Wye / Turning track in NYC?

I take the 280 & 283 back & forth from Syracuse to NYC every other week, and I have noticed what looks like a wye or maybe what used to be a turning track that goes off to the West just to the north of Penn Station and where NJT comes in from underneath. There's never been anything on the track in the few years I've seen it other than some Metro North MOW cars. Just wondering what it is/was?

yes there is a small wye just north of empire box tunnel, it is rarely used, mainly for emergencies.
trains get turned on loop track in sunnyside yard.

I believe the wye is located where a new york central car float yard used to be, since built over...

Interesting, never heard that one. I thought it was part of the Post Office stuff (that's what I had been told) but never made much sense to me.
But it also was right before the high-line went above ground, so figured it had something to do with that.

the wye is around 45th street not even close to were car floats use to be.
closest car float ramps were at 70 street.

I was referring to the small yard west of times sq shown on this map:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... a_1900.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If there was no dock operation there, then "the more you know"!

I see no yard west of time square ?? I see old yard west of south end of central park and that float bridge is still at 70th street.
http://binged.it/1H3Abrf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The yard shown on the Wikipedia map begins at about 60th St. and runs north to whatever street hits where Broadway crosses Amsterdam Ave., certainly north of 70th St., so it looks like we're talking about the same yard. In any case, it's not 45th St.

Going way back, there was at least one float bridge south of the New York Central's 60th Street Yard; however, it belonged to the Lehigh Valley, which had some operations over there that were not, so far as I know, physically connected to the Central's West Side trackage. It's still there, restored, at the west end of 26th St. https://goo.gl/maps/JsgSd

Nothing to do with the wye on the Empire, though.

A friend who works for a shortline railroad has a son who is an Amtrak locomotive engineer. One or two years ago, he told me they moved some equipment to or from that wye, and they were accompanied by an Amtrak police officer. I guess that walking to the tail end of that wye track was considered a personal security risk, as it looks like an inviting place for the homeless to congregate.

Since the tail of the wye ends in a rock cut, then I suspect that tail track never connected to anything; that is, it did not lead to/from some other location.

I know that Penn Central / Conrail had yard tracks at street level on the west side of Manhattan, somewhere around 32nd Street and Tenth or Eleventh Avenue, until the early 1980s. I know because several privately owned passenger cars were stored there at that time, and an AAPRCO meeting was hosted onboard the cars back in those days. Those surface yard tracks must have been connected to the West Side Line at another location, north of the High Line, because they had no connection to Penn Station trackage.

I've been trying to see this wye via Google maps to no avail. Is it blocked from view?

It's under ground in the general area of this map.

Ah, thanks!

jhdeasy wrote:A friend who works for a shortline railroad has a son who is an Amtrak locomotive engineer. One or two years ago, he told me they moved some equipment to or from that wye, and they were accompanied by an Amtrak police officer. I guess that walking to the tail end of that wye track was considered a personal security risk, as it looks like an inviting place for the homeless to congregate.

Since the tail of the wye ends in a rock cut, then I suspect that tail track never connected to anything; that is, it did not lead to/from some other location.

I know that Penn Central / Conrail had yard tracks at street level on the west side of Manhattan, somewhere around 32nd Street and Tenth or Eleventh Avenue, until the early 1980s. I know because several privately owned passenger cars were stored there at that time, and an AAPRCO meeting was hosted onboard the cars back in those days. Those surface yard tracks must have been connected to the West Side Line at another location, north of the High Line, because they had no connection to Penn Station trackage.

I know it is now the LIRR yards, but when/why did CR flee...?
Historic Aerials 1979 shows boxcars still in the yard...

cause there was no more ships arriving in manhattan and no traffic to support the line.
why did ships disappear, they went to port of newark cause they got bigger and manhattan did not want all trucks on its street supporting shipping business.