Kearny Connection

There is precedent for trains from the Morris and Essex lines to route through a connection to a PRR-associated railroad and use its terminal for better access to New York City.

The Morris and Essex Railroad, from the time of its arrival in Newark in 1836 until it established its own depot in Hoboken in 1855, built a junction with the New Jersey Rail Road (the Pennsylvania Railroad's predecessor) in Newark, to get to the NJRR's Paulus Hook terminal in Jersey City and its ferries to Manhattan, although this was to the south of Hoboken rather than to the north.

To be precise, the junction was with the NJRR's Market Street branch, which joined with the NJRR main line in Newark to cross the Passaic on the Center Street Bridge, then through the Bergen Hill Cut to its Paulus Hook terminal in Jersey City.

Nearly all of this has since been removed; the exceptions are tracks for PATH and the P&H through the Bergen Hill Cut, and a small portion of the NJRR mainline east of the former Center Street Bridge (now called the Center Street Branch), but that is now only connected to the M&E albeit further east in Kearny.

[11] The Kearny Connection's popularity and success led to other transportation improvements such as the opening of the Secaucus Junction station seven years later.