel where important communication such as train orders are given
161.550 Yard channel for North Bergen, South Kearney and Manville Yards. Yardmaster is in South Kearney.
For Conrail Shared Assets:
160.860 Conrail North Jersey Dispatcher. He covers the Northern Branch south of North Bergen, The Passaic and Harsimus Branch and the Lehigh Line to Port Reading Junction in Manville. He also controls the National Docks Branch and part of the Garden State Secondary which was formerly known as the Chemical Coast Secondary until a few years ago.
160.800 Oak Island Yard (Newark)
160.245 Oak Island Hump (Newark)
Norfolk Southern:
161.070 Croxton Yard and Lehigh Line west of Port Reading Junction in Manville.
NYSW:
160.485 All of the Southern Division. Includes the Hudson Secondary from Warwick, NY to the junction with Metro North's Port Jervis Line.
NJTransit
161.400 Hoboken Division
161.235 Newark Division
160.800 Metro North Port Jervis Line Suffern west to Port Jervis

I generally do not listen to Amtrak is they are WAY to chatty. I also keep Oak Island yard locked out unless I am on the Lehigh Line for the same reason,

 

[cr8054]

PS:
Amtrak:
Section A (Penn Station) 161.010
CTEC New Jersey 160.920

 

[Steve162]

"Kearny"
Sorry, I'm from there, it's a pet peeve.

 

[wtp]

as bad as my mail going to hillside NJ and i lived in hillsdale...

 

[cr8054]

"Kearny"
Sorry, I'm from there, it's a pet peeve.

Sorry. I should know better. I worked at South Kearny yard for a couple of weeks in 1998/1999. Its the only place where the track by the yard office was called "The Grape" The one side of the yard there was the "Government Lead". The conductor I worked with was nuts. He would ride the back of a boxcar like he was Jesus Christ all the way from Hack Tower to B Track Waldo which was definitely over one mile. Topps Siding was in the middle of the run. Why he never switched ends there, I will never know. Riding a boxcar over the Hackensack River would frighten the living daylights out of me. Especially on the back of a boxcar. One slip and its all over.

 

[cr8054]

as bad as my mail going to hillside NJ and i lived in hillsdale...

Especially since the two are nowhere near each other. Hillsdale is much nicer too. I love the train station. Supposedly it was a headquarters of the New Jersey and New York Railroad before the Erie gobbled it up.

 

[cr8054]

I forgot to add these two frequencies for the telemetry devices in the locomotives and the rear end markers.
Locomotive to marker 452.9375
Marker to Locomotive 457.9375

These can be helpful to determine if a train is close. However, if you are close to a yard it would be wise to lock these frequencies out as the markers are just left running and pinging away after they are taken off the train. The same is probably true for the locomotives as well.

 

[KC2zZe]

cr8054, a job well done with the information you've provided above. Any chance you could flesh out the list for the area you've covered with relevant maintenance-of-way frequencies and any other interesting specialized channels you could think of? For example, I know along the Port Jervis Line (which bisects my Village), depending on who is doing what, I've heard 161.1600 (by Metro - North RR), 160.4400 (by NJ Transit), and 161.4750 (also by NJ Transit) used.