Nostalgia & History > PRR through NYC question

So PRR ran under the hudson into/through Manhattan and out the other side eastbound to Sunnyside Queens and on to the LIRR, which was essentially a PRR operation anyway.

Question is, with that arrangement, did the PRR ever run freight through this route? Not so much to Manhattan itself, but from NJ to Long Island and interchange to other points and RR's?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/14 10:21 by NYC_L4a.

The tunnel clearances won't allow anything higher than a passenger car to go through, on both the Hudson and East River sides. The PRR ran plenty of boxcars with passenger trucks on the passenger and mail trains thru both tunnels, but no freight trains. Aside from the aforementioned, the closest to a freight train ever run (and still run today on occasions) is the Ringling Brothers Circus train.

Andy

If I'm remembering correctly in the late PRR days or early PC days they experimented by running a coal train through the tunnel from NJ to Long Island behind a bunch of E44's. I think the grades coming up from beneath the river were too steep to make this operation feasible.

Here is a thread from '03 I just found on this very topic http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?2,635511



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/14 12:26 by stevelv.

Mail trains also went through Penn.

There were quite a lot of mail trains that ran through Penn Station. They were considered first class "passenger trains".
During Christmas holidays non passenger freight reefers such as FGEXs were sometimes in these trains to cover
this peak season.

They were known as CAR FLOATS, not barges.

The PRR, like most other railroads serving New York City and nearby communities, used car floats for local freight movements. Among PRR's facilities were Exchange Place in Jersey City, Greenville & Harrison Cove in Bayonne, West 37th Street (piers 77 & 78) in Manhattan and North 4th Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

twropr Wrote:
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> The tunnel clearances won't allow anything higher
> than a passenger car to go through, on both the
> Hudson and East River sides.

Yes and any freight or hazmat derailment in this environment would have been unspeakably disruptive to the passenger operation on which the city's economy depends. Also, the countless number of switches and turnouts is maintenance-intensive enough without running freight tonnage over it.

Bob

I don't know the history. I'm sure they must have considered making those tunnels large enough for freight.

I'm sure there is an interesting story behind this.

JS

melloj Wrote:
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> I don't know the history. I'm sure they must have
> considered making those tunnels large enough for
> freight.

Well, since they were built in the first decade of the 20th century, they were no doubt able to handle the dimensions and weight of any freight car in existence at the time.

Ray

No, they weren't. The tunnels on each side of Penn Station New York were never intended for freight service. PRR floated all of its connecting cars out of Greenville Yard to the couple of dozen car-float yards of other railroads all around New York harbor. All of the railroads had car-float yards everywhere. I've seen an old map of B&O car-float yards. They had 1 in Manhattan, another up in the Bronx. Other railroads were the same. And don't forget the car-float yards for Brooklyn East District Terminal and the New York Dock Railway. And there were other "dock" railways in New Jersey, too. Back in the days of warehouses and "loose-car" railroading, there were car-floats, docks, short-line railroads, terminal railroads, all sorts of facilities all around New York harbor. Along with all the ferries in the harbor, the passenger ships and the smaller cargo ships, it must have been really something to see.

> they were no doubt able to handle the
> dimensions and weight of any freight
> car in existence at the time.

Not "any", but 99% of them sounds reasonable.
Not because PRR ever contemplated running
freights thru-- but few freight cars were
taller or wider than passenger cars.

At UP in 1973 we started up blocking for Penn Central to expedite the movement of PFE traffic. At North Platte we made blocks for Selkirk (ex-NYC side), Enola (ex-PRR side) and Blue Island (shorts).

PC Transportation gave us a blocking book, assigning every one of their stations to one of those three blocks.

But the problem was, we would have many PFE waybills where the consignee's station was shown as "New York City" or a borough like "Brooklyn" instead of one of the official PC station names.

PC wanted the reefers going to the Bronx (in particular, to the huge Hunts Point fruit and vegetable market) to go in the Selkirk block. Ditto for consignees on Manhattan.

PC wanted the reefers going to distributors located in downtown Brooklyn or south Brooklyn to go on the car float from Greenville, and thus in the Enola block.

But for distributors on the north side of Brooklyn, they wanted to get to them via the New Haven freight line, so they wanted them in the Selkirk block.

So we had to get street addresses for every consignee in New York City.

And we had to get huge wall maps of New York City, which we posted in the North Platte yard office. We draw lines around the areas that were in the Selkirk block and areas that were in the Enola block.

With a Herculean effort, we got the blocking right, and the transcon perishable train was a big success.

But we could start to understand why PC didn't have a chance when blocking was that complicated.

About PC perishable trains: The hot PC train on the ex-PRR side from Blue Island to Jersey had the symbol CG-8 (CG for Chicago to Greenville). The symbol was a hangover from Pennsy days. (It was obvious that most of the hot carload traffic Pennsy had for NYC went on the Greenville car floats.) The hot PC train from Blue Island to Selkirk had the symbol NY-2, a hangover from NYC days. Both trains left Blue Island around noon. We had to get our transcon perishable train onto the IHB at Melrose Park before the Chicago morning commute rush in order to make connection.

Best regards,

Rob L.