jayrmli wrote:1) There is plenty of space at Pilgrim to build a yard. Farmingdale would be very tight.
2) If it was a rail to truck transfer site, the last thing you'd want is to add more traffic to Route 110. It's about at capacity during the week already. The Pilgrim site is closer to the LIE than Farmingdale is.
3) The existing yard at Farmingdale is already being used by another freight customer, who you wouldn't want to move anyway. To build on the south side (as you suggested originally) would require new switches/signals, etc. There already is a switch at Pilgrim.
Read my original posting as to why intermodal (TOFC) wouldn't work. Transloading doesn't take more space necessarily, but there is space available at Pilgrim.
Where everyone dropped the ball was in choosing Pilgrim as the site. The ultimate site for a large freight yard would have been the old Grumman property in Bethpage. You could have designed a huge yard, and all customers could have been serviced out of this yard much more efficiently there than out of Fresh Pond. You would have relatively close access to the LIE and route 135.
Jay
I agree about Pilgrim as dropping the ball, which was why I asked why that area. While it has the space and switches, it is meeting resistance due to its closeness to residential areas. Also, what is the best nearby north/south route for trucks? I cannot think of any.
Funny thing you mentioning the Bethpage area - between Hicksville & Bethpage stations, it looks like there was a transloading site on the north side of the LIRR tracks, complete with tracks to wharehouses with loading docks and what appears to be a truck scale (was it one?). I did not think this would be a good site as there is housing near by, so, like the Pilgrim site, there would be resistance. Also, there did not seem to be a good truck route to 135, but I could be wrong on that point.
A Farmingdale site, either north or south of tracks, should eleminate the neighbor problem, but I cannot comment about Rt110s capacity. Would adding switches at my south side site be that difficult or such an issue?
As to your point of getting TOFCs onto LI, it would have to be part of Freight tunnel project. Although, if existing systems (Hells Gate & Float bridges) can get freight cars onto LI without hassels, then settling for a transloading site would still be an improvement.