Riding the Acela & Shooting at Newark Penn Station

I had to head to New Jersey for the day for work on Tuesday the 15th, and since my employer canceled the air shuttle between Groton and Morristown, NJ, I figured the Acela was my best bet for travel. A bit shorter than driving down there, and a bunch easier – I didn’t have to drive for 2:45 of the trip. So I booked a seat on trains 2151 and 2172 between New London, CT and Newark Penn Station in NJ. From Newark, it was a short drive to Peapack, so I got a rental car for that portion. And of course my camera bag went for the ride with me.

The ride on the Acela was superb. Quiet, pretty smooth, and the real plus – 110V outlets at your seats, so I could run my laptop the entire way! Passed quite a few trains in both directions – including Shore Line East, Amtrak, Metro North, CSX and the Providence & Worcester (we met CT-2 just west of New Haven at about 8:20PM). But I think it was well worth it, and much better than driving the entire 3.5 hours from home. As things turned out, I also had about an hour and a half at Newark Penn Station in the evening before my train got there (I wanted to make sure I got there in time – I wasn’t sure of the traffic situation in downtown Newark at that time of day). In that 90 minutes, I saw a good 25 trains – and photographed quite a few of them. And as a side note, I had not one issue with any Amtrak or NJT employee, or any issues with security while taking photos on the platforms of Newark Penn Station. And the security presence was quite obvious, both on the Acela and in the station (even had what I assume to be an explosives sniffing dog board in New Haven on the way down). A good thing to see – even better that they apparently didn’t have a problem with me taking photos.

OK, here’s the photos. They’re pretty much in chronological order, except for the first one – that should be down lower in the pack, but I forgot to upload it in order, so it’s there first. Each one has a caption on it, so you can see where it was taken.

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Thanks for looking!
Tom