1923 Aerial view of Jersey City

Irish Chieftain wrote:Looking at all those tracks that used to be on that waterfront, it's a real wonder that the PANY insisted on building a container port in Newark Bay instead of NY Harbor or along the Hudson...

Good point, but the PA didn't own the railroad trackage, while it did own Port Newark / Port Elizabeth. It also owned the former North German Lloyd docks in Hoboken, just north of the DL&W station. The US government had seized the facility during the war and subsequently turned it over to the PA.

Nice bit of "corporate welfare" there. No reason to presume that the railroads would have been uncooperative insofar as helping to convert their then-extant facilities along the NY/NJ waterfront to accommodate containers, though...might've even been cheaper than having to do all the dredging work to Newark Bay that they've done over the years...

That was a very different world.
The photo is actually kind of stunning....

Absolutely wonderful.
BigDell

timz:

Boy did you ever open up a pleasant can of worms for me.

Regarding the Jersey City shot.

I brought the same area on “Google Earth.”

I had trouble finding comparing landmarks, there is practically noting left of the Erie. I even had trouble locating Dickerson. HS. I was then able to follow the Lackawanna tracks to the west end and locate the inbound entrance to the Archways.

By going past the tollbooths I was able to locate the ventilator tower for the tunnel that was built at the end of a Erie pier north of the Terminal. (More about that pier in my next post.)

The picture of the Canal Street side is clearer and tells quite a story.

1. Between West Street and Greenwich St. where Washington St. is now there seems to be a pair of tracks running N-S. I cannot tell if vehicles shared the tracks with the trains.

2. In the dock just north of Watt St.. are three Day Liners. The largest one, I have determined must be the Washington Irving.

3. South of the Watt St pier are two ferries docked in there slips. This was the Desbrosses St. Ferry terminal of the Pennsylvania RR. Ceased operations in 1930.

4. South of the ferry slip is a the Desbrosses St. Pier of the Day Line at which a liner is docked.

5. This is where the Washington Irving would depart on her fatal voyage 3 years later in 1926.
( More about the Washington Irving in my next post.)

6. South of the Day Liner are there piers with some 18 RR car floats

7. Car float piers extended south to the Erie pier at Duane St.

8. Those car floats were one reason for all the railroad yards in NJ.

The commuter trains from the Susquehanna and the Erie's Northern Branch continued using the Erie terminal in Jersey City for several years after the other Erie trains started using the Hoboken terminal since there was no direct route for them to get on the trackage to Hoboken without making a back-up move. The NYS&W and the Erie ran parallel from Granton Jct. to Jersey City, so the two lines were used as a double track main, NYS&W being the eastbound, and the Erie being the westbound tracks. The Jersey City station was used until 1959 when the Erie re-routed the Northern commuter trains to Hoboken and the Susquehanna trains cut back service to the Susquehanna Transfer, and then backed the trains to the Little Ferry yard for the daytime layover.

Lackawanna484 wrote:

Irish Chieftain wrote:Looking at all those tracks that used to be on that waterfront, it's a real wonder that the PANY insisted on building a container port in Newark Bay instead of NY Harbor or along the Hudson...

Good point, but the PA didn't own the railroad trackage, while it did own Port Newark / Port Elizabeth. It also owned the former North German Lloyd docks in Hoboken, just north of the DL&W station. The US government had seized the facility during the war and subsequently turned it over to the PA.

Its actually not so much of a wonder that the Hudson piers were abandonded. In the late 1940s the traditional method of shipping, break-bulk, gave way to containerization. Break-bulk was very labor intensive, lots of longshoremen on the docks in the Hudson and East Rivers. Containerization required much less labor, but much more land, for maneuvering and staging. The only area with that much available land was the Newark-Elizabeth Meadows. And BTW, the PANYNJ leases Port Newark from the city, but owns Port Elizabeth outright.

Albert/wantsrail -

Nice shot, too.......Actually, no railroad came any thurther than Spring St./Canal St. (The West Side Elevated of the NYC), so if you are refering to the elevated structure that runs accross the picture just down from West St., that must be the El.

CF

Don makes a very good point about available land,plus today with the immediate access to the turnpike from PN&PE I guess it was just necessity.

MickD wrote:Don makes a very good point about available land,plus today with the immediate access to the turnpike from PN&PE I guess it was just necessity.

That's also one of the big hangups on NYC's perpetual plan to invigorate the Brooklyn piers. Limited space to stage containers, mount them on trucks, and then move them through often congested streets, with well organized residents.

One other giant point to remember was that prior to coonstruction of any of the vehicular crossings (Lincoln, Holland tunnels, GWB) of the Hudson, everything had to be floated across. Even passenger took a ferry or the tubes.

Once those items could be trucked to/from the door of the facility to the railhead in NJ there was no need to double or triple handle the items. (i.e. truck from facility to pier in NYC, place on barge, place on pier in NJ, and then place on railcar.)

The other big item, coal for NYC, was also a small part of the operation by the 1950's having been replaced by other heating methods.

One of the largest buildings not in the picture is the Seaboard (cold storage) building that still exists a few blocks prior to the toll plaza and just north of the Erie tracks.

My wife's grandparents still live about two blocks south of the Seaboard terminal and the remains of the right of way. The entire area was very economically depressed when they bought the home in the early 1970's but now it is a thriving, affluent urban area. I often wish I had seen the area, especially the RRs in their heyday.

Chris

trainwayne1 wrote:The Jersey City station was used until 1959 when the Erie re-routed the Northern commuter trains to Hoboken and the Susquehanna trains cut back service to the Susquehanna Transfer, and then backed the trains to the Little Ferry yard for the daytime layover.

The New York Times reported in 1959 that the NYS&W no longer went to Jersey City-- but the 7/60 Guide still shows the NYS&W there, though the NRRofNJ was in Hoboken by then. Don't ask me to explain it.

Another mystery: that Carstens softcover on the NYS&W says they stayed in Jersey City until 1966, and that hardcover "Erie Memories" says the NRRofNJ trains did likewise. That seems impossible-- the employee timetables from 1962-64 show them running into Hoboken-- but you'd think Collins would know.

timz wrote:

trainwayne1 wrote:The Jersey City station was used until 1959 when the Erie re-routed the Northern commuter trains to Hoboken and the Susquehanna trains cut back service to the Susquehanna Transfer, and then backed the trains to the Little Ferry yard for the daytime layover.

The New York Times reported in 1959 that the NYS&W no longer went to Jersey City-- but the 7/60 Guide still shows the NYS&W there, though the NRRofNJ was in Hoboken by then. Don't ask me to explain it.

Another mystery: that Carstens softcover on the NYS&W says they stayed in Jersey City until 1966, and that hardcover "Erie Memories" says the NRRofNJ trains did likewise. That seems impossible-- the employee timetables from 1962-64 show them running into Hoboken-- but you'd think Collins would know.

Didn't the NYS&W cut back service to only as far as Susquehanna Transfer around when the Erie moved to Hoboken?

How much has it changed?
Take a look at:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Jersey+Av ... oc=A&hl=en

11the St is the Erie right of way, the bridges over Erie St. and Grove St. use the original Erie RR bridge abutments.
To the west is the Arches. Zoom in, follow tracks by Turnpike to the entrace to the Erie Tunnel.
From this point follow right of way north to Lackawanna Tracks (NJT Tracks) a little more and the under construction HBLRT right of way comes into view.

In New York, Susquehanna and Western in Color by Paul Tupaczewski on page 14 it states that the NYS&W cut it's passenger operations back to the Susquehanna Transfer in 1959. I had my first engine ride in 1961 on a commuter train from Butler and can attest to the fact that the trains ran only as far as the Transfer in North Bergen and then would back up to Little Ferry for the layover until the evening westbounds.