The original electrification went to 30th St. The High Line electrification went to 23rd Street.
But the steam pictures surprised me. I thought the oil-electrics were already in use by 1923. Possibly 1923 was the last year for steam, and thus the photography.
NYC took delivery of several Shays just for west side service in 1923. The GE-IR three-power units were delivered around 1930 after 1928 ALCO-GE-IR prototype 1525 was judged successful. The Shays replaced some of the ordinary rod engines previously in service. NYC surrounded the works with boxy housings, and set up the controls to make them a little easier to run backwards. They were used in 10th avenue street running before the high line was completed.
daveklepper But the steam pictures surprised me. I thought the oil-electrics were already in use by 1923. Possibly 1923 was the last year for steam, and thus the photography.
I think steam engines were on 11th and 10th all through the '20s.
https://picasaweb.google.com/116363262722377355677/NYCentralWestSideRR#5208743231530004226
TRAINS, March 2002
West Side story – The rise and fall of Manhattan’s High Line
By Joe Greenstein
Ghostly silent, an old railroad viaduct still winds its way down Manhattan's West Side. Once a bustling New York Central freight line, it has not seen a train for 20 years, and most New Yorkers barely notice the drab structure. But the "High Line" has sparked an impassioned debate between those who think it is an important historical legacy worth preserving, and those who view it as an ugly impediment to the area's economic growth.
On the one side is Friends of the High Line, a group that would like to see the viaduct transformed into a 1.45-mile elevated park, under the auspices of the railbank conservancy, a federal program that converts unused rail rights-of-way to recreational trails, with the understanding that railroads may someday reclaim them. In opposition to this idea is the Chelsea Property Owners Group, which views the High Line as a colossal white elephant that depresses property values and inhibits commercial development.
Friends co-founder Robert Hammond sees railbanking as the ideal way to preserve this unique vestige of Manhattan's industrial past. Indeed, in view of recent catastrophic events here, the idea of paying homage to the city's transportation history has taken on a new poignancy. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he said. "The High Line was originally built for the public good, and we'd like to see it returned to the public good."
The property owners thinks the public good would best be served by tearing the line down. It contends the structure is a public hazard, as evidenced by falling chunks of concrete and steel that indicate an advanced state of decay.
"Not so," said Debra Frank, a spokesperson for CSX Transportation, which inherited the line in its portion of the 1999 Conrail acquisition. "It was originally designed to hold two fully loaded freight trains at one time," she said, and added that the basic structure is still sound. That conclusion is supported by several engineering studies, including one completed by Conrail in the 1980s.
Outgoing Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had sided with Chelsea property owners, new mayor Mike Bloomberg seems to favor preservation, and Friends is gaining political clout: supporters now include high-profile politicians, architects, artists, and entertainers.
TRAINS TAKE TO THE SKY
The High Line was born in the 1920s to resolve congestion on Manhattan's West Side. Confrontations between burgeoning automobile and truck traffic and street-running freight trains in this warehouse and industrial district were occurring with increasingly disastrous consequences-one local thoroughfare, 11th Avenue, was nicknamed "Death Avenue." Something had to be done.
The solution was to eliminate all the grade crossings by realigning, and in places elevating, New York Central's West Side freight line. Driving this as probably no one else could or would was the autocratic and monomaniacal Robert Moses, public works czar of New York City whose legacy includes over 50 major bridges, tunnels, expressways, and parks.
Moses, hardly a friend of the railroad companies, wanted to build a limited-- access expressway along the Hudson River on Manhattan's West Side. This required an accommodation with the New York Central, and thus was born the West Side Improvement plan.
Though it's likely both Moses and the New York Central viewed the plan as a deal with the devil, it served the purposes of all concerned. The plan called for the complete reconstruction and realignment of the Central's freight-dedicated line extending south into Manhattan from the Water Level Route in the Bronx. Most of the right-of-way passed through Riverside Park, where a new highway was to be built directly above the tracks, which followed the river as far as the Central's 60th Street Yard, then curved inland a few blocks and passed through a new cut.
The elevated portion of the West Side Freight Line, known as the High Line, began at West 35th Street. Here the new alignment turned west, then south, in order to gain enough distance to climb over the Central's 30th Street Yard (now a commuter-car yard for the Long Island Rail Road). The High Line then doubled back east along 30th Street and curved downtown to parallel 10th Avenue. A two-track spur continued east for another half block to reach the U.S. Post Office's Morgan Parcel Post Building.
The High Line's crown jewel was the St. John's Park Terminal, a huge freight house at its southernmost point just above Spring Street. This 800-foot-long, three-story structure had eight railroad tracks with a capacity of 150 freight cars. Fourteen elevators transferred freight down to street-level docks with spaces for 127 trucks. At the south end of the building, a five-ton hoist handled especially heavy loads. Equipped with a sprinkler system, built of concrete, and virtually fireproof, St. John's Park Terminal was state-of-the-art for the era.
Work began in 1925, but the 13-mile project was not completed until 1935. With appropriate fanfare, the High Line was dedicated on June 28, 1934. From that date onward, the railroad ran 14 feet above the city streets.
Some of the High Line's customers had second-story lineside loading docks, while others had spur tracks directly into their buildings. A few large businesses used freight elevators to lift trucks from the street up to track level, to speed unloading of freight cars.
High Line motive power was completely appropriate for a modern urban railroad of the 1930s: NYC's tri-power box-cabs (diesel-electric, third-rail electric, and storage-battery electric).
RELIC OF A FADING ERA
New York Central was the only trunk line with an all-land freight route into New York City. But by the 1960s, it was becoming clear that running freight trains onto the island of Manhattan was a money-losing proposition. The golden age of railroading was at its end, and nowhere was this more evident than in Gotham, where the patterns of commerce were shifting and the price of doing business was soaring. Much of the city was now served entirely by truck. Rail-borne cargo destined to the city was increasingly routed to west-of-Hudson railheads, then trucked in.
Construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center, which opened in 1986, required the realignment of the High Line's ascending grade at 35th Street. Builders installed a new grade just south of 34th Street, but the work was never completed because by then the High Line was without traffic. A large portion had already been demolished, from Gansevoort Street to the St. John's Park Terminal. Five years later, a section of the West Side line was reconfigured to allow Amtrak Empire Corridor trains from Albany and points beyond to enter Pennsylvania Station.
Hopes flickered for a rejuvenation of the High Line in the late 1980s, when city officials announced their plan to phase out the giant Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Conrail saw the High Line as a potential conduit for outbound shipments of municipal solid waste, recyclables, and construction debris.
But the politics were just too complicated, according to Jonathan Broder, Conrail's General Counsel. Local property owners took legal action to prevent trash hauling on the High Line; the mayor's office wanted it torn down; and changing market conditions made the economic equation unworkable.
What's more, Manhattan's West Side, the borough's last bastion of industrialization, was becoming gentrified. Realizing the winds of change weren't blowing in its favor, Conrail bailed on the plan. "Since then, the High Line has existed in a state of suspended animation," says Broder.
And that's the feeling one gets when walking on the structure today. These are not exalted city vistas as from the Empire State Building or other lofty heights. The High Line is only once-removed from the streets, yet it's still on intimate terms with them. It's a modest vantage point, offering fascinating vignettes of the urban tapestry that is Manhattan. The experience is not without irony, because over the years this raised platform of steel and concrete has become carpeted in plant life: wild grasses, wildflowers, even a grove of ailanthus trees. This is especially amazing when one considers that each seed and particle of soil arrived here airborne. In fact, it's said that some High Line plant species are not even indigenous to the area.
WHAT NEXT?
The future of the High Line, whether it will be demolition or refurbishment, revolves around the question of who will pay. In 1992, property owners came close to getting their wish of having it torn down. But a consistent sticking point has been the need to indemnify then Conrail, and now CSX, against any demolition and liability costs that exceed a federally set limit of $7 million.
Friends of the High Line have outlined a proposal for greenway conversion, based on a cost-per-square-foot analysis, with a projected price tag of about $43 million. The property owners' group counters that the actual cost would probably be two or three times that amount. Robert Hammond of the Friends acknowledges all estimates are speculative, and no specific funding has been identified. However, he stresses city and state support are essential for any preservation scenario to succeed.
For its part, CSX says it just wants to extricate itself from paying about $400,000 a year in taxes and maintenance fees on a property it has no plans to use. The Surface Transportation Board has directed the railroad to negotiate with the underlying property owners for the line's demolition, while remaining receptive to a potential filing for a Certificate for Interim Trails Use.
Said CSX's Debra Frank, "CSX will take its cues from the community, and attempt to do what's best for local interests, while honoring its obligation to shareholders."
Any final decision needs the approval of local government as well as the STB. Even Norfolk Southern, as co-purchaser of Conrail, is entitled to some say in the matter. Thus the High Line's fate is inexorably bound in a web of red tape and conflicting interests.
Nowadays, New Yorkers pay the price for a vastly depleted rail infrastructure, and each time city planners think about reconstituting some aspect of a rail network long gone, cost estimates seem to start at a billion dollars. One wonders if the ghost of Robert Moses isn't getting a good chuckle out of all this, especially since 30,000 big rigs a day cross the Hudson River on the Verrazano Narrows and George Washington bridges alone.
But New York is a dynamic, constantly evolving entity. Whose crystal ball can predict the future of this city's transportation needs? Perhaps West Side development will transform the old viaduct into a perfect corridor for light rail transit or some other form of freight or people moving technology. Wouldn't railbanking be the ideal way for the city to hedge its bet?
Steeped in history, suspended in time and space, the High Line's fate now very much hangs in the balance. "I hope that somebody is creative with it," says Conrail's Jonathan Broder. The Friends of the High Line of course agree.
The “Tenth Avenue Cowboy” flags a tri-powered locomotive leaving 18th Street Yard in 1941. The High Line is visible above.
JOE GREENSTEIN is a free-lance photographer and writer living in Brooklyn. This is his eighth TRAINS byline.
Once again I'm grateful to wanswheel for posting the fine Trains article on this subject. I read it in 2002 with an eye to the future; to read it in 2015 is a revelation.
My main reaction is how stupid the position of the owners' association's stand on the proposed "green" High Line looks today in light of what must be an explosive increase in all nearby property values. I only wish I had owned a building alongside the High Line in 2002; imagine the increase in any building's value since the opening of the High Line a few years ago.
Sometimes it pays to imagine something different and go with the flow, or zeitgeist of the times.
"They all laughed at Rockefeller Center,
now they're waiting to get in."
The High Line has lessons for cities all over America. It's fascinating to read this article again.
I feel stupid. I should have remembered that the boxed-in Shays were Shays and not oil-electrics. Intresting that they boxed them in. But I think this was to avoid scaring horses, not to disguise the fact that they were steam locomotives.
Horse-drawn wagons were in use in New York's streets until after WWII.
rcdryeNYC took delivery of several Shays just for west side service in 1923. The GE-IR three-power units were delivered around 1930 after 1928 ALCO-GE-IR prototype 1525 was judged successful. The Shays replaced some of the ordinary rod engines previously in service. NYC surrounded the works with boxy housings, and set up the controls to make them a little easier to run backwards. They were used in 10th avenue street running before the high line was completed.
I believe there's at least one picture on the Web of one of the Shays in service in the Hudson Highlands -- Ulster & Delaware, maybe? -- after it was retired from New York City service... this in addition to the western New York places Dr. Leonard has mentioned.
wanswheel http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/search2/search.cgi?zoom_sort=0&zoom_xml=0&zoom_query=shay&zoom_per_page=10&zoom_and=0&zoom_cat%5B%5D=0 http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/lima3354/sn-3237.htm
Since this contraption had to be preceeded by a Tenth Avenue cowboy, may we correctly refer to this as a "one horse shay"?
Thanks, wanswheel. Great link; beautifully read.
Thanks for the link and thanks for the pictures
@ChessieCat123: Somebody needs to put on record that it's the whole city that has 8,000,000-odd people (with the emphasis on "odd, in many cases--that's what makes it interesting). The island with the High Line has less than 2,000,000. Tiesenhausen
Not to hijack this thread but I'm not up on my horse-drawn nomenclature. I think a felloe is something to do with the wheel, but what is a thill or a whippletree? Anyone know?
A thill is either of the two long shafts that are placed alongside the horse and that allow Dobbin to pull the shay. A felloe is that wooden part of the rim of a wheel into which the outer parts of the spokes are inserted. A whippletree is sometimes called an equalizer or leader bar and helps to more evenly distribute the weight of what's being pulled.
Doesn't everyone know this? What has happened to education and especially Drivers Education in our schools?
A whippletree is also referred to as a whiffletree.
daveklepper I feel stupid. I should have remembered that the boxed-in Shays were Shays and not oil-electrics. Intresting that they boxed them in. But I think this was to avoid scaring horses, not to disguise the fact that they were steam locomotives. Horse-drawn wagons were in use in New York's streets until after WWII.
I imagine you might recall that the New York,New Haven,& Hartford's Union Freight railroad subsidiary; a shortline that served Boston's waterfront area, had Climax locomotives that were similarly constructed. The line had boxed body 0-4-0 tank engines before that..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_dummy
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
This was a freight railroad connecting North and South Stations with 98% of its track in public streets, mainly Causeway Street and Atlantic Avenue, with numerous sidings. It lasted well beyond WWII. GE made a promotion film on its dieselization. It had several in-street crossing with Boston Elevated - MTA streetcar tracks on Causeway Street.
Don't forget that most of its run was under the Atlantic Avenue El, before it was torn down. The three-truck climaxes pretty much filled the entire space under the El structure.
http://www.gearedsteam.com/climax/images_t-v.htm
NKP guy, thanks for that. Hearing Eddie Albert speak was almost like listening to an old friend.
Actually, 54light15, it was wanswheel who posted that wonderful link which you seemed to enjoy as much as I did. Eddie Albert sure does read in a fine old Midwestern accent that sounds like a friend talking.
These days it sometimes seems that the art of public speaking is dead.
Does anybody have a NYC, CR, or CSX track chart that shows where the crossovers, diamonds, and spurs were ? Friends of The Highline are good people but have very little historical RR info. Thanks.
A10
Was there a reason why Penn Station was built so close to the NYC 30th Street yard, or was it just coincedence?
The reason was the location of the LIRR facilities in the Sunnyside and Long Island City area that were to be tied in to the PRR effort. Look at an overall rail map of the area. Land was available for Sunnyside Yard expansion, and this was critical to the success of the project.
I should also point that the reduction in Manhattan's living populaton was accompanied by a huge increase in working populaton. Also, the living population is at lower density with the elimination of tenement housing. Hunts Point Market, The Bronx, served by CSX, is really the replacement for St. John's.
wanswheel: Ever notice the similarity of St. John's Chapel (where the HR RR had its freight house) and Center Church on the New Haven town green?
St. John's was a great loss, even if if was for a good cause (speaking, of course, as a railfan!).
Great stuff! What is the vehicle that looks like a streetcar but only has four widely spaced windows down the side? A closed in steam locomotive?
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