It's NOvember 16 and not much has happened since my last blog entry. Weel, that's not really true. I have done alot of thinking about what to call my layout.
Now I don't know what others have gone thru to come up with a name for their layouts but I don't really like being cutesy. I am no John Allen so I shy away from names like the Gorre and Dephetid. I also tried not to be so true to life that I would call my line the New york Connecting Railroad sinc ethat doesn't run the distance mine layout will cover. I could have used the Cross-Harbor Line but that isn't descriptive of what my railroad is all about. For that I had to create some historical fiction.
My layout is supposed to depict the trackage that runs from the car float aprons in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn thrue Brooklyn into Queens and onto the Hell Gate Bridge. It then goes thru Oak Point Yard in the Bronx and then thru Westchester County of New York into Connecticut and terminates in New Haven, Connecticut. In addition to trains running from Bay Ridge, there is also traffic coming from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and running via the Hell Gate Bridge (the real one has 4 tracks on it) and up to New Haven, Connecticut as well. So there is going to be a lot of traffic running on the line.
So I went thru a number of iterations on coming up with a name. These included the Tri-Boro Line (too hokey and it's been done): Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Connecticut (a mouthfull and think of all the lettering that would need to go on the equipemnt and rolling stock), Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and new Haven (same problem as before); and a number of others which I won't bother discussing.
Then I remembered something I had learned when taking computer programming courses as an undergrad in college. It's know as the KISS Principle. And no it has nothing to do with former rock bands with wierd makup and tongues lashing out. The word KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Son. So applying this principle to the naming of my layout I came up with something which is fairly obvious: The Bay Ridge and New Haven. Lettering is simplified. Amtrak can easily fit into the operation and best of all I can use former Conrail, New Haven, and Long Island Railroad locomotives and equipment ot fill out my roster.
The only remaining problem seems to be the car floats that will carry railroad cars between Greenville (not modeled on the layout) and Bay Ridge (which is modelled on the layout. So I've done a lot of reading about and viewing photographs of this kind of service in the Port of New York. I've also been looking for the answer to a particular question which has come into my head because of what I haven't seen in those photos. I've noticed that virtually all the car floats used in this service were moved by tugboats. Now I have nothing against tugboats but it seems to me that it would have made sense to at least experiment with having some of the car floats be self propelled at least in the later years of the service. Now the reason I bring this up is that the last few car floats built were anywhere from 290 to 360 feet in length and something like 50 feet wide.
During World War II, the US built around 1000 vessels known as LSTs. These ships were flat bottomed and were 328 feet long and certainly wide enough to carry 3 or 4 tracks on their tank decks. They could easily have managed 20 - 25 cars on those tracks and could have carried them across the harbor ar a speed of 5 knots and possibly faster. No tug and car floats could they have gone that fast. The distance between Greenville Yard in NJ and Bay Ridge, NY is 3 1/2 miles. crossing ta stretch of water was a a 1 to 1 1/2 hour ordeal in the best of times using two car floats carrying 17 cars each for a total of 34 landing at the aprons. Two LST size self propelled car floats could land 40 to 50 cars in a 45 minute time frame.
Now I don't claim to know why it wasn't done but it wouldn't saurprise me if the reason is because the traffic flow was decreasing due to the fact that industry and businesses were fleeing the New York City and Long Island area due to problems that had more to do with taxes and unions than anything else. So with less traffic and pleanty of available car floats, no economic need for LST type car floats existed. But you can bet I'm going to look into this further.
As always, feel free to let me know what you think and provide criticisms and suggestions freely.
Irv
Irv, Just as an FYI, LST's
Irv,
Just as an FYI, LST's are still used for moving equipment in the Phillipines. My father has a brother-in-law who works for a copper mine there, who told us about this. When the mine bought some large dump trucks from a Japanese firm 2 or 3 years ago, they were shipped to Manila (I think...) by freighter, then ferried to the island with the mine by LST.
Converting an LST to a car ferry might be very interesting. I don't think it would be too implausible.
Have you ever seen the Southern Pacific car ferrys? I don't know exactly where they operated, but I saw a model of one once at the Maritime Museum in San Diego. The model had large side paddlewheels in shrouds, and 2 tracks down the center. I thought it was neat.
Rail car ferrys
There was one on the cover of the previous MicroMark catalogue. It was a steam powered ferry so it was not my era. It obviously did peek my curiosity though.
Irv