Ralph Curcio Hopewell Railroad Photos

Here are 42 photos of local train stations and trains, photographed by Ralph Curcio between 1976 and 1999. These are not just photos of the stations in isolation, or of trains on the tracks – they also include untraditional views around the stations, passengers boarding and disembarking trains at the stations, and freight trains as well. Most are from around the Hopewell train station, with others in Pennington and the switching area north of the Pennington station.

== See all the Ralph Curcio railroad photos in the Hopewell Photography Gallery ==

Ralph Curcio (1949 – 2012) was an avid transportation and photography enthusiast who took some 10,000 photos of trains and trolleys. Curcio was a Lawrence resident who spent his entire career at The Times of Trenton, working his way over four decades from librarian and copy editor to editor of the community page.

This Hopewell collection was assembled and donated by Daniel McFadden, Curcio’s longtime friend, who took over his impressive photographic collection and has been scanning and sharing the images around the region. For example, the New York Transit Museum’s Ralph Curcio collection contains over 2,500 images. McFadden is continuing to look for Hopewell area material to share.

Selected Images

These are a few of the images from the collection, illustrating changes to the area stations and tracks over the years.

Aug. 1976 – Passengers at the Hopewell station ready to board the morning train to New York.

The train had three cars, marked as Reading Company, and the railroad was still using two tracks, separating passenger and freight service (with a third siding at the station).

Aug. 1976 – View looking through the waiting room of the Hopewell station, from the track side looking out into the parking area.

This is currently our only image of the interior of the station in operation.

Aug. 1981 – Passengers from New York disembarking at the Hopewell station. (Is there some better, less pretentious term than ” disembarking”?)

The train has two cars and a separate engine.

Viewed from the bridge, the station area is looking more run down, including the freight shed past the station and the passenger shed across the tracks.

Aug. 1981 – View of the Pennington station, looking up from the tracks.

The station seems to be in reasonably good shape, although the grounds could use some trimming.

April 1982 – A passenger train passing the Glenmoore switching equipment building, which was along the tracks north of Pennington, to the east of Route 31, roughly half way up to Route 654 to Hopewell (i.e., across from Woosamonsa Road).

This area had sidings to serve local businesses, including the still-standing overpass bridge to the Trap Rock quarry.

March 1999 – A Conrail freight train passing the Hopewell station. The railbed is reduced to a single track.

The building reconstruction is underway, with scaffolding on the front. (The windows were previously boarded up but painted with a window design.)

Missing Photos

These wonderful photos help to document the historical use of our train stations, but there are large gaps, especially:

Photos of the interior of the Hopewell or Pennington stations, especially while they were in full use.
Photos around the Pennington station complex, and the switching area north of the station.
Photos of these areas from the 1920s to 1960s, and into the 1980s.

Does anybody have – or know of – these kinds of photos to share?

More on the Ralph Curcio Railroad Photos

The new Hopewell Photography Gallery currently contains these images from Ralph Curcio, plus photographs by Gary Saretzky (see earlier post).

== See the Hopewell Photography Collections brief (PDF) for more on these photographers and their collections, including descriptions of each of the Curcio photos ==

== See all the Ralph Curcio railroad photos in the Hopewell Photography Gallery ==

More on Hopewell Railroads

Two railroads were built in the 1870s to connect Philadelphia and New York by travelling up from the Delaware River, through Pennington and Hopewell, and then north towards New York. The Mercer and Somerset opened in 1874, but was shut down in 1880. The Delaware and Bound Brook opened in 1876, and is the predecessor of the line that still runs through the area.

Hopewell Valley Railroad Lines