Oak Point Pics

Here are some photos of The Oak Point Yard (Circa 1920) that I came across, albeit a little grainy, like impressionist painting. The first view is looking west. I have placed some annotation targets on each.
A) Weigh Station
B) Platforms of Casanova Station along the Harlem River Branch
C) 149th Street Bridge in the background
?) Structure not identified

Here is a photo looking southwest

D) One of the main catenary bridges at the yard’s big track curve which lead to the car-float aprons and stub ends
E) Smoke stacks of the New York Central’s Port Morris Power Plant
?) Structure not identified

Here is a photo looking south

F) Approximate location of car-float aprons in the background
G) Harlem River Branch

Would appreciate posting of pictures of the yard or comments, especially from former NH employees.

Unidentified structure in first picture is probably a switchman's shanty.

"Harlem River Branch" identified in last photo is part of the yard, not part of the main line (it's on the wrong side of the truncated catenary bridge).

Oak Point of the 20's was a lot different than Oak Point of the 60's when I first worked there. The building as Henry stated
could be a switchman's shanty or a combination switchman/car inspector or maybe something else for that matter. There
is not likely anybody around who can identify everything in these interesting photos.
At one time Oak Point was the largest 100 per cent electrified yard in the US. I don't mean the largest yard with overhead
wires but the largest yard with wires in the entire yard.
By 1960 there were many parts of the yard that were no longer in use for railroad purposes and the unused areas grew over
the years that I worked around that area.
Incidentally today I think Oak Point is the last exclusive New Haven Yard to have yard switchers employed in it. By this I
mean switchers that do not work outside of the yard and are not advertised to work outside of the yard.
Noel Weaver

This is a wild guess on my part, but here is a map showing the possible location and angle of the camera for the photos above. My sense is that a least two of the photos were taken on the Leggett Avenue Bridge. The first shot shows the main line tracks heading west to the 149th Street Bridge and Hellgate approach. In the last photo the designation target G should have been placed over the tracks on the bottom of the photo. These two tracks appear to be under the main line catenary bridge.

-what's the huge dirt pile which is being heaped up alongside of present Oak Point yard? Looking at the old diagrams and the view from the expressway today, it appears part of the yard is buing buried with over 20 ft. of fill. Or is it just on the edge, in which case, how about drainage?

Roger

Wow, 20 feet of fill, that seems a lot. At one time there was discussion of constructing a prison in the area, but there was strong opposition by the adjacent community and local activist.

Here’s an areal image showing two car-floats approaching the Oak Point transfer aprons from the north. I am assuming the tug is working with the currents. The ‘V’ shaped configuration makes sense, but what was the naval procedure to separate the two floats so they could be docked into the individual aprons? The gypsum plant can be seen in the background by the ship.

I was just riding my bike past Oak Point Yard today. I believe the humungous fill pile is actually being carted away. Of the tracks that curve south out of the yard, only about 9 remain. They have been a little reconfigured so they cover about 1/3rd of the original south part of the yard. The other 2/3rds are covered about evenly by the fill pile and warehouses.

From the old photos, it is amazing to see how much interchanged by car ferries back then. Today Oak Point is very busy, with interchange to the NYAR and containerized garbage apparently being the main activity. There's also a fair amount of perishables shipping to the Oak Point food distribution area.

I'd guess that about 100 cars per day are delivered from Selkirk.

I think I posted some current pics in another newsgroup, I need to check.