(The following article by Jennifer Moroz was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on October 28.)
TRENTON, N.J. — Chris Fralic knows what it’s like for the masses commuting in and out of Manhattan by train.
He was among them once. And come Monday, he will reluctantly rejoin their ranks, pushing and jostling in Penn Station after work to find a seat on the train home.
For two years, Fralic, a vice president of business development for an Internet start-up, has been spared the crush as a member of a long-standing but little-known group called the 200 Club. He and about 75 other commuters lease a car attached to an Amtrak Clocker train – one car into Manhattan in the morning and one leaving the city in the evening.
In a world that is often standing room only, the club has offered a guaranteed seat in comfort. And today it makes its last run, leaving only a few others like it in the country.
Tonight, Amtrak is pulling the plug on the Clocker, established by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1950s to provide hourly service between Philadelphia and New York.
“I’ll miss it,” Fralic, of New Hope, said Wednesday morning on the ride from Trenton to New York. “I think everybody will have to adjust.”
For members, most of whom climb aboard in Princeton Junction, N.J., tonight’s run will be their last hurrah before they join the hordes on NJ Transit, which is stepping in to replace the Clocker service in the busy Trenton-to-New York corridor.
For 22 years, NJ Transit has paid Amtrak to carry some of its New York-bound customers because the state-run railroad did not have the capacity. But with new equipment and extra seating, the transit agency can carry those customers itself – saving $6 million a year in payments to Amtrak.
The switch will be a blow to regular riders, who have enjoyed Amtrak’s wider seats and ample leg room for NJ Transit’s much cheaper prices. (For travel from Trenton to New York, an NJ Transit monthly rail pass costs $320; a one-way fare for the trip on the Clocker costs $45)
Railroad history will take an even bigger hit. The passing of the 200 Club, a more than 50-year tradition, will leave only a commuter club in the Chicago area and one on NJ Transit’s North Jersey Coast Line, said Bill Vantuono, the Coast Line club’s president and editor of Railway Age Magazine.
Once commonplace, “the commuter clubs started to disappear when commuter rail lines were turned over to state or regional transit agencies… mostly in the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Vantuono said.
His Jersey Shore Commuters Club was grandfathered in when NJ Transit took over the Coast Line, agency spokesman Dan Stessel said. The 37-member club pays the agency $56,000 a year to lease half a car that has been converted to include Amtrak-style seating and tables.
In an effort to save the 200 Club, its leaders also tried to forge an agreement with NJ Transit. But “given capacity constraints and equipment issues,” Stessel said, “we were unable to accommodate them.”
“This is a sad day,” said John Devlin, 60, of Washington Crossing, Pa., an investment banker and 200 Club member since 1990. “For the extra money you pay, it just makes the commute less hectic. When you get to work in the morning, you’re ready to perform, and when you get home at night, you’re relaxed.”
While club members seem to have taken a vow of silence about the cost of joining, one let it slip that a full-time member paid $1,200 a year on top of the cost of an NJ Transit monthly pass.
Members do not get fancy service for their money, just conductors who politely tell other riders drawn by the vision of empty seats: “Sorry, this is a private car.” And the club car isn’t anything opulent – just regular Amtrak stock.
But some members say their dues have bought a whole lot more than a guaranteed seat.
“We’ve made friends,” said Eva-Marie Davis of West Windsor, N.J., president of a title insurance company and a club member for about 10 years. “We get together after work. We know each other’s families. We help each other out.”
“Look at you. You’re making me teary-eyed,” said Mary Rotondi of Robbinsville, N.J., who sits beside Davis regularly.
There have been some good times on this club car, to be sure. The Christmas parties, which new members organized as a rite of initiation. Friday night rides with beer and popcorn. Devlin even remembers hitting golf balls off the back of the car.
Still, it was nothing like the old days. Once, there were porters and food service, men smoking and playing cards.
Most of the perks were lost after Amtrak was formed and took over operations of the Penn Central’s passenger service in 1971. New regulations prohibited the government-subsidized railroad from providing private cars with services unavailable to other passengers, said B. Grant Fraser of Princeton, the club president and a member since the early ’80s.
The club – named for the number of a train on which members once rode – may not be what it used to be, but there is still demand for what Fraser called “paying a little extra for a little different service.”
And he is still thinking of ways to keep that service alive. Fraser said he was talking with Amtrak in hopes of hooking up a club car on a different service.
Davis would love for the club to continue, but isn’t holding her breath.
She has a different plan to keep the club together. She hopes to get some members to ride NJ Transit en masse.
“If we make enough noise,” she said, “no one will come to our car and we can have our own car again!”