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