"Naked City" 1958-1960

[Flintlock76]

Overmod

Something that makes little sense to people today was that you couldn't see action easily from 'the Jersey side' -- there was too much haze and smoke in the air.  Crossing the George Washington Bridge, it was unusual to see as far down as the Fifties.  Exactly twice I remember seeing the Statue of Liberty sticking up in the distance... now of course you can easily see as far south as the bridge at the Narrows. 

Which is one of the things that annoys me when some nowadays howl about pollution and how it's destroying the planet.  They have NO idea what it was like years ago!  They have no idea what real air pollution looks like.

Just to give everyone an idea of what Overmod and I are talking about, here's a recently done railfan video shot in Rutherford NJ with the camera pointing towards New York City.  Go wide-screen for a view of the city in the background.  NO WAY would you have been able to have a view like that in 1970!  The smog wouldn't have allowed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2P8HJ9bs-A&t=10s  

[Overmod]

The West Side line was also the freight connection from 'upstate' via the NYC, and as late as the Sixties very long and heavy trains with multiple units were handled at reasonably high speed that way.  I remember being in a cab on the West Side Highway and seeing a consist headed by a FA burst out of the tunnel at very nearly the speed we were going...

I'm also old enough to remember seeing a switcher with one of the wagon-wheel radio antennas switching at the A. Salmon & Sons Wholesale Meats sign -- it made no sense to me then that they weren't in the seafood business.

When I was born the yard on the Hudson at the fifties was still enormous and well-populated, including some of the rebuilt-power rarities.  By the time I was old enough to see over the considerable railings... much of the fun was already gone.  Something that makes little sense to people today was that you couldn't see action easily from 'the Jersey side' -- there was too much haze and smoke in the air.  Crossing the George Washington Bridge, it was unusual to see as far down as the Fifties.  Exactly twice I remember seeing the Statue of Liberty sticking up in the distance... now of course you can easily see as far south as the bridge at the Narrows. 

The New York Connecting Railroad was originally built as a connection around to Bay Ridge yard, where of course ongoing traffic was all lightered across to go west and south.  The connection to New York Penn Station was only a 'branch' in the original descriptions, and only later was the map revised to have the 'principal route' go west across Manhattan instead of south past a raft of interesting connections.  PRR actually at one point tried passenger service to piers near Bay Ridge that could accelerate access to transatlantic liners: first the Depression, then political changes in Germany put the kibosh on the idea before PRR really figured out the most expedient routing.  Had the Staten Island tunnel(s) at the Narrows been finished in the 1920s, we might have seen interesting passenger action from a number of railroads to those piers...  

Even then, the only non-passenger crossing was as far north as Poughkeepsie... and that had a hard speed limit on it with pieces chronically falling off; when that was closed circa 1970, a great deal of interesting Eastern/New England railroading changed or ended -- mostly the latter.  The Smith bridge of the Castleton Cutoff was the first real crossing... and you had the Berkshires to the east if you didn't make your way down, down, down to what is now the River Line.

The East River piers were notable because they were not serviced by any sort of connecting railroad trackage; in fact, some didn't have "tracks" at all and took the freight right out of the cars riding the lighters, and sent them back emptied.

The scope of operations on the Jersey side was colossal -- you would never recognize this from what remains.  Look at the area of the Black Tom explosion then, and compare it to today.  A very great deal of that traffic came and went on lighters, some of them traveling a considerable distance.

One of my favorite books when I was about 8 years old was a picture book that represented much of the railroad activity around the New York area "on a particular day in 1949"  (I thought it meant photographers had gone around that day and arranged to photograph all the operations shown!)  If anyone remembers what book this is... let me know.

By the time I was old enough to actually go to the pictured locations myself... most of them were gone.  Looking back, much of the change took place in an astoundingly short period of time...

[Flintlock76]

rcdrye

(Moran was a big player in Manhattan, and is still in the tug business)

I remember showing my parents a Mark 1 Video of New York Harbor activities several years ago and my mother, who's a New York City girl, recognized the Moran tugboats immediately.

"You couldn't get a job with them!" Mom said. (I'm assuming her brothers tried, they were good-paying jobs.)

"You mean unless you knew somebody?"  I asked.

"Right!" she answered.  Probably still the same.

[rcdrye]

Hard as it is to picture it now, New York City had lots of railroad activity in the first half of the 20th century.  Breaking it down by boroughs (and just skimming over - any things missed are my own fault):

Manhattan: New York Central had extensive yards on the West Side, and served many piers via car floats.  Cars were also "floated" to the West Shore at Weehawken.  Balimore and Ohio had a small yard served by a carfloat from Jersey City on the lower west side.  Piers on the East River were also served by car float.  In addition to NYC and B&O, there were piers served by PRR, DL&W, Erie, Central of New Jersey and Lehigh Valley.

The East River had a whole series of small yards with freight houses served by car float, including the one where CRRofNJ 1000, generally considered the first successfull diesel-electric locomotive, was first assigned.  Brooklyn had several small railways serving the dock areas, and Long Island and New Haven received lots of cars by car float.  PRR and Long Island had a lot of freight-only trackage in Queens.  The Bronx had yards served by NYC and NYNH&H.  Staten Island had the B&O-owned Staten Island Rapid Transit.

Car floats came in several varieties.  In addition to the standard float, which could be loaded as either a two track or a three track float, there were "station floats" that were used alongside ocean-going ships.  A "station float" had a center structure at car floor height with or without a roof.  Items like bananas and smaller crates were sorted for loading as they were unloaded from ocean-going ships.  The floats were then moved by either a railroad owned tug, or a contract tug (Moran was a big player in Manhattan, and is still in the tug business) to a local float yard (New York Central), or across to New Jersey.  Most railroad-owned tugs had relatively high pilothouses so the crew could see over the cars on the floats.

All that's left is the float operation from Greenville New Jersey to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, where the New York Dock Railway and the New York and Atlantic (LIRR freight carrier) still handle a few cars.

[NP Eddie]

I recently viewed two Naked City TV shows that were filmed in NYC. One involved a body found by an NYC freight yard. The other one showed a barge with freight cars on its deck bound for New York City.

Assuming that they were head to lower Manhattan, they were probably New York Central? Did other railroads service New York City? Was the the route of the New York Central's high line that the CSX donated to the City of New York?

Ed Burns