Hurricane Sandy

I was out in the affected areas in NJ and NY today distributing out donated items. From what i saw the NJCL is really in very bad shape anywhere near the water. There is sand, sewage & muck clogged into every nook, crack, gap and space hundreds of feet inland all the way from the verizano narrows all the way to cape may. Everyone has to wear masks or risk getting a respiratory infection.

There are large areas with no power aside from generator operated traffic lights, people have no water... It is really bad. Even if the tracks were all fine, literally it's a giant disaster area.

I'm going to show you folks the 2 photos i took today from staten island to give you an idea of what is going on.

http://i899.photobucket.com/albums/ac19 ... 689189.jpg


http://i899.photobucket.com/albums/ac19 ... 2c6028.jpg

In the second photo i tried to depict where the water line was from the storm surge. Even a ways away from the beaches they had water marks on stucco and concrete. That one place was a building that burned down from a gas leak. It still had water from a busted pipe pouring out. There were national guard, FDNY, sanitation dept all over every street. Thousands of buildings, homes and businesses alike, had to have their first floor gutted to the frames because of mold and other contamination.

Down farther south along the NJ coast towards belmar & bay head etc it's even worse.

acelaphillies wrote:SEPTA still has some retired Silverliners sitting around.

No thanks.

morris&essex4ever wrote:

acelaphillies wrote:SEPTA still has some retired Silverliners sitting around.

No thanks.

Hahaha

acelaphillies wrote:

morris&essex4ever wrote:

acelaphillies wrote:SEPTA still has some retired Silverliners sitting around.

No thanks.

Hahaha

It might be worth it if they were able to barge any equipment out of bay head and bring it up to the rail dock at newark. Other than that they are pretty much orphaned for months.

The damage along the coast is no joke mind blowing in both how bad and how widespread.

The north tube is operational. Additional repairs are needed, but all 7 tunnels that service NYP can be used.

25Hz wrote:It might be worth it if they were able to barge any equipment out of bay head and bring it up to the rail dock at newark. Other than that they are pretty much orphaned for months.

The damage along the coast is no joke mind blowing in both how bad and how widespread.

why a barge and not just truck it to where it needs to go to get back to connected rail?

Matt Johnson wrote:So, I'm guessing the rail option is out for getting home to Hazlet for the Thanksgiving holiday, and likely even Christmas. Any idea if work is being done to restore the washed out sections of the Coast Line, or has weather hampered the effort?

jp1822 wrote:

morris&essex4ever wrote:Wow, I really thought the Coast Line south of South Amboy and the M&E would be OOS till December at the earliest. Wasn't expecting such good news!

This article sounds like good news, aside from the sub-station issue at Kearny....

Has anyone seen any of the rebuilding of the rail between Perth Amboy-South Amboy-Matawan?

the NJT facebook page has a picture of what appears to be new/repaired track along the Raritan Bay between South Amboy and Matawan. The NJ.com article posted above sounds as if they fixed river draw too. If the Morgan bridge is messed up I'd guess they can get it band aided so it's stuck down since it's the winter and go from there.

I'm amazaed they're talking Long Branch so soon.

ThirdRail7 wrote:The north tube is operational. Additional repairs are needed, but all 7 tunnels that service NYP can be used.

That's very good news! Does anyone know what impact that tube suffered from Sandy?

I can attest first-hand the crowding on NEC. By the time the trains reach Newark, forget about it--and I reverse commute on NJT.

I'm curious about how they currently have service staged. Presently, NEC trains run on the top-of-the-hour during the outbound morning rush, the first to New Brunswick leaving at the 7th minute, the second to Trenton leaving at the 14th minute. Is there any reasoning behind that? I'm assuming that trains are turning at New Brunswick for inbound service.

My hats off to all the people putting more and more service back into play each day after this devastation.

The one good thing about all of this, is being on-board a train that shoots through the tunnels and immediately enters Penn without any hesitation. I'll enjoy that perk.

Rah2005 wrote:That's very good news! Does anyone know what impact that tube suffered from Sandy?

It was flooded.
The storm surge flooded both North River Tunnels to the west of NYP, and 2 of the 4 East River Tunnels to the east of NYP (the two compass south tunnels flooded). The Empire Tunnel and the 2 compass north ERT's were fine.

Rah2005 wrote:I'm curious about how they currently have service staged. Presently, NEC trains run on the top-of-the-hour during the outbound morning rush, the first to New Brunswick leaving at the 7th minute, the second to Trenton leaving at the 14th minute. Is there any reasoning behind that? I'm assuming that trains are turning at New Brunswick for inbound service.

Up to this point, there has only been 1 tunnel available into NYP, so they have had to single track all the way from east of Secaucus (or BERGEN interlocking) to NYP. That means they had to set up their schedule to allow trains to run in both directions with only a single track available.

The westbound trains from New Brunswick turned in COUNTY interlocking, which is right by Jersey Avenue station.

cause complete railcars far exceed the US limit for truck weights

As far as I know, there is an intact track from at least Long Branch to Morgan and South Amboy (track 1). If they really needed to, they could take the cars out of Bay Head via the Amboy Secondary to Midway. I don't think the track is "ready for prime time" quite yet but a shop move would be possible, id assume. I haven't heard of any significant damage west of Long Branch other than trees down, but I could be wrong.

However, what are they going to do with the Comet 3s if they were to get them out of Bay Head? Fix them and update them at the MMC? HAHAHAHH

That would be more realistic than trucking them out.....And barge? How are they going to get to a barge to be loaded? Minor detail....hahah

Jtgshu wrote: That would be more realistic than trucking them out.....And barge? How are they going to get to a barge to be loaded? Minor detail....hahah

Earle Naval pier of course! On a serious note, any idea how that pier held up?

Good to know the M&E is back online tomorrow even if it's on a limited schedule to NYP.

LIMITED Midtown Direct Service is to return Monday morning on the Morris & Essex Lines between Dover and NY Penn Station

http://millburn.patch.com/articles/midt ... f-12125571
http://www.njtransit.com/tm/tm_servlet. ... SE_ID=2812

Should be interesting to see how this works out, glad to see they've managed to somewhat divide the Outter (Morristown Branch)/ and Inner Zone's (Summit & Eastward)