Big Stink in Bay Ridge, April 1961

My friend and regular poster here R, Glueck sent me these files. I have his permission to post these and with the exception of adding the type and formatting the size, these pictures have not been manipulated in any way. The text below is from Richard's e-mail to me and explains what is going on.
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My father hated, and I'm using the word "hate" here, hated Bay Ridge and
the carfloat operations. There was always some disaster going on there,
whether it be derailments, vandalism, or kids being electricuted on
catenary wires. These slides are dated April of 1961. Here he was
called out for the single most unusual train wreck in his career. A
local sewerage plant had malfunctioned, and the gases built up inside the
holding tanks either ignited or simply reached critical mass. The
concrete structure exploded, hurling a high concentration of fecally
contaminated waste across the Bay Ridge yard. The impact was enough to
overturn a New Haven caboose, derail boxcars and flip covered hoppers.
The stench must have been awful. The clean up must have been worse.
Today, OSHA would have trained teams in clean suits with high pressure
hoses and containment systems. In '61, you went in and cleaned it up,
probably hosing as much as you could into the bay. These were shot by my
Dad, Harry A. Glueck.





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wow, im sure that was one big big mess to clean up, probly took awile to air out to..lol

<i>ow, im sure that was one big big mess to clean up, probly took awile to air out to..lol</i>

You missed when the MDC's compost heap in Hartford CT burnt for a few months. Whole south side stunk royally.

If an enviro org ever ever ever proposes a compost heap near you. DO NOT ALLOW IT TO BE BUILT!!! I'm serious. Composting inherintly creates heat, and fire. And believe me, a compost heap that's not burning smells. one that IS is 10 times worse, and AFAIK, you can't put it out with water. You really don't want to know what it's like to have everything for miles smell like a full, 4 days old, unflushed toilet that's on fire. Trust me.

There's a woodchip pile that's perennially burning from composting adjacent to the Long Beach Branch just by the canal that serves the power plant, and it's a real stinker too. Usually around spring it smokes enough to solicit reports from the crews and the company had to go spread things around.

Old Yard A had a track that ran around the periphery of the yard called the 'big stink' track, and that designation stayed right up until the yard was torn up for ESA. I initially thought this post might have been about that.

That's amazing that incident occurred in Bay Ridge and it flipped a hack. I wonder if it kept down the rat population at the yard...

Looks like alot of toilet paper in the area! Whew!

de Don, n2qhvRMLI

Holy Crap! (Now that sounds appropriate. )

Those shots are REALLY something!

I certainly hope no one was hurt or otherwise from that incident. The compost plant that was adjacent to the floats is now a sewage treatment facility that has one of those 'giant odor-eaters' so that the dangerous gases are vented out into the atmosphere before they can condense and become combustionable (unlike my gut after a meal at Whitecastles)

Thanks for posting them, Paul! My Dad was a hard worker and though he was in management, he never asked his workmen to do anything he wouldn't do himself. A lot of people would pull rank and duck something as foul as this; not Dad. The railroad has changed a lot since those days, and possibly because so many of his kind are no longer with us.

Bay Ridge was a wretched place to run freights. Vandals made whatever was bad even worse. Still, I am sorry to know that today it's a memory for railroad operations. Maybe apartments or condos will wind up being built where the rails once shuttled freight across the harbor. At least there will be fertile gardens!

<i>(unlike my gut after a meal at Whitecastles) </i>

Dude, you want dangerous:

* Me
* 2 big cold frosty mugs of Coke (classic or cherry)
* 3 slices of Sal's Pizza* - large pepperoni with extra pepperoni.
* 1/2 to 45 minutes on my Harley after that.

My friend TJ banned me from his bathroom after that >:)

And I do mean banned.

White Castle? Never liked them. I've seen postage stamps bigger than those things. Isn't like the minimum order of them 3 or so? And they used to poke holes in the patty (I'm not saying meat here. I don't know what the heck those things are. I don't think I WANT to know).

Ironically, my friends out west think WC is like <b>the</b> thing. I guess it just hit over there?

* Amazingly, I inevitably get caught at Glen Street waiting for an Oyster Bay train. Or Glen Head. Or both. I'm serious, it's like a 90% chance I get hung up at either or both. I don't know HOW I time it...

I just find this such an interesting bit of LIRR history, almost a foot note of sorts...long since forgotten, something I never knew of until Richard sent me these. We have at West Colton what we reffer to as "the garden track". This is a small spur that has very tall (about fifteen feet) flowering plants running the entire length that block the view of the yard from the executive train when it is parked over night when it comes to town. It seams that spot is very well nourished from all the toilets that were dumped on the ground in the days before Microphore toilets.
BTW, I onced worked at 22nd & Stillwell Ave running a payloader for the City of NY. This was a very large compost site right next to the boardwalk. One thing I found out was the bad smell comes from improper airation of the compost heap. It needs to be mixed around on a regular basis. I wonder if it is still there. It was right across the street from the "Icebergs Athletic Club".

Amazing photos. I've walked around that area a few times and it still smells bad with that sewage facility there.

Are those 4 old LIRR diesel coaches still parked near where the photos were taken?

Why was that one track at 'yard a' called the stink track? That must be one old name, as when I was a kid in the late 70's early 80's I went there a lot and don't recall any part of the yard smelling bad...

The Stink was called that because it ran right alongside West Chemical's building. The makers of CN disinfectant's building had two spurs leading into unloading docks.
One for boxcars (bottles) and one for tank cars (stinky stuff)

Back to Bay Ridge.
I wasn't assigned there at the time, but I had heard from fellow workers that the following summer, that the yard was filled with a virtual salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, egg plants and whatever might have been "planted" there during the incident that is pictuered here.
JJ Earl

Welcome back, JJ! Where have you been? We've missed your input. Hope to see you around these parts more often.

BTW, a certain retired LIRR Engineer you know says 'hello'. I ran into him at the Subway Centennial Pageant on Saturday. He was happily riding some beautifully restored BU cars (the ones from the Transit Museum).

Thanks for the welcome, Doug.
Since moving, we've been busy.
I'll bet certian retired engineer was in his glory in that equipment.
JJ

Yikes!

Something that actually would have smelled worse than Van Iderstine's!!!

I couldn't imagine the 1961-era attempt at clean-up!!

Dave Keller

No, Dave.
VI you could smell, when the wind was right, all the way from Blissville to Yard A.
The smell from West Chemical could only be noticed right outside thier siding.
This was from spilled fluids, from the tank cars, left to make a foul smelling mixture rotting on the ground.
JJ Earl