Kids hop aboard new effort to save decaying train station

NorthJersey.com ^ | Sunday, March 16, 2008 | JENNIFER H. CUNNINGHAM

[Coleus]

The Easter Bunny came to the rescue of a battered Hawthorne train station that's more than a century old this weekend. More than 1,600 parents and children packed a seven-car NJ Transit train Saturday for a ride on the "Easter Bunny Train." The bunny, along with Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat and Snoopy the Dog, visited with children during the 90-minute ride from the Glen Rock-Boro Hall Train Station to Suffern, N.Y., and back again. The train made three trips. The tickets cost $9 for children and $13 for everyone else. The proceeds from the sold-out train rides will go to preserving an old New York, Susquehanna & Western Railway train station on Royal Avenue in Hawthorne.

"It's a service to the community," said Craig Hartman, president of the Volunteer Railroaders Association, which sponsored the event. "It's also a way for us to raise money for important projects." The Hawthorne train station, a two-room, one-story, street-level wooden structure with a damaged roof and peeling brown and cream paint, formerly served as a ticket office and freight depot at Diamond Bridge and Royal avenues. Now, the station is the Railroaders' headquarters and their train memorabilia repository. Kasey Smith, a former Susquehanna railroad worker and the chairman of the Railroaders' Easter Bunny train rides, said the association hopes to one day turn the station into a railroad museum.

Hartman said it's important to preserve pieces of North Jersey history. "When we ignore or trivialize our history, we lose what we were," Hartman said. "It's important to have a portion of their roots and their past guiding them." Over the years, the Royal Avenue roadway encroached onto the station, resulting in passing trucks scraping the station's roof, which now overhangs the street. The trucks already have ripped a small part of the roof.

The association wants to move the station away from the road and restore it. It estimates the project could cost as much as $72,000. The Railroaders have managed to raise about half of the expected costs. "This little building has been sitting on this corner for almost 110 years," Smith said. "While we hate to move it off the corner, its very existence is jeopardized."

Back on the Easter Bunny train, each child received a stuffed Easter Bunny, a plastic Easter egg filled with candy and a railroad-safety coloring book. Parents said they supported the Railroaders plans to preserve and restore the train station. "I think it's great that they're trying to preserve a piece of history," said Debbie Stessel, 46, of Pequannock, who brought her daughter, Samantha, 4.

[Swanks]

Grew up 2 mi. from the station. Know it well. But keep in mind this P-O-S**t newspaper's role is to keep Jersians dumb and stupid w/stories like this while the pols rape and pillage right under their collective noses.

Can they run a story about NJ being $70B in dept in employee pension funds? Hell no; can have that; too many people if they knew would leave this laughing stock of the nation.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Can they run a story about NJ being $70B in dept in employee pension funds? Hell no; can have that; too many people if they knew would leave this laughing stock of the nation.

Grew up in Oakland many years ago, and the papers up there are pretty bad. However I tend not to agree with the idea of criticizing a story for what it is not about.

[Swanks]

Funny. Grew up in Hawthorne then moved to Oakland...

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Grew up on Iroquois Avenue in the Ramapo Mountain Lakes Development. A couple of years ago they tore down all of the post WWII Cape Cods and replaced them with great big Colonials that use larger lots than the original home.