I’ve been reading about how some railroads used tugs and railcar ferries to move cars across bodies of water. Usually it was a river or the Great Lakes. But at one time a car ferry was used in the Puget Sound area, which is a tidal area. I know that the auto ferries use a ramp that can go up or down to allow for the different water levels as the tide changes. But how did they allow for tide changes with a railroad track? The water level can change 12 feet or more depending on the tide.
[#welcome] ! Any Pacific Northwest or B.C. folks out there able to help this guy?
- a.s.
Here are a couple of pages of interest.
http://www.alaskarails.org/industries/seattle-dock.html
http://www.alaskarails.org/route-map/cities/whittier/dock.html
The ramps here work on the same principal as auto ferry ramps. Here in Nanaimo the maximum tidal range is 16’, but usually the barges and ferrys run earlier or later on those days to avoid the highest and lowest tides. RDCs (which are long and low) are brought over only during moderate tides.
I’m sure the Great Lakes ramps and Mississippi River ramps also worked this way to adjust to water levels. The Milwaukee Road also had some floating pontoon bridges which needed adjustments as well.
The Great Lakes can change levels seasonally by a couple of feet. Usually the powers that be try to keep the changes to a minimum, but Mother Nature doesn’t always cooperate.
You can’t forget that the ferry/barge itself will change levels simply based on loading. I have no idea what that range would be.
Larry’s right–even if the body of water were perfectly calm and never changed level, the loading apron would have to be flexible enough to accommodate changes in deck height that occurred in the normal course of loading and unloading.
On Lake Michigan, these aprons could accommodate the loaded cars themselves, but usually didn’t handle the locomotives–a string of idler cars was used to shove or remove the cars (whether this was purely a weight consideration or fear of fires on the wooden aprons from steam locomotives isn’t really important–both C&O and GTW had their own switchers in Milwaukee that probably got changed out from time to time, though).
For big tidal ranges like Vancouver, I’d suggest that longer aprons would be needed; I think that one of Eric’s pictures from Seattle bears me out on that.
There is an article on Mississippi River ferries in the January 1984 Trains. It suggests the most common application there was to build rail lines into the river on an incline, and have a rail mounted ramp ride up and down carrying an additional set of rails on top, like this-
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1030898
St Ignace dock-
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=182246
IIRC, there was a blue-water trainferry service between several East Coast ports and pre-Castro Cuba. Also, the Great Lakes ferries were largely self-propelled, while the Port of New York was strictly car floats moved by tugs.
All car ferry slips had adjustable ramps, either pivoted at the shore end or ‘rolling wedge’ type. The latter are better for waterways with large variance between high and low water, but require a large amount of space.
In a tideway, it is possible to time loading and unloading to a particular tidal state, giving a “window” of 3-4 hours every twelve during which the shore-to-ferry ramp will not take on any unacceptable angles. Of course, depending on the time of the (Lunar) month, that window might be at some really inconvenient hour.
On a practical note, any kind of watercraft had to be kept in approximate balance. Frequently, cars would be added to or removed from the on-board tracks a few at a time to ease the stress on the ramp (which had to twist as well as rise and fall.) And anyone who switched a cut of loaded ore cars onto an outside track of an otherwise empty vessel would be looking for other employment (if he survived his encounters with the skipper, the portmaster and the salvage master.)
Chuck
The “Ann Arbor No. 4” did capsize in port while loaded ore jennies were being loaded onto one of the outside tracks. The general practice for loading the lake boats was: half of one of the inside tracks, all of the other inside track, the remainder of the first inside track, half of one of the outside tracks, all of the other outside track, the remainder of the first outside track.
And don’t forget the CN had a lot of experience with car ferries on the east coast there services to Newfoundland where the cars once unloaded had to be changed to narrow gauge trucks for the trip across Newfoundland.
There was also the CN car ferries to Prince Edward Island and they even had a west coast service to Victoria.
The CP ran rail car ferries to Vancover Island from Vancouver.
I am even old enough to remember when the Milwaukee Road operated rail barges to Port Townsend from Seattle.
Have watched the rail car barges for Alaska being loaded in Seattle.
I believe there is even rail car ferries or barges operating between Louisiana and Mexico.
Al - in - Stockton
The Milwaukee (later Seattle North Coast) had a rail ferry going from Seattle to Port Townsend, WA. I saw the Port Townsend dock once long ago; but I don’t remember much about it. (My attention was on the 1925 built boxcar in a parked work train. [:-^])
The low tide we had last month on Puget Sound (Western Washington) represented an 18" swing between high and low tides, greatest since about 1976. I watched a semi and trailer highcenter himself on the ramp from a (non-rail) barge. Rail service did use vertically flexible aprons (fixed on the shore end, rolling on the watercraft end) just as highway connections do, but simply did not operate at extreme high or low tides. The nickname of the narrow gauge Ilwaco Railroad and Navigation Company which ran on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula and from a dock at Megler, Washington to Astoria, Oregon was “The Railroad that Ran by the Tide.” It makes for a nifty prototype excuse for timing your trains on a model railroad. Jim Sabol here.
Jim again: (I hit the wrong key) That’s an eighteen foot swing, not eighteen inches. Sorry. So was the guy driving the semi.
Just to add a little, the seasonal variance of the height of the water in lower the Mississippi River is huge. Before the opening of the Huey P. Long Bridge for the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad and its connecting carriers ca. 1936, ferries moved the cars across the river. Ramp lengths and angles were limited by the levies and also somewhat by the inability of the ferries to block the channel to other navigation, although presumably a ramp could angle down to the river and not be perpendicular to it. So don’t assume this was not a problem on rivers!
Hello All,
The Kettle Valley Railway, part of the CPR system through southern BC, had an extensive system of rail ferries running IIRC on the Arrow Lakes, Kootenay Lake and Okanagan Lake from about 1910 through about 1965 or so. It ran with a series of tugs, riverboats and barges, most of which are gone as are the docking facilities. As water levels fluctuated on the lakes they had a series of ramps at Penticton and elsewhere, not unlike the carferry loading ramps common today.
Most of the KVR is gone now. I recall the track being pulled at Midway, BC in the mid 1970’s IIRC and orderly stacks of rails awaiting removal. The Midway depot remains as a museum.
The only remaining piece of equipment of which I am aware is the SS Moyie, a riverboat that KVR sailed on Kootenay Lake. It is beached at Kaslo, BC and has been restored by the Kaslo Historical Society. I went through it about 10 years ago and they had done a fine job of it. There are a lot of archived photos of the KVR rail ferry operation throughout the Southern Interior and a number of booklets published with photos and informative text. I’ll try and find these in the next week or so and post relevant bibliography.
Hope this helps
Charlie
Chilliwack BC
P.S.
Make that 1935. The Huey P. Long Bridge’s official opening ceremony was on Monday, December 16, 1935, and it seems probable that some trains crossed somewhat before then.
How do the powers that be do that?
Controlling how much water is allowed to flow (‘dumped’ to those of us north of the border) down the Chicago Sanitary and Ship (mind how you spell that) Canal to the Illinois River and thence to the Mississippi. Also there is some control possible at the Welland Canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario, but not much.
I’m afraid that the “powers that be” cannot control the levels of the Great Lakes. Any attempt to do so with the Ship and Sanitary Canal would result in severe flooding of the Illinois River and would most likely have very little effect on the level. Just think about Niagara Falls a moment and picture how much water flows over the falls. That is a wide open flow to the St. Lawrence River (ultimately) from the Great Lakes. Mother nature controls the levels of the lakes, not man.
The SS Badger sails between Ludington, MI and Manitowoc, WI during it’s operating season. It has the ramps similar to those shown in the pictures, only shorter. Badger was originally a rail car ferry, going into service for the Pere Marquette Railroad in 1953 and still is a coal fired, steam powered vessel. The rails have been paved over and she is now used as an automobile and passenger ferry. She can handle very heavy trucks which most modern ferries like the Lake Express out of Muskegon,MI cannot.
As I said, Mother Nature has a tendency to confound efforts to control lake levels, but there is an international body (the International Joint Commission) specifically charged with coordinating exactly that. There is quite the controversy ongoing right now about how to best do it. As GT suggests, there is a lot of interaction involved - if Lake Superior is too high, you can’t just dump water into Lakes Michigan and Huron - you have to consider how fast they can get rid of it, too.
Lake Superior can be controlled to a degree by the dams at Sault Ste. Marie. The Chicago canal has already been mentioned. The Welland Canal offers some control, and the dams at the St Lawrence Power Project in and around Massena, NY, offer control of Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River.
That said, low water levels in Lake Superior over the past few years have resulted in lower water levels in the rest of the lakes. You can’t fill up a bucket unless the tap is running.
The IJC’s challenge is to maintain suitable water levels for shipping and recreation all along the system, while at the same time ensuring sufficient water to generate power at the power dams.
It’s not an easy task. Google the IJC and “Plan B+” for some insight. Here’s an example.