Question about Albany Union Station ROW

I've never done much research about the NYC, but I am aware that the Penn Central abandoned the station in Albany in the late 60's in favor of Renneslear. I've been poking around Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth attempting trace former and current right-of-ways. I realize that the freeway construction obliterated much of ROW around the former Albany station, but I've been unable to ascertain as to how passenger trains from New York City and other points south swung over to the west side of the Hudson and Albany.
The Livingston Ave. bridge would have required a back-up move, thus I'm sure that wasn't used for crack passenger trains. The same appears to be true for the Alfred H. Smith brigde.
Can someone help me out?

There was another bridge just to the south of LAB called the Maiden Lane Bridge. The passenger trains used this bridge.

If you look in Goggle Earth, this bridge would have been located about where the current pedestrian bridge over the interstate is now. Maybe a little south of that. On the Rensselear side, the tracks would have passed through the baseball field for the Rensselear high school, which is gone now. There was a wye in this location.

So just imagine a double track line curving west off the current north-south trakage, about where the current station is. This line then crossed the river on the Maiden Lane bridge and then curved north, through Union Station, then west to join up with the tracks off LAB. Someone will probally post more detailed information as there are people on this forum that actually worked that track when it was still here.

Morning Sun books has a few titles with great pictures of this area. Check them out.

I think it may have been a little further south, closer to were the bridge that connects ALB and Renn by way of 787. It would have brought you out to the current location of the new Amtrak station. The area of the current location of the Amtrak shop and old high school were the B&A round house and shops.

When heading NB you would have crossed the Madien Lane bridge into Albany Union Station then up "bull run" to connect back into the NYC main and point west. Bull run is still there but hardly ever used. The last move that I know of was last year(?) when a D&H/CP train used it to back down to Kenwood yard.

Ironman wrote:Morning Sun books has a few titles with great pictures of this area. Check them out.

Trackside in the Albany Gateway 1949-1974 with Gerritt Bruins ---- and yes, it is a great book! Hope it's still in print and you can get one

The B&M Historical society has a bunch of old movies converted to VHS tape. One of them, with film taken by Dana Goodwin, taken in the late 30s-mid 40s. Most of it looks to have been shot in Ayer and Fitchburg. There are some other shots taken while on excursion trips. One was to the Albany area. There are shots of D&H challengers and Northerns in Mechanicville. There were some other shots in Albany too. One has a D&H camelback switching coaches, while a Hudson goes overhead, on the Maiden Lane Bridge. The picture looks like the D&H Plaza was RIGHT behind the train. This should put the location in perspective.

Maiden Lane Bridge was located right between The D&H Building and old Albany Union Station, which are both standing today with different owners. If you look on a Google map, you can imagine Partition Street in Rensselaer extending straight to the west across the Hudson River, and that would be the alignment of the bridge. The approaches were on curves, but the swing span was just about perpendicular to the river channel. The location is clear on a Troy quadrangle topo map, such as

http://docs.unh.edu/NY/troy28nw.jpg

When I was working on the fourth floor of the D&H building in early 1970 I watched the demolition of the Maiden Lane Bridge. Albany Union Station had been closed in 1969, and Penn Central was using a station in the Town of Colonie at Karner Road. Albany-Rensselaer had not been built then.

Gordon Davids

The Trackside with Gerrit Bruins book (from Morning Sun) has a detailed map of the area in the introductory section.

If you're in the Albany area, look for the newish (2001) pedestrian bridge over the D&H and I787. It sits almost on top of the former Maiden Lane RR bridge.