The Barclay Street Ferry

In my formative years, I especially liked taking the Erie from Arlington to Pavonia, where I'd take the ferry to New York.

Even before the merger of the Erie & Lackawanna, as early as December, 1956 (I am told by Donald Kern that it started with the distance trains, followed by all but the Northern Branch and N.Y.S.&W. by the end of 1957), the Erie had started to funnel trains into the Hoboken Terminal and to combine ferry services. That's how I started using the Barclay Street ferry.

If you bought a train ticket or a one-way at the station, you could still buy through passage to New York. However, since your ticket would be lifted (as was not the case with the commutation tickets), they had to give you another ticket to let the ferry ticket taker know that you had already paid for your passage.

After boarding, you could look at the other E-L ferries berthed at neighboring slips.

When the captain sounded the horn, it was enjoyable to go to the stern and watch the wake as you left the Hoboken Terminal.

About 10 minutes later, after scooting around some of the famous ocean liners that were still in use in those days, the ferry would arrive at Barclay Street, very close to the present location of the World Trade Center. In fact, one of the joys of commuting this way was watching the excavation for the WTC's basements. Painting the sign at a ferry terminal isn't an easy job, so rather than paint the whole thing again, they changed LACKAWANNA R.R. to LACKAWANNA-ERIE. While that wasn't the official name of the merged railroad, it was cheaper than painting the whole sign.