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There is absolutely a bridge or tunnel that takes a train to Queens. Its called Hells gate. Or the East River tunnels if you're ok with routing your freight ops
by IIAOPSW 1y ago
There is absolutely a bridge or tunnel that takes a train to Queens. Its called Hells gate. Or the East River tunnels if you're ok with routing your freight ops through Penn Station (massive short cut).
One of those mostly invisible things people don't know about is the New York and Atlantic Railroad, which is basically a private group that has been contracted to take over the freight operations that were previously run by the Long Island Rail Road. You can see some of their locomotives in the picture.
The short line connecting railroad mentioned sounds like its the NY&NJ, which is actually a barge float operation between the 65th st yard and Bayonne iirc. There are certainly ways to avoid this barge, but they are rather circuitous, and could only maybe be done at night otherwise the slow freight trains would get in the way of normal passenger service on those tracks.
And describing an extra siding on the Bay Ridge Branch as a "new terminal" is a bit misleading.
- hydrogen7800 1y ago>There is absolutely a bridge or tunnel that takes a train to Queens. Yes, but I don't think there is a rail route to there from west of NYC. Besides barges and passenger rail tunnels, it looks like the only rail crossing over the Hudson is over 100 miles up river.
- IIAOPSW 1y agoRight, but there's nothing preventing sending the freight service on the LIRR main line tunnels (other than it possibly getting in the way of passenger service, which can be avoided by doing it in the middle of the night). These freight and passenger lines weren't built separately. They were literally part of the same railroad. Though I do admit the shortline barge is still a reasonable option to avoid the scheduling and bureaucratic complications of the "Penn-freight" route.
- paddy_m 1y agoAvoiding the barge operation means using the Selkirk Hurdle [1]. After the Hudson tunnels to Penn Station, the next rail bridge over the Hudson is at Selkirk NY, 147 miles north of Newark. It is about parallel with the northern border Massachusets. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkirk_hurdle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selkirk_hurdle
- IIAOPSW 1y agoSure, but there's nothing in principle which prevents just running a freight op on the commuter lines through penn station other than possibly getting in the way of the passenger schedule, but that can be solved by scheduling it between 1am and 4am when there's nothing to interfere with anyway.