Unlikely, but potential new Jersey City rail customer?

So, the approval process continues, slowly but surely:

By a vote of 6 to 3, the Jersey City City Council approved the placement of a large warehouse on the PJP landfill site near Tonnelle Circle at its Wednesday night meeting.

This 46-acre tract, owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, abuts Holy Name Cemetery and for several years was the scene of a perpetual underground fire.

Perpetual fires aside, pre-1970 this would be a no brainer - there would be a new siding to this warehouse. However, its 2006 and everything is iffy. I guess this is South of the Pulaski Skyway on 1/9, and I recall a large Hartz facility nearby once served by rail (I may be mistaken), so it is at least possible that rail service could be established - anyone with more info as to yea or nay?

This might be the new facility that General was talking about in the NS H0-2 thread.... It probably would be best if we let this topic die for now....


Steve

He was indicating a facility near DB Draw, perhaps on the Boonton Line - this facility is definitely south of the Pulaski Skyway and south of PATH if my Atlas is to be believed. I would say it is NOT the facility discussed by General, but a different (future) warehouse...

I'm not sure what parcel General is talking about, but the former PJP Landfill is immediately north of the Skyway.

Don31 wrote:I'm not sure what parcel General is talking about, but the former PJP Landfill is immediately north of the Skyway.

This is not the same place that I had referred to in another post. I am not 100% sure, but I don't think the PJP Landfill site can be accessed by rail.

General wrote:

Don31 wrote:I'm not sure what parcel General is talking about, but the former PJP Landfill is immediately north of the Skyway.

This is not the same place that I had referred to in another post. I am not 100% sure, but I don't think the PJP Landfill site can be accessed by rail.

It could be. See location http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q ... 029526&t=h

There was a spur that went to a scrap yard and other places on the north side of Broadway off the PRR. Gone for years but if might be possible to obtain an easement and run south to the site.

From a remediation report:

PJP Landfill is an inactive landfill located at 400 Sip Avenue, Jersey City New Jersey. The site occupies approximately 87 acres of former marsh land along the Hackensack River. Land use in the area is primarily industrial and commercial, although two high-rise apartment complexes are located within one half mile of the site. Surrounding businesses include a bus and recreational vehicle scapyard, a Hartz Mountain warehouse, an automobile junkyard, a truck terminal, a construction material recycling operation, and a church cemetery. The Pulaski Skyway, an elevated highway, passes over the site in an east/west direction. A small stream called the Sip Avenue Ditch cuts through the site and runs west to the Hackensack River.

What was burning in the underground fire?

I guess what everybody's asking is, can the site be reached by rail, assuming a spur off of PATH isn't allowed?

I guess we agree the site is the open space (seen on the google site
above) to the west of the end of Sip Ave, between Route 1 and the
river.

As Timz notes, the real problem is probably not how to snake a line
past the buildings in the Broadway area (maybe you could run near
the water to west of the buildings), but how to get across the PATH
tracks, which are the south of the freight line, with both lines running
east/west just north of Broadway. Are the two lines on the same elevation about?
JS

I dunno how thrilled Path would be, but they are considered a "heavy rail" railroad, and there would be no restriction with hours of operation and equipment, etc, like on the light rail lines.

There is a freight track that cuts across Path on the south side of Hudson yard in Harrison - AFAIK, its no longer used, but it goes along the river, between the PATH yard and the river, and crosses the PATH line on the east side of thier yard, and either meets up with the ladder track in Hudson yard or is reached off of track 16, i don't remember.

The old topo map shows a track splitting off the freight line eastward at the east end of the Hackensack River bridge-- it essed under the passenger line, apparently beneath the east end of the passenger bridge. Is there still room there?

I found the topo showing the line
http://www.terraserver-usa.com/image.as ... city%7c%7c
that crosses under the PATH tracks. It is hard to make out, though.

and even better, go to http://local.live.com

type in "broadway, jersey city, nj" in "where", enter, and click on
"bird's eye view". You can move left/right/up/down by clicking
adjacent panels in the inset, and zooming in/out by clicking on the
large/small buidling icon, and view in different directions by clicking on N/S/E/w.

One panel to the left after the first view got me to the location of interest. The freight line is on an elevation down much lower
that the PATH, and there is clearly a reinforced bridge on PATH where
the freight line used to go underneath PATH (as can be imagined from
the topo). YOu woudl then have to reverse to go west toward the river.

JS

pumpers wrote:I found the topo showing the line
http://www.terraserver-usa.com/image.as ... city%7c%7c
that crosses under the PATH tracks. It is hard to make out, though.

Ah, the spur on the topo map you linked to (north of the Pulaski Skyway, South of PATH, and directly east of the Hackensack Rive) which heads West, then curves directly South to serve the large purple building (which has the S of Skyway imprinted over it) - I think that building is a former Hartz Mt facility (which I mentioned in my first post), and the spur the one I also mentioned above - I sort of remember by the late 1980s the spur looking unused; I have no idea what that facility is now, not really having been in the area (or using PATH to Newark) in the past decade or so.

Here is another snippet from the article (gone to archive, I am afraid), the rest being discussion of the vote and so will not be included (it past). Notice the detailed discussion of what the warehouse will eventually hold:

Robert Cavanaugh, the attorney for AMB, the California-based company building the warehouse, said, "We bring in stuff from the ports."
The proposed $100 million facility will be 883,000 square feet with 36-foot ceilings, said Cavanaugh, a former Jersey City councilman and mayoral candidate.

I sort of remember a 2 story tall statue of a lumberjack looking guy holding a carpet off Rte 1/9 in the general area.

There is a freight track that cuts across Path on the south side of Hudson yard in Harrison - AFAIK, its no longer used, but it goes along the river, between the PATH yard and the river, and crosses the PATH line on the east side of thier yard, and either meets up with the ladder track in Hudson yard or is reached off of track 16, i don't remember.

Didn't this once serve the gas terminal on the Passiac river (which had its own 'critter' to shunt tank cars around - this seemed to have closed rather abruptly a decade or more back. Also, right across from this gas terminal, and served by a spur off the same branch which cross PATH was a building - the spur crossed 'Cape May St.' and entered the building through a angled door (well, I remember it looking oddly angled - perhaps it wasn't in real life)

Sir Ray wrote:

There is a freight track that cuts across Path on the south side of Hudson yard in Harrison - AFAIK, its no longer used, but it goes along the river, between the PATH yard and the river, and crosses the PATH line on the east side of thier yard, and either meets up with the ladder track in Hudson yard or is reached off of track 16, i don't remember.

Didn't this once serve the gas terminal on the Passiac river (which had its own 'critter' to shunt tank cars around - this seemed to have closed rather abruptly a decade or more back. Also, right across from this gas terminal, and served by a spur off the same branch which cross PATH was a building - the spur crossed 'Cape May St.' and entered the building through a angled door (well, I remember it looking oddly angled - perhaps it wasn't in real life)

I think there is some sort of Trackmobile still sitting there.

timz...

PJP was a municipal solid waste landfill that caught fire underground and burned for several decades IIRC. When the wind was from the south, the PATH trains would pass thru the smoke. When I was commuting on the PATH, I was able to taste that plume on many occasions.

The company I worked for at the time was awarded the contract to remediate the site. Many previous attempts were made to extinguish the fire by injecting millions of gallons of water into the site (the landfill was old and only 10 to 15 feet deep). The trash was pretty much dumped into the marsh back when. The fire was successfully extinguished by excavating the site in sections and applying chemical foam. My job was to perform air monitoring, a task that required twice-daily visits to a monitoring station we had at an upper floor of the housing projects across the street. We were required to wear hard hats when walking to the projects as the tenants had a tendency to throw garbage directly out of their apartment windows.

TheBaran wrote:timz...PJP was a municipal solid waste landfill .

The FBI also conducted an investigation of the site around the time of the fires, as it was among the locations rumored to be the final resting place of Jimmy Hoffa.