Probability seems to be <0.010%.
While I agree with that probability of it ever hosting trains again, I am left to wonder just how much structural damage was done by the 1974 fire and beyond that how much damage was caused by the bridges overall neglect in the 1974-2009 period. Fully understand that Penn Central had no financial standing to effect repairs, even if they had a pressing operational need for the bridge and that ConRailâs thought processes discounted the bridge entirely and the 21st Century railroad vision also discounts it.
Probability is essentially zero; thereâs no advantage going to Cedar Hill any more; the route to the east is hilly and curving; I believe Conrail took out part of the track.
This was a critically important link up to 1892, one so vital in fact that it justified J.P. Morgan crashing the national economy for a couple of years to stop McLeodâs Reading Combine. But the bridge was built early, with 1885 technology, and even by the '20s was obsolescent as a high-speed high-volume link. Industrial flight from Connecticut after WWII essentially sealed much of the need for bridge traffic on this particular route. McGinnis and bankruptcy further hurt things, and inclusion in Penn Central (which of course had far superior routes in itself) was the next-to-last nail in the coffin.
I recall reading that PC wasnât that upset that they lost use of the bridge. That the bridge still had allowed routings to other remaining railroads. Loss of that interchange made it more likely for a longer, all PC routing to destination or western interchange point.
Jeff
Not much New England freight traffic these days other than to shipyards at Bangor and New London?!
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A rail link was built around the southern tip of Bronx to connect the Hudson line with the New Haven line.
The Maybrook line is abandoned on both sides of the bridge to Hopewell Jct. The Beacon line connects with the remainder of the Maybrook line there. For a while Conrail used this to connect the Hudson Line to the New Haven. MetroNorth bought the line between Beacon/Fishkill Jct and Danbury, but is now asking for proposals. I rode the line in the late 1980s on a New Haven (Technical/Historical?) Society fan trip.
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I believe that you mean Bath, not Bangor. Bath Iron Works (General Dynamics) is still one of two contractors for the Arleigh Burke destroyer program.
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Thanks for the correction!
Bangor is a major submarine facility, so he was correct to mention it together with New London.
A college friend of mine published âBath Mattersâ for many years so I had a sort of vicarious view of things involving Bath Iron Works.
The Bangor that is the sub base is Bangor, Washington. The Bangor in Maine isnât near the ocean.
He did say New England, didnât he? Itâs that reading-comprehension thing againâŚ
You two seem to be engaging in a silly kerfuffle.
So to amplify: Bangor ME is only 40 or so miles from mouth of Penobscot Bay, where it follows into Atlantic. Bath is located on the Kennebec River, about 10 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.
Lost in the quagmire was my relevant point which was that not much industry of the sort using todayâs freight rails exists in the area formerly serviced by the bridge
I thought you were bringing up submarine (formerly defense, now war) issues, and was mistaken.
An enormous amount of the industry that was fed and supported by the Maybrook Line (and its connection via Cedar Hill to the Shore Line) is regrettably gone. Let alone industries that would currently patronize any revival of that route for rail service.
In the Classic Days, doubtful that much Maine traffic was routed via the Mazybrook Line and Poughkeepsie Bridge. Didf not the B&M have its own line to Mechanicsville. If not, the D&H link from Troy would be both shorter than via the New Haven and also give the B&M or B&M-MC a greater share of the revenue. My imprerssion is that Poughkeepsie Bridge freight traffic had a destination or origine on the New Haven or one of thr connectingv short-linecand terminal railroads. And possibly a small amount for the Centralâs Harlem and Putnam Divisions.
Boston and Maineâs freight interchange with the New Haven (Springfield, Worceswter, Ayer) was almlost entirely freight for the New York City metropolitan area, Long Island, and via car-float to and from New Jersy to Florida and other Southern and southwest states. The Bay Ridge - Greenville car-float operation handled probably double the freight of the Maybrook Line, despite some traffic routed over L&NE and L&HR. Someone with access to the car-count data can confirm or refute me. There was also some minor Oak Point - Jersey City and Hoboken car-float freight.
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Probably better to think of it as the most direct route to Connecticut industry when that state was still a hotbed of precision manufacturing, and much of the goods and supplies involved moved by rail.
In the days of the Reading Combine it was a much more vital potential link. But the door was slammed on that world in the roughly half-decade after 1892.
The Maybrook/Poughkeepsie Bridge Line was essentially a connection for the âAnthracite Roadsâ and the âAlphabet Routeâ. The NYC had the Wallkill branch but was more of a rural branch. Of the 6 lines that met a Maybrook, only 2 are left: the ex-Erie, now a MetroNorth commuter line with NS and NYS&W trackage rights; and a remnant of the ex-Lehigh & Hudson owned by the NYS&W. As far as I know, NS does not run thru freights on the line any more. NS serves New England thru the greater Albany area, or perhaps also thru the cross NY Harbor carfloat. CSX has the ex-B&A, and perhaps thru the previously mentioned Oak Point connector.
Also something to remember: until completion of the New York Connecting Railroad and the Hell Gate Bridge route to Bay Ridge, the New Haven had an extensive break in trackage from the Bronx to points west and south across the Hudson. In early maps, in fact, the âmain lineâ of the NYCR was the route from the bridge to Bay Ridge, and not via Harold to Penn Station. In the years before 1917, New Haven had passenger trains from Boston to the South that actually bypassed the water ferry at New York entirely, going the âgreat way roundâ via the Maybrook line from New Haven and then connecting to the BelDel.
Even then, Bay Ridge still needed extensive lightering for freight connections. Whether or not âHylanâs Holesâ across the Narrows would have constituted a key link in New England traffic (the rail tunnel would have been a single bore with the Brooklyn end at right angles to the tracks in the Bay Ridge yard) in the absence of one of the grand multiple-railroad bridges like Lindenthalâs proposal (in 1916) is another story.
I do not know the proportion of traffic that was anthracite coal going to heat cities and towns in New England â that almost had to be a premise of the various railroads that served the west end of the bridge. That a Mallet was working this line for the approach grades to the bridge (mentioned in the Alco-GE promotional video) clearly hints that at one time coal traffic would have been substantial.
Seems likely in the era when most heating was with coal, preferably anthracite. Once homes had stokers, such as the âIron Firemanâ bituminous coal took over in my understanding.
Many home stokers were set up for anthracite, including the one in our house in Kingston (at 20 Gershom Place, built 1936) which had a Timken stoker. For some reason I never asked my grandfather how to run or service it, but we did have tin âash cansâ handy. Was still running when the house was flooded during Agnes.
Anthracite as a fuel is fired differently from bituminous: it needs a thin layer with comparatively large primary airflow (as carbon is relatively slow to light off, does not produce much of a luminous flame, but develops substantial heat from a given mass â the kind of heat that charcoal in a forge with forced draft can produce, which will melt conventional fire grates distressingly quickly. You can read the story of early attempts to burn anthracite in locomotives in Angus Sinclairâs History of the Locomotive Engine (a readable copy is on HathiTrust).