Photo of the Day: Demarest Railroad Depot

I’m a sucker not just for railroads but also for the stations that once dotted their lines. Thisparticular station, in Demarest, N.J., several miles north of where I live, was considered “the handsomest of the line” on the Northern Railroad of New Jersey. Until my (very) early childhood, in the early 1960s, passenger trains stopped here.

My area needs another rail link to New York very, very badly. In the last few years, transportation planners and government officials have, variously, tied themselves in knots or (in the case of Gov. Chris Christie) badly fumbled the ball on this issue. I rue the years when this country made our passenger trains economically unfeasible. We have lost something environmentally useful and—in the case of this depot—aesthetically pleasing in the process.