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The sun actually came out on my way to work this morning!
Yep, the sun actually made it's appearance shortly after I got on the road at 6 AM. That meant I could actually see the bay from the Belt Parkway and the Verazano Bridge. It was a beautiful sight to actually see a few ships on the water for a change. Unfortunately one can't see the Bay Ridge carfloat aprons from the bridge or even from the adjoining Brooklyn Queens Expressway but you can't have verything.
I reread my copy of the book on the New York Connecting Railroad over the weekend and rediscovered a few things that seemed to have escaped me since the first time I read it in September 2008. Here are some of those facts.
Car floats during the period 1917 - 1960 carried 19 40 foot boxcars. Of course capacities were reduced when box cars grew to 50 feet in length. So how big were the carfloats? it seems most were around 290 feet in length. Some were shorter but there wer some that were longer as well. Most tug boats towed two of those carfloats and that would have made trains of 38 cars, though many were longer.
Most steam locomotives pulled trains to Bay Ridge over two sections of track: The first section seems to have originated at Oak Point Yard in the Bronx and run over the Hell Gate Bridge to Maspeth Yard in Queens. There may have been some interchange of cars there but that isn't clear from what I've read. The second section of track ran from Maspeth Yard to 65th Street Yard near the carfloat aprons. The difference was in who owned the tracks. The New York Connecting Rail Road owned the tracks from Oak Point Yard to Maspeth. The Long Island Railroad owned the tracks from there to 65th Street Yard and up to 1924 ran passenger service along them as well as freight.
Steam locomotives ran in the normal direction to 65th Street Yard but ran tender first on the way back because there were no facilities to turn them until they got to Maspeth Yard.
The etire line from Oak Point to 65th Street Yard was once srved by electric locomotives while the Catenary was still standing between 1933 and 1958 or so.
The entire line frm 65th Street Yard in Bay Ridge Brooklyn through to Oak Point Yard in hte Bronx is approximately 21 miles in length. In effect one coud actually model this line with no compression in about 268 feet of space. Of course, you'd need a pretty big asement to do it in but it is possible.
Today what was once the New York Connecting Railroad (the tracks between Maspeth Yard and Oak Point Yard) is owned by CSX. Amtrak ownsthe tracks that run from Penn Station across the Hell Gate Bridge as part of the Northeast Corridor, This, too, was once part of the New York Connecting Railroad.
Car float service is no where near the levels it was at even in 1960 since there are at most one or two crossings of the river from Greenville Yard in New Jersey. These do not use Bay Ridge as a terminus. They do dock at the floatbridge at what was once New York Army Terminal. This is the only float bridge in operation along the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront today. One should however realize that there were many more such operations along this waterfront in bygone days.
The floatbridges in Long Island City are no longer used but have been converted into a park. The float bridge suports still bear the Long Island name they always have but they are no longer operational as most of the track in the area has been ripped up or paved over. One can still sometimes see them when pot holes become common in the Winter.
Irv
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Irv,
Great Post. I'm especially interested in this:
I sthere a good source for pics or video of these operations? While I am running full steam ahead for my n-scale switching layout, I am also really intrigues by doing a full scale version of the E-L's Harlem Station as a modern (1980s-1990s) switching layout.
In any event, thanks for all the great stuff. Any chance you have some pics of your modeling to post?
Philip H.
Chief Everything Officer
Baton Rouge Southern Railroad, Mount Rainier Div.
I have photos but they are copyrighted materials so I am leery of posting them. However you will find some photos the Morning Sun books by Flagg on the Port of New York and in Brooklyn's Waterfront Railroads which is no longer in print. You'll also find some stuff on this in Transfer that was published by the Pennsylvania Railroad Historical Society.
Irv
Hey Phil-
Phil Goldstein maintains a GREAT website that is all about carfloat and terminal railroads in New York. Here is the link (if you haven't seen it already). Really thorough and makes for an interesting read.
My Blog: The
Hoboken ShoreTerminal Railroad Comes to Connecticut
Just so the correct information is out there-
The float bridge currently in use by New York New Jersey Rail (successor to NY Cross Harbor, NYD, PC, PRR) are actually located a the former Bush Terminal Location in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn (adjacent to Bay Ridge Brooklyn). The float bridges you mention Irv, are adjacent to the former Army Terminal at the 65th St Yard (interchange with NY & Atlantic RR) and were built in the 1999, and have never been used - They cannot handle Plate C or large cars commonly used today. These were built at the location of the site of the former PC/NH-LIRR NY Conencting float bridges. Also, as a point of detail, the float bridge that preceeded the unused "new" bridges (because the original bridges were dismantled in 1970) was originally placed in service by the NYD in 1981, and was taken from the Erie's W28 St. Terminal. This info ican be found, among other places, in Tom Flagg's NY Harbor books for those of you who want to look up actual dates and info. Here is another great source of accurate info - http://www.trainweb.org/AbandonedLIRR/NYCH.htm
Also, you mention Transfer as a source of info. Transfer WAS the official journal of the Rail-Marine Interest Group (RMIG) and NOT the PRRT&HS. Transfer back issues can be gotten here - http://www.trainweb.org/rmig/, and back issues of the PRRT&HS journal, the Keystone, can be gotten here - http://www.prrths.com/Keystone/PRR_Keystones.html, though the back issues containing a wealth of PRR NY Harbor info are long out of print.
RAH
Ralph Heiss
South Plainfield, NJ
"Genius is not so much about new ideas as it is about clarity of ideas. Two people can have the same idea yet it will be genius in the one and mediocrity in the other." - Kevin Solway
Modeling the LVRR and CNJ in Jersey City, NJ circa 1951
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LVHTRyTHS/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/railmarineops/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LCL_Ops_Modeling/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steameraweathering/
Thanks for making these necessay corrections. It is often difficult to [rovide information with an imperfect memory when your refernce material is several miles from where I happen to writing a response.
Irv
That's what I'm here for ; ^ )
My info sources are 25 miles away, too, but that's what the internet is good for (most of the time), and having read and re-read the same books over, and over, and over again......It sinks in after a while.
RAH
Ralph Heiss
South Plainfield, NJ
"Genius is not so much about new ideas as it is about clarity of ideas. Two people can have the same idea yet it will be genius in the one and mediocrity in the other." - Kevin Solway
Modeling the LVRR and CNJ in Jersey City, NJ circa 1951
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LVHTRyTHS/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/railmarineops/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LCL_Ops_Modeling/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steameraweathering/
You've been working at this longer than I have so you should have read all this stuff more times than me. But I still have a number if questions that aren't clearly answered by any of my references.
However, to create a practical layout I have to make certain assumptions. One of those is that the float bridges located at the 65th Street Yard would have been updated to handle all or most of teh currently used freight cars. Of course certain problems could still exists such as how to handle double-stack container cars which may not be loaded to capacity due to the tunnel limitations leading to and from Greenville Yard along the Northeast Corridor. I am not sure how this would be handled other than to load these cars with only a container in the lower position.
Another consideration has to do with Maspeth Yard. Currently the New York and Atlantic handles all railorad freight traffic to and from Nassau and Suffolk Counties. There is also some freight activity that is handled by MTA locomotives in Brooklyn and Queens. There used to be many more users of train traffic in the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens than currently but most of these tracks cross roads in these two Boroughs that used to have crossing gates and booths for the attandants of gates back in the 1960s. Most of those businesses are gone but some still exist and certainly the buildings that housed them still exist and can readily be seen from Grand Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue near Flushing Avenue. Not much freight travels on these tracks but there is obviously still enough to create traffic jams when a lcal freight drag goes through. Unfortunately I haven't et located a map of these tracks. One must exist somewhere but I am not sure where at this point. Finding such a map would certain give me an idea of what I could include as far as traffic is concerned.
Any help I can get on this would certainly be appreciated.
Irv
Regarding your question about stack cars on floats, Irv. I'm wondering if they would even put stacks on a car float , or would they just trans load the containers to chasis and bring them in by truck?
I was wondering the same thing...seems like a lot of work just to go 30 miles or so, even in traffic on the Van Wyck!
My Blog: The
Hoboken ShoreTerminal Railroad Comes to Connecticut
I think one needs to look at the reason why car floats existed to begin with and that is to send trafic by the shortest route between two points. Remember that the reason why the New Yrk Connecting Railroad was built so that traffic could go from Greenville yard and points west across the harbor to points north and east. Thus would it really pay to load containers carried on stack cars to trucks, transport them from Newark, NJ to the Bronx by truck and then reload them on other stack cars for ship to points north and east? Remember that each container woudl need to be put on separate truck and each would require a union driver and fule to reach the ultimate destination. So the distance involved would be more than 30 miles.
Irv