New York Division-Bergen Line - Part Deux!

[minerman146]

I have been dying to get the Harlem Station done enough to put RudiJaeger's 44Tonner on and run it around. After reworking the track another 3 times, I have settled in on the 1968 and final iteration of the Erie Railroad's 149th Street Transfer Station in the Bronx, NY. The biggest issue is scenery references for the time period. I have about 10 images to work with. Historical Areals is almost useless, but it did have a great shot from 1980 which clearly showed the freight house position in relation to the Major Deegan Expressway and the 149th Street Bridge. So we put in what we can, add a little 'imagineering" and we shall see how this all works out in the coming weeks.

First, a map view:

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So here are some sceen shots of Rudi Jaegers repaint in its Native Environment on the Harlem River in the Bronx.

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And last, the pride and joy of this build, is the Car Float. Yep, we hacked together a float with parts. The Barge is a concrete bridge support, with bridge filler for the deck, a dock is the walkway in the center and the walkway roof is a flat station roof.

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Many thanks to Rudy Jaeger for thinking of the Minermen and for inspiring yet another detour on the Bergen!

[buzz456]

Screenshot_New York Division - Bergen Line_41.23537--74.17835_14-57-03.jpg

[RudiJaeger]

Many thanks to Rudy Jaeger for thinking of the Minermen and for inspiring yet another detour on the Bergen!

It was my pleasure, and worth the effort to see the little 44 tonners working on the Bergen; I'm happy you guys like the paintjobs. That's some fine work being done on the Harlem Station. Cheers! ~ Rudi

@ Buzz: Nice shot!

[minerman146]

I've spent the past few days reading up on car floats and all the traffic that traversed the Hudson River to bring goods into New York City. While I stay focused on the Erie and Lackawanna, the Central Of New Jersey, Lehigh Valley also play prominent roles. Remember its a heck of a lot easier to get freight into Manhattan crossing the river that running up North past Albany on the New York (huck-tooey) Central. So, as I am working working on the Harlem Station for the Erie, right next door on the other side of the 149th St Bridge is the, I would say famous, CNJ Bronx Terminal.

This is an image of a model of the site:

CNJ Terminal.jpg

Wow !
Suffice to say - this is a completely undeveloped type of railroad service not done in Train Simulator. This is also something for the budding route builder to tackle. And it looks like a heck of a lot of switching fun.

The quick history is that there were car float operations that crossed the Hudson from the late 19th Century through the late 1960's. But believe it or not, there is an operation that runs between Jersey City and Brooklyn; Read about it here"
https://gizmodo.com/a-rare-trip-on-the- ... 1557809294

I want to point out that, for me, RudiJaeger really opened up a can of worms with his 44 Tonner. Obviously that got me building Harlem Station. But even more interesting is the Hoboken Shore Railroad. I keep telling everyone that will listen what a unique railroad that the Erie, Lackawanna and EL were. But lets read up a bit on Weehawken, the Erie and the HSRR: http://www.macrodyn.com/ldsig/wiki/inde ... ley_Triggs

These shots are from the 1970's

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Here is the plan. I recreate Manhattan from Battery Park to George Washington Bridge, both East and West Sides, and the Jersey side of the Hudson from Liberty State Park, to Fort Lee. THEN put in ALL of the railroads! I should be done in 5-7 years! I am kidding of course, but who is to say someone might want to take this on? There is just soooo much railroad in the Hoboken area - it boggles the imagination!

Ill stick with my Harlem Station - so that you can get a taste of the car float operations and how that relates to the rest of the route.

Something fun to consider.

Before my guests come I need to squeeze this shot in. YES, I can get the 1960s in here!

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[minerman146]

The famous Wednesday (delayed) Route Update
Friday Update Status
[x] Walk of shame
[ ] Sure, why not?

Well, it looks like there will not be an update tomorrow. I prefer completed sections for release and we don't have one at the moment. Currently, we have a partially worked on Carlton Hill and this surprise new work, where we just flew the heck off the beaten path to La La Land. Yes, we are in the Bronx! There is a ton of research work going on to get the skyline in order for 1968. We do dip in the past, but not to this extent. And this adventure is way different in anything we have attempted before. As always, I hope this work registers with some of you and it will get a workout by budding and experienced hoggers who really want a change of pace. I think 13 tracks in a 500 by 700 foot postage stamp should do the trick.

Tonight's conversation is going to be history. It has to be in a superficial way, unfortunately, as I only have some much time, and space, to write. ( I need to be building not talking about it). So, we are in the Bronx, on the Harlem River. Its 1968 or so, across the street, is the Bronx Terminal Market. On the other, West side, is the Harlem river and the car floats. Nearby is Yankee Stadium, New York Central track is to our North and East. And we are so uptown in Manhattan its the Bronx. Lets talk context. There are few points I want to make, and weave those into this route build and what I am trying to accomplish. First the context. In your mind, you have to imagine Manhattan. In 1970, there were 7.8 million people here, its 13 by 2 miles wide and one of the most densely populated parts of the world. Think also about what sustains a city: heating, cooling, electricity, building materials, water, clothing and a massive amount of food. Every single yard, past and current, points to Manhattan. And how do get all these goods into the city? By Ship, by train and by truck. The infrastructure to transport and store this material boggles the mind. Yet, it was done in the time of horses and ships with sails to today with its trucks and container ships. At one time Manhattan was ringed with docks. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the island was ringed by tall mast ships, then docks and rails, then docks to the lesser, rail and way more highways and bridges. In terms of our railroad universe, remember, every single Class 1 in the North East, was here to serve this metropolitan area. As, an aside, I am trying work out how many cars a day went to the island. I am thinking several hundred per day, not counting what ever the Central was delivering from the North. Its was and is, a massive operation. Take a look along the Hudson, around New York Harbor on satellite imagery and see the tracks today. Remember, this is all a shadow of what rail traffic was, even 50 years ago.

Back to Bergen line and context. I am covering the Erie here for the most part. It was one of a dozen railroads that served the New York Metropolitan area. I dont intend to shut out all the other railroads. To stay focused, and save on typing, we will keep it Erie. Now, what is really amazing for me, is that in doing the Bergen, I am not just looking into the past disinterestedly, but I am looking back with my own eyes that saw this place at that time. I was alive when this Harlem Terminal was operating! So, now I am finding myself reliving the past, as I research the area and backdate it. What struck me about New York City and North Jersey at the time was the sheer size of the city and the expanse of industry and rail that runs into and around the city. The other part that I was dumbstruck about was how OLD everthing was. New York Harbor was heavilly indstrustrial, heavily populated and what wasnt burnt out was one huge brick factory after another with smoking stacks, and steam that rose up in a cloud that hung over the entire region. Trains? Everywhere moving, vast yards with hundreds if not thousands of cars. Tiny specks of cars and trucks running over distant bridges and highways in every diretion. So, doing this research floods me with memories of this industrial ... spectacle of the North East. It blows me away now, having seen GG1s fly over Croxton Yard, then, 4 or 5 years later seeing them lined up rusted, with "CR" stencilled on them awaiting the scrapper. I caught the sad end of an era. But, at that time, you could clearly see what was the industrial might of the United States is this region. You could also see it was in decline, rotting away, with bulldozers and excavators removing the dead tissue to preserve the rest. New York City was bankrupt, covered in grafitti, as so broke, it couldnt tear down its own abandoned structures. The stuctures stood untill they burnt down on thier own, leaving much of the Bronx, for expample, looking like Dresden in 1945. I kid you not, it was literally square miles of decay, fallen brick, abandoned vehicles, a wasteland. Hoboken wasnt much better, with is collapsing docks and warehouses. So many building with out windows, some burned, some collapsed. Yet, the Erie Lackawanna and what was left of the other railroads, still moved fright and people each day through this brick wastland. Now, I am mentally in the early 70s, it was just a sad mess, like the biggest junk yard you ever say. People were living and working in this area. And there I am with my Dad, in the cab of some train, just awed by it all, its 1974 and I am just soaking this all up.

Ill try and stop here, as, if I had the time and inclination, I would just write the book and be done with it.

My route build and why I do this. Its not, believe it or not, to recapture the past. It is to understand, why the railroad was there, its purpose and how it fit in to North Jersey and Manhattan. I simply could not grasp, 45 years ago, what all this was there and why it was falling apart. And in the time since, I wanted to understand. The Bergen, is not just the reprenstation of a real place, its also an economic and business study of a single railroad, specifially from the Hudson River to the wooded wilderness of the Delaware River Valley. For me, it all leads to Bergen County and them choosing to fill swamps in with factories, refineries, and rail yards to serve Manhattan. I think what would capture what I saw, in just one place, would be Patterson, NJ. So old, so industrial, so decayed it, in one place, could capture what I have been writing about here.

In closing, its one thing to talk about history. In this medium, I can show it to you. This is my take on railroad history and using Train Simulator, instead as Railroad Simulator. Know this, the deep scenery is not just fill in all you can see, but its repicates the environment, the context of rail operations. This, I think, give you a 'feel' of the place an awareness that your physically part of the world, even though its completely virtual.

*90 minutes of typing for all this... geez.

[NYWhiskey]

*90 minutes of typing for all this... geez.

Great read, although you could have built the High Line in that time. Just kidding...

[buzz456]

*90 minutes of typing for all this... geez.

Great read, although you could have built the High Line in that time. Just kidding...

[minerman146]

Great read, although you could have built the High Line in that time. Just kidding...

Yeah I could have laid down a dozen structures or so in that time. I had to write it down as it was epiphany time. I have had a ton of learnin' with this build.
Tonight - I get some more buildings down. This will take a few weeks to do.

You two lugs are real characters - let me tell ya.

[minerman146]

Last night I got about 4 solid hours of work done up in the Bronx. Much of the time was spent repositioning buildings and researching their dimensions. So, turning back the clock 50 years, is not insurmountable, it just not easy.

Spin over at OVSRails posed a question to me. And he wanted to know where the floats came from on the Jersey side of the Hudson. Since its more fun and time consuming to put pictures up and explain it, I chose the 1 hour of time option to get it all out here. Hey, we might need all this research in the future. I have definitely amassed research material over the years, in case, we decide to do the EL 1970 version of the route. At this stage, and I will use a paraphrase of a comment by exrailwayman here: your kitbashing knows no bounds but you have just about depleted the assets you have limited yourself to. This is completely true. I an keep hacking away with what I have to work with, but my models are getting more and more complex and missing the detail of the orginal object I am trying to create. So, I am bumping into the need for actual models to create the vision. This circles all the way back to me either being a developer or to show a developer the Bergen and what its potential is. This Harlem Station detour and the images below are case in point. So back to Spin's question.

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I took a Historical Areal Shot and laid over the current version of the Bergen. So, what we see on the route and high-rise buildings to the South of Hoboken Terminal, was a missive rail yard. This was for Lackawanna and the Erie, and the Eire Pavonia Terminal was here too. The big white arrow shows the where the float bridges where. The historical image is from 1979 and that is way I remember it, it was just overgrown and very infrequently used. As we see today, this was torn up and developed.

The image below is taken from the book Tidewater Terminals of the Erie Lackawanna by William H Sheppard. Which you can do like I did, and buy it on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Tidewater-Termin ... B00K60IZPQ
Mr. Sheppard was a signal operator for the Erie and EL and a gentlemen I know sent me pdfs of other drawings he did which enabled me to signal and speed the Boonton line I did a few months ago. So, note his original drawings were to augment what they used in the manage the trains on the New York Division from the perspective of the signals department.

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This image shows the extent of the yard trackage in Jersey City/Hoboken. If you look carefully you can see where he noted the car float berths.

So for Spin - here is the location where the floats originate for Harlem Terminal. Because of the way I merge all these era's, I unfortunately cant add these docks to the current integration of the Bergen. But as I keep saying - the EL was quite an interesting railroad!

[minerman146]

I pushed the pedal to the metal this weekend and got some serious scenery laid out. I did the research, checked my maps, found some interesting shots of the Bronx House of Detention and THEN I was ready. All, I wanted to do was just fill some scenery in so I can take some more pictures of Rudi's 44 Tonner. Boy, did I get my self in trouble. I have 20 hours in on just research. The Bronx Terminal Market is part of a 200 million dollar urban development project. Which means they are tearing down just about everything. The site of the Harlem Station itself is slated to be turned into condos and, get this, The Universal Hip-Hop Museum. You know Hip Hop is getting olden when it warrants a museum. Amiright?

Well lets start with the ugly. The Bronx is not just urban, its like uber-urban. Its old, its new, its derelict, its thriving. Its all kinds of stuff. And this area lies in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. The Stadium is just 2000 feet from our site. And no, I cant put in Yankee Stadium. Lucky for me there is a big fat ridge in between the terminal the stadium - so no line of sight (that I know of). The picture below, shows what is done as of right now. I am trying to confine my work to 2 square kilometers, it looks like it will be 4, so that you get 360 degrees of deep scenery around our work area.

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The tree line in the distance is about 2km away to the North. If I swing the view around to the South, I can see the Empire State Building, and I will fill in 2km in that direction as well. I am paying attention to the buildings. With Historical Aerials, I can see 1968 and what is there and not place the new stuff, to try to keep this accurate.

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Looking to the North, from left to right we have: The Harlem River Drive, the Harlem Rive and the Major Deegan Expressway. The Major Deegan was built in 1954, right over Exterior St. and DOES NOT look as nice and clean as we see here. On each side of the highway on ground level are freight houses, the ones on the left were rail served by the New York Central. The Exterior St side is where the trucks would pull up. The buildings extend about 1500 feet to the North. The large brick building is another very large freight house - about 6 stories high. Out of the shot and to the right of the freight house is (was) the Bronx County Jail. All these buildings were torn down in the past 10 years. Below is a better shot of the freight houses.

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I think the view under the Major Deegan is interesting. I have issues the supports as the cross members should be about 3 feet high instead of what looks like 8 inches with my hacked gantry. I will find some steel to get this to look better. Here you can see how close the freight houses were to the street. Fortunately, I found a 1930 picture of this view without the Major Deegan, and all the structures were there. I positioned them based on the photograph and a 1980 aerial which had the buildings still there.

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As I come to shot #5, the scenery to the North is in, and can get a decent shot with the Harlem River and some decent scenery. As always I match building foot prints, and the height of structures to get you that 'real deal feel' you have come to know and love here on the Bergen.

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In conclusion, the Harlem Station is starting to fall together after a rough start. Thanks to RudiJaeger, I am now on a wild detour to make a place for a very special, one of a kind Erie engine, and do it in a very specific time. Makes ya wonder if I am ever going to finish this thing. But, I just cant pass up such a unique operation. And since, I can hack my way through with my limited kit and make it work, I say - Go for it!

[RudiJaeger]

Well, if you guys ever lose your hair over this, you can always blame it on me eh?

Seriously, that's some beautiful work, and I admire the research being put into this project. So the stadium was only 2,000 ft away ...wonder if there are any urban legends of "The Mick" knocking a ball into the yards? ..wouldn't surprise me

[minerman146]

Well, if you guys ever lose your hair over this, you can always blame it on me eh?

Seriously, that's some beautiful work, and I admire the research being put into this project. So the stadium was only 2,000 ft away ...wonder if there are any urban legends of "The Mick" knocking a ball into the yards? ..wouldn't surprise me

Actually blaming you is "Plan B"
Yankee Stadium is so very close, and to think, all those times I have been to the stadium. Even this year, I didnt even think of the Harlem River and this little place. I was very aware, I was on the Hudson River Line as I take the train from Peekskill, NY to the E153rd St Station. So I definitely have been here! Aside from the kidding around and all the work to do this, I swear I think this will be very interesting for people who have never been here before. And certainly all our friends out there, who are not from the US, I think, will get a kick out of seeing this rendered. I mean seriously, who would tour the Bronx on vacation - even if you were a total train-nut! (other than me.)

The other cool part - that I actually think will happen: someday someone who plays the Bergen on Train Sim, will be driving through here, not realizing, why it looks so familiar. Then, it will hit them. THIS I love when it happens on other parts of the route. I really do try to get everything down as it is, even with my hacked buildings. But the size, placement and proportions are all there. It happens to me on occasion - its kinda creepy, when I see what I did in real live. Trust me ... its pretty darn close!

[minerman146]

Got some good work in to the South of the Erie Terminal. I just hacked together the Harlem River Lift Bridge. This bridge is actually 2 lift bridges that carries the Harlem Line to 125th St. Read up on the bridge! http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2014/ ... ft-bridge/

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Not too shabby - the biggest challenge and most of the time spent was determining. 1. The height of the bridge over the waster (205ft) at its highest point, establishing the height of the track (21ft) and keep that in relation to all the roads and highways that go under the track. I forget how much time I spend working on elevations, particularly roads, as I use those to establish building height. For underpasses, my final check is to throw a tractor trailer under, if it fits I'm good. Some times, I doubt myself when the trailer doesn't fit. Then I go to street view and start looking for the clearance signs that are posted.

I had to put the bridges in to the South to start working on the back ground scenery for the Terminal. Once the highways and base street elevations are established then I can start dropping more structures.

Before I started on the Harlem Lift Bridge, I loaded up the New York - New Haven Route in editor to check DTGs bridge out. The did a great job with it. Then I peeked to the North and saw where that route terminates and Yankee Stadium. I had forgotten that. I had an 'oh no' moment where like Hoboken, I end up doing part of what DTG has done. I very rarely check out other routes, so as to not get influenced by other techniques. It's better I do it my way, rather that imitating other routes. ( though I did thoroughly analyze DTGs Hoboken Track Work and how they handled the grade )

Below are shots from roughly the same place. The Harlem Armory is in the lower right corner as a reference point. And low and behold is Yankee Stadium.

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Lastly, for the life of me, I don't know why someone doesn't just do the Hudson Line from Yankee Stadium. Forget Poughkeepsie, just do 30 miles to get past Croton Harmon and the Servicing facility there. Its also the end of electric service. I think even with my kit I could bash together the Tappan Zee Bridge. The original not the new one. You also pick up some freight yards and Croton is famous in New York Central Land. IT would be a nice route extension for the New York - New Haven Route.

[LuisaA]

I'm confused. How is this going to be linked to the Bergen line?

[minerman146]

I'm confused. How is this going to be linked to the Bergen line?

Harlem Station is linked via tug boat and car float from Hoboken. The Erie RR. Had these tiny yards served by a single switcher, to move boxcars off of car floats in both The Bronx and Manhattan. This build will allow us to simulate the switching. My QD and any scenarios would involve shunting cars on/off the car floats and placing cars for unloading at team tracks or docks at a freight house. I hope this helps.