This came up in a discussion elsewhere, figured someone here might know. Someone asked how the Long Island Railroad got its engines back in the steam days. They asked about the PRR engines post them buying the LIRR, but there also is the question about what the LIRR did before that to get the engines to Long Island. I would assume prior to the PRR buyout and the building of the tunnels under Manhattan and the Hell Gate Bridge that the only way to bring them in would be to float them on a ferry or bring the components in and build them locally (though maybe I am missing something), but how did it work post the PRR buying them? Did they have rights to use New Haven tracks and bring it across the poughkeepsie bridge/NH/Hell Gate? Did they use somehow the Hudson River and East River tubes, whether under power or being towed? Did they ferry it from Jersey City to the Float docks in Brooklyn, or across the Sound to Greenport (they had a ferry operation there when the LIRR tried to be a prime route to Boston I believe).
Yeah, you'd think we'd see pics of K4s and G5s on the carfloats at Bay Ridge -- or if they ran thru Penn Station you'd think we'd see pics at Sunnyside or on the Jersey Meadows. But I never have.
Don't think you're missing anything about pre-1910 LIRR -- all its engines and cars had to be floated to it.
I've always wondered how many pieces of isolated carfloat-only trackage existed in Queens and Brooklyn in, say, 1940.
Przobably around eight or ten. One was the Lackawanna's. which electrified with one 600V DC box motor (or steeplecab?), photo was on a thread several years ago) and power provided by a BMT poer-house for its Williamsburg Bridge rapid-transit line and streetcars. CNJ had one, where the first commercial deisel-electric (box cab, 1000) operated. Then there was Eastern Brooklyn District Terminal, with its 0-4-0Ts, the last steam in Brooklyn. And the Navy Yard.
Remember that the route taken by the Big Engine to the World's Fair (involving BelDel-L&HR-New Haven) wound up connecting to the Long Island. Hard to think of much that would be longer, or heavier, than that...
Much of that route was used for the Federal service before the Hell Gate connection was complete but as I recall there was a history of water connection before the years of that 'runaround' (and I have to wonder if a carfloat service adequate for that train would not have been able to handle any engine that wouldn't 'fit' through the Hudson and East River tunnels.)
I'd think that one of the more direct routes from Baldwin would be to the PRR facility in New Jersey (Greenville after 1904) with lightering across perhaps to Bay Ridge, which had heavy capacity. I can't find the picture of the ATSF 4-8-4s on lighters going around the tunnel restrictions in Baltimore, but someone like Mike surely can; those engines were substantially larger than anything LIRR would have been concerned with, and even if those barges were purpose-built just for such orders it would not be difficult to bring them coastwise north.
I think 'bill has identified most of the special possibilities - it may be worthwhile thinking about how engines built in Paterson would have been routed for delivery. I'm embarrassed to say that as one of the great proponents of an Orient Point Bridge, I didn't even consider Greenport as a possible point of entry for engines built in New England, although I now see no good reason why it shouldn't have been...
I'd also assume that once the PRR's Hudson River tunnels were built steam locomotives going to the LIRR could have been pulled "dead-in-tow" through the tunnels to Sunnyside Yard for delivery to the LIRR.
Before the tunnels? Certainly, they'd have to have been barged over.
How did locomotives built in Paterson NJ get to the nearest railhead? Well, as crazy as it sounds, they were pulled by horses to the nearest rails!
Until they got too big. That was the end of Paterson as a birthplace for locomotives. Danforth and Cooke, Grant, and Rogers, all gone by 1905, although Grant was the first to go due to a catastrophic fire in 1885.
Flintlock76I'd also assume that once the PRR's Hudson River tunnels were built steam locomotives going to the LIRR could have been pulled "dead-in-tow" through the tunnels to Sunnyside Yard for delivery to the LIRR.
You do know the first train through the Hudson tunnels was steam-hauled, right?
Miningman This locomotive built in 1838 and the only one constructed by the Works was shipped by sloop to Brooklyn…
No particular surprise there ... there would be no railroad south from Poughkeepsie for over a decade more!
That is the only mention of a 'water-level-route' delivery in the article, and a reminder that the Baldwin locomotives too must've sailed from Philadelphia
Overmod Flintlock76 I'd also assume that once the PRR's Hudson River tunnels were built steam locomotives going to the LIRR could have been pulled "dead-in-tow" through the tunnels to Sunnyside Yard for delivery to the LIRR. You do know the first train through the Hudson tunnels was steam-hauled, right?
Flintlock76 I'd also assume that once the PRR's Hudson River tunnels were built steam locomotives going to the LIRR could have been pulled "dead-in-tow" through the tunnels to Sunnyside Yard for delivery to the LIRR.
No! That surprises the hell out of me! I'd suppose the electrical system wasn't up yet.
I wonder how long that steam crew could hold their breath?
It was in one of those early-PRR books -- if I recall correctly, by Fred Westing. In fact, I think the same one in which he reports some of the longpdistance feats recorded by some PRR crews around the turn of the 20th Century -- one of which was something in excess of 36 miles with a train without the fireman touching a scoop. This might have made a 'through' pass even with the ascending grade in the bore less awful than it would have been in, say, a comparable tunnel with a Rio Grande L-105!
To say nothing of a pre-"cab forward" Southern Pacific crew going through their tunnels and snow-sheds!
We were talking about steam on the Lawn Gyland Railroad?
Check this out. Steam, and a little bit more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J07JIZ0Xkpw
I believe the first and only steam train through Penn Station was an inspection train for PRR officials, and had an Atlantic and one coach. Easy enlough to build up enough steam to run through both tunnels to Long Island City or Sunnyside without firing.
And it is not clear the train returned the same way. The equipment may have been brought back by carfloat or even remained as LIRR equipent.
i am quite certain new LIRR locomotives were delivered mostly by car-float. Even before PRR assumed control of the LIRR, the PRR and other railroads already had freight interchange with the LIRR by car-float. The line to Bay Ridge was originally part of the narrow-gauge Manhattan Beach Railroad. When the LIRR got it, around 1875, it was standard-gauged, and interline freight service followewd.
The branch to Manhattan Beach paralleled the Brighton Line, currently the B and Q, and even at the end shared the embankment, whcih was six-tracks wide, not four as at present. Some evidence of this still exists in the concrete of underpasses. This six-track RoW existed only on the embankment, the Brighton llline north of Avenue H, where it crosses over the Bay Ridge freight line, is in a cut, four-tracks wide.
daveklepperAnd it is not clear the train returned the same way.
My source was one of the Westing books, as I recall, and he did not say it went back across the way it had come over! I mentioned it only as an arresting example of truth too strange to be believable fiction.
Thank you for bringing up the subject. It is an important and interesting fact.
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