Freight to GCT?

Prior to and during the conversion of the elvated part of the West Side Rail Line in Manhattan to a park, I stated thatthat new York City would be better served by restoring freight service there. Several other posters said that there would not be enough of a market for feight trains in Manahattan.

However, I wonder. Would it be feasiible to run freight into Grand Central Terminal? Dual mode freight locomotives could be used to deal with minimizing smoke in the tunnel. There's 4 tracks along Park Avenue, and seven levels to the terminal below the street. And as to who the customers would be - I suggest that for starters, trains could serve restaurants and stores that are right there in the terminal, and provide an office supplies coop for the many white collar businesses in that neighbourhood. If such service could be successfully started, further expansion could be explored later.

Does anyone have any comment on this? In light of the ongoing issue of whether to have a trash transfer station on the East River that the locals are against, is there anyplace in Manhattan where a facility could be built for loading trash onto trains, or might the city do well to truck Manhattan's trash to Oak Point Yard where there already has been substantial trash hauling?

Believe the Park Ave Viaduct allows max weight of 190,000 lbs,GCT handled baggage and small amount of express,
most of the Mail,and Express was handled on the West 30th st Branch.
Not sure if Plate "C" boxcars could fit in the tunnel to GCT.
MW gons +flats are used to haul in supplies for LIRR's ESA project, and haul out trash created at GCT for disposal/recycling.

Todays freight cars are large compared to cars used in 50's not to many cars left that are 50 lenght and 14.6 high.
there is also no room left in GCT, all platform and yard tracks are used of and on 24/7.

railfan365 wrote:Prior to and during the conversion of the elvated part of the West Side Rail Line in Manhattan to a park, I stated thatthat new York City would be better served by restoring freight service there. Several other posters said that there would not be enough of a market for feight trains in Manahattan.

However, I wonder. Would it be feasiible to run freight into Grand Central Terminal? Dual mode freight locomotives could be used to deal with minimizing smoke in the tunnel. There's 4 tracks along Park Avenue, and seven levels to the terminal below the street. And as to who the customers would be - I suggest that for starters, trains could serve restaurants and stores that are right there in the terminal, and provide an office supplies coop for the many white collar businesses in that neighbourhood. If such service could be successfully started, further expansion could be explored later.

Does anyone have any comment on this? In light of the ongoing issue of whether to have a trash transfer station on the East River that the locals are against, is there anyplace in Manhattan where a facility could be built for loading trash onto trains, or might the city do well to truck Manhattan's trash to Oak Point Yard where there already has been substantial trash hauling?

Basically your advocating the equivalent of LCL freight into Grand Central? Restaurants and stores do not use whole carloads of merchandise/food stuffs. Instead the items are shipped to large distribution centers (in NYC case mostly located in New Jersey) and then picked and loaded by the piece as an order is needed. There is no way you could economically convert that supply chain to boxcar/reefer traffic, there's not enough volume. Maybe pallets of freight could be shipped baggage car style...

The photo in the link below should help to explain things:

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=car+floa ... 140&ty=105

Those of us beyond the age of 55 or so can recall a time when large numbers of carloadings were floated on barges, called car floats, in much of New York harbor. Every major eastern trunk line had a least one pier on Manhattan's lower West Side, and some had several and maintained small yards adjacent to tidewater in Brooklyn as well. Entire railroad companies such as Bush Terminal and Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal serviced these facilities, often with "fireless" steam locomotives charged from a stationary boiler. There were even "through" routings to New England via a terminal in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge.

All of this became unsustainable as a result of several economic trends -- mostly the railroads' inability to compete for the market--sensitive high=value manufactured, perishable and miscellaneous freight, plus all the factors contributing to the general urban economic decay which set in beginning in the 1960's Much of the traffic is still there, but it moves in containers, and often goes only as far as the "distribution centers" a hundred miles or so inland. Local truckers usually take over from there.

Very small shipments tend to move via UPS or Fed Ex, which supplanted the Railway Express Agency during the same time frame.

Larger freight deliveries are handled by LTL carriers,like Yellow,Roadway,FedEx Freight, RTL carriers to various
retail stores

LTL= Less then Trailer Load.

I'm well aware that since no every9one can be near train tracks, we'll always have to have trucks doing some of our freight distribution. However, unless we give in to defeatism and say that trucks are superior to railroad for all freight movement, then rail is still relevant and workable. My thinking is a\based on having more intermodal facilities near or in New York City, team track type arrangements whereby LCL cusotmers can pick up their deliveries from cars that have several shipments in them, and more carload + deliveries where feasible would ease a major burden on our infrastructure and our air quality.

Not to GCT per se, but I represent an important public advocacy group that is promoting freight rail in New York *east* of the Hudson River.

http://www.railnewyork.com

Join our Facebook page for the latest news, reports, events, studies, and updates on our efforts!

Conrail(CSX ) had a clause in their sale contract, that forbids Amtrak from letting freight carriers use the Empire connection (West side freight line) in same agreement they abandoned their freight rights. seeing freight service to Manhattan has a slim to non chance..

railfan365 wrote:I'm well aware that since no every9one can be near train tracks, we'll always have to have trucks doing some of our freight distribution. However, unless we give in to defeatism and say that trucks are superior to railroad for all freight movement, then rail is still relevant and workable. My thinking is a\based on having more intermodal facilities near or in New York City, team track type arrangements whereby LCL cusotmers can pick up their deliveries from cars that have several shipments in them, and more carload + deliveries where feasible would ease a major burden on our infrastructure and our air quality.

Its not about giving up and saying rail has no place in shipping anywhere anymore, it is about knowing where the lines are drawn. Not only would the cost and logistics for LCL shipments be rather nighmarish with the team track idea, how many businesses are going to want to take those shipments to a team track when the trailers will come to them to get the LTL loads? And who is to say that LTL trailers don't use rail anyway? Maybe not as much recently (I haven't seen them lately but haven't paid as much attention) but I can definitely recall seeing TOFC trains full of UPS semi trailers running around, I bet some of those were LTL loads.

I doubt many places, NYC included, would stand a chance at making a "communal" style LCL business even remotely operable for the reasons above - packing all the incoming items from a "team track" into a box car would likely mean it will get unloaded and reloaded a number of times then before it can get to its destination since the chances of any car being fully loaded for a similar destination are slim. There are transload facilities around (one was recently built nearby me in Batavia a few years back) but they don't do a whole lot of LCL as far as I know - the transload receives/ships full box cars of a product/products for single companies and acts as a warehouse to hold excesses - A full boxcar comes in carrying raw materials, it gets unloaded and stored in the warehouse until the company is ready at which time they come get it with their small box truck or what have you. At the same time if they are using rail for outgoing products then chances are the finished product is also stored at the transload warehouse until there is enough for a full car load. Obviously not something that would readily work for food and something that takes a specialized supply/demand chain anyway instead of the common practice nowadays of "just in time" shipping.

As I said, its not about giving up on rail freight all together - its about recognizing where it will and will not work. I don't think GCT is one of those.

railfan365 wrote:I'm well aware that since no every9one can be near train tracks, we'll always have to have trucks doing some of our freight distribution. However, unless we give in to defeatism and say that trucks are superior to railroad for all freight movement, then rail is still relevant and workable. My thinking is a\based on having more intermodal facilities near or in New York City, team track type arrangements whereby LCL cusotmers can pick up their deliveries from cars that have several shipments in them, and more carload + deliveries where feasible would ease a major burden on our infrastructure and our air quality.

I don't disagree with your main point but it's not very far from NYC to the intermodal yards in NJ and it's really not economical to replace local delivery trucks (running maybe 10-50 miles from a warehouse) with freight trains. Trucks are definately not superior to railroads for all freight movements but stating the opposite (i.e rail is superior to trucks for ALL freight) is just as absurd. The LCL customer is looking for efficiency, and what LCL business still going by rail is only competitive as intermodal, NOT boxcar.

To v8interceptor - I get most of what you're saying. But don't get me wrong - just the opposite of saying that rail is always superior, what I did say is that we'll never be able to stop using trucks - since not everyone can be right by tracks. It's a question of how much will be transported each way.

As to what else is addressed in the last two posts, let's not forget the long running push to have a freight tunnel under the Hudson River that would get more rail freight to Glendale.There areare llogistics for geting cargo closer to final destination by train than is currently being done.

NYC and the region have a serious freight rail problem, but trying to run LCL freight into GCT makes no sense. Beyond the railroad's work trains for maintenance, there is no practical or economical way to run freight to GCT. What the NYC region needs is the Hudson freight tunnels to get double stacks and freight trains from NJ to the LI/NY/CT side of the world.

CTRailfan wrote:What the NYC region needs is the Hudson freight tunnels to get double stacks and freight trains from NJ to the LI/NY/CT side of the world.

Agreed. And what's preventing it from being built is the NIMBYs. If only there was an easy fix for them! They would rather contend with thousands of 18-wheelers on the highways than have a single additional freight car rumble down the garbage-choked train tracks running behind their houses - tracks that probably predate their ownership of said house by many decades.

A freight tunnel to LI or the NYC/new england area,won't solve nothing, todays freight cars are to big for LIRR or MNCR infrastructure.
Box cars of tody won't fit under overpasses etc due to old clearances.
Besides most truck traffic originates pretty locally in 3 state area, and there is no way railroads can compete with time or rates.