Correct, for freight there are two ways in to long Island, via CSX Selkirk / CPrail Saratoga and the Hellgate bridge to NY&A RR on Long Island.
or from New Jersey via car float to Long Island.
Freight does not fit under catenary wire in tunnels leading to New York Pennsylvania station.
todays freight cars exceed the 14' 6" height, but even in years past very little freight has gone tru the tunnels.
more info here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_New_Jersey_Rail,_LLC
A sad story. Some freight did 'sneak' thru the tunnels during WWII. Now that the ex-CNE/NY&NE/NH/CR, et. al., Poughkeepsie bridge is a "Yuppie Walkway", all hope is lost! Too bad the mayor of NYC, having been fired "for cause" by the BRT, and the governor of NY, for personal financial reasons, quashed the B&O/BRT Staten Island-Brooklyn tunnel project in 1925. It was designed for freight, too. The new NJT tunnels are a "Road to Nowhere", terminating in the bowels of Manhattan and not connecting to Penn Station, let alone Grand Central Terminal. More political silliness. Oh, well! It's only tax money! BTW, GCT (Grand Central Station, before 1913) did have freight service to a milk plant at 48th St. (?), way back...
When I worked 'construction' in GCT, we would take excavation debris to Melrose for trans-loading and bring in foundation billets and grillages from the steel erectors fabrication works for our new work. All of this was done at night, of course. Fun times! Thought you might like to know...
Hays
Freight from Flordia if routed on CSX, which has the greatest share of the Florida freight business, would probably be routed north to Selkirk Yard near Albany, then south via the CSX daily train from Selkirk to Fresh Pond Junction in Queens, located at the intersection of the Hell Gate - Bay Ridge freight line (owned by New York Connecting Railroad north of Fresh Pond Junction and the Long Island Railroad south and west of Fresh Pond Junciton but mainly operated by the New Haven and foremerly electrified at 11000V 25Hz AC, the location of the New Haven's ex Virgininian freight locomotives and there previous electric locomotives, now Amtrak north of the junction but maintained by CSX) with the secondary Long Island City - Jamaica line, never electrified, which sees freight service and two rush hour passenger trains each way each weekday, and then turned over to the New York and Atlantic Railroad which is the privately owned freight carrier with rights on all Long Island lines exept into Penn Station from Sunnyside. If Norfolk Southern gets the business, say by interchange from the Florida East Coast at Jacksonville, then it would move to Greenville, New Jersey, via the old B&O-Reading-CNJ-Lehigh Valley route, where it would be switched by a Cross Harbor Railway switcher on to a car float to Bay Ridge, where the Cross Harbor would turn it over to the New York and Atlantic. This car float rout was formely operated by the Pennsy, and Long Island labeled B6 0-c-0 (0-6-0) electric switchers operated the Bay Ridge yard, and Pennsy laveled switchers the Grrenville Yard for both PRR and LV traffic. The CXT train to Fresh Pond does not use the wye at Mott Haven but uses a new connecting track that runs under the Metro North approach to the Harlem River vertical lift bridge, and into the old New Haven Oak Point Yard past the old Willis Avenue location where the Harlem River Shuttle and the New York Westchester and Boston connected with the 2nd and 3rd Avenue el shuttle train to 129th St. Elevated station. Hell Gate Bridge had four electrified tracks, the wester-sourthern two for passenger service and the eastern-northern for freight, with only one freight track in use now, without catenary over this track. In addtion to CSX, CP (D&H) and Providence and Worcester have rights to operate of the bridge to Fresh Pond Junction, the CP with trackage rights south from Schenectady, and the Providence and Worcester on the NE Corridor from New Haven and New London.
In days gone by all railroads serving the NY Harbor area had carfloat operations...the "Maritime Division" as most were called. The NYC brought freight down the east side of the Hudson to the Bronx or the West Side of Manhatten (now also a "yuppie" walkway beyond the Amtrak line to NYP).while also entering the Harbor via the West Shore. Central and NH freight entered LI via the Hell Gate Bridge. Not all NH traffic was from New England as they connected with the L&HR, O&W, Erie, and L&NE at Maybrook (with traffic from LV, CNJ, PRR, DL&W, RDG via connections) taking traffic to Cedar Hill and then to Port Norris in the Bronx then to Fresh Pond Jct with the LIRR. Otherwise it was float barges from NJ terminals to Brooklyn and LIC. NYP proved difficult for many reasons: all kinds of clearance problems, traffic density, and grades down, under and up out of the rivers. Today, Manhatten is not a great terminator or originator of freight, nor is there transloading of ships in Manhatten nor as much in LI's LIC and Brooklyn as was or is in NJ ports today. While there is a freight market on LI itself, it is not as much as was warrented before, say, 1955 or 60.
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This area is complicated and tough to understand without access to a decent rail map, or someone that knows it real well from first-hand knowledge - such as henry6. As a result, it's one area that I'm not as familiar with as I would like to be. It also represents an under-served rail market opportunity, IMHO - as unencumbered by any experience or deep knowledge of the territory, too.
The following links may be helpful, or lead to those that are:
The Cross-Harbor Freight Movement Project's study maps for the 2 'Rail Freight Tunnel Alternatives' at - http://www.crossharborstudy.com/railMap.htm
See also the narrative at - http://www.crossharborstudy.com/addressing.htm
Wikipedia on ''Railroads on Long Island'' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Railroads_on_Long_Island
Wikipedia on ''Hell Gate Bridge'' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_Gate_Bridge
Wikipedia on ''New York Connecting Railroad'' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Connecting_Railroad
Wikipedia on NY&A or 'NYA' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_and_Atlantic_Railway
which has a fair map at - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NY%26A_System_Map.PNG
NY&A 'official' website - has 'thumbnail' map - http://www.anacostia.com/nyar/nyar.html
S. Berliner, III's 'unofficial' NY&A website - also has 'thumbnail' map - apparently last updated circa 2002 - http://home.att.net/~berliner-ultrasonics/nyar.html
Wikipedia on the ''Oak Point Link'' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Point_Link
MTA Long Island Rail Road Map - http://www.mta.info/lirr/html/lirrmap.htm
- Paul North.
Paul_D_North_JrS. Berliner, III's 'unofficial' NY&A website - also has 'thumbnail' map - apparently last updated circa 2002 - http://home.att.net/~berliner-ultrasonics/nyar.html
Interesting to see a serious railroad webpage on Berliner's site - spent way too much time on his RR apocrypha pages (UP Garrett-Boy, UP Bigger Boy, EMD DDP-45, etc.).
Freight is handled so much more efficiently from Elizabeth and other ports via truck into NYC that freight into NYC by tunnel or bridge is just not effective. The yards aren't there and the trucks handle it dandily. The hurdle to Selkirk and back is a big pain in the neck but compared to the alternatives, who knows.
Passenger and Transit, on the other hand, are completely different stories!!
A truck driver stuck in a rush hour traffic jam might dispute the word "efficiently!"
Methinks the railroads would handle the freight more effeciently if there WAS a tunnel or a bridge.
Cool site, Paul! Lots'a "stuff" there.
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