LONG ISLAND CITY
 

LI City Aerial View 1936
Archive: NYS Collection

1955 and LI City is busy indeed!

Sunnyside Yard  Rendering 1904

       In 1910 the Pennsylvania Railroad had completed its terminal in New York City, which was connected by tunnels to New Jersey, and under the East River to Long Island. At Sunnyside the large yard of the Pennsylvania Railroad was constructed. An agreement was made with that Railroad and the Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad Company whereby the cars of the Long Island Railroad would be carried through the tunnels under the East River into the Terminal at Seventh Avenue and Thirty-second Street, New York. Thus the Long Island Railroad acquired what successive administrations had striven for in vain, a terminal on Manhattan Island. In order to reach this terminal it was necessary to electrify from Jamaica to New York, which was accomplished in 1910, and the first train run into the Pennsylvania Station on September 10th of that year.    Felix E. Reifschneider's  1925 Long Island Rail Road History

LI City Float Bridges 3 & 4 gone by the ‘40s new 5 & 6 active LI City
 Station

LI City floats # 1-5 c.19xx?

LIRR #462 on  Montauk Cutoff 10/1974 
Photo: Joe Daly

LIRR #155-156 RF15 on Montauk Cutoff crossing 49th Ave View N 12/08/1977 Archive: Henry Wagner

Montauk Branch Cut-off
LI City Borden Ave 02/18/2008
Photo: Joe Gregory

Montauk Cut-off above the oncoming C420 View east at Hunters Point Ave Station platform Photo: Joe Daly 10/1974

Yard A looking NW
c. 1980
 Photo: Steven Lynch

Yard A LIRR #C64 N22
Photo c. 1964+  Steve Hoskins

Arch St. NY City rock salt  piles c.1986 as Citicorp Tower not yet built. 
Archive: Henry Wagner

LIRR #460 Alco S-2 with Idler Car c.1958
Dave Keller Archive

ALCO S1 #418, S2 #52 LI City 10/04/76
Photo: Goldstein Archive: Dave Keller

Sternberger Warehouse to the left, Peter Mallon/ Bickford's on the right.

Note 1:

This looks like a “Barney”arrangement.  A small car, the barney,  would run on those two inner rails, pulled by cables which you can see in the middle of the track.  When up on the level with the normal track, it would stick up high enough to engage the coupler of an engine, which it could them move along the track.  When not in use, it would be rolled down into the pit so as to clear normal movements.  This sort of thing was used to push hoppers up into the car dumpers that used to exist at Jersey City and Weehawken , and also was used at CNJ’s Ashley inclined plane, pushing car up the mountain from Wilkes Barre. 

I wasn’t aware that such a thing had existed at Sunnyside.   Probably was originally put in when there was only 3rd rail, and DD-1 and L-5 locomotives.  You wouldn’t want 3rd rail around a maintenance pit.  That whole engine house was designed to work on a production line basis, engines moving through in one direction only.  Using a steam switcher would have been a nuisance as it would have had to run around using another track.  The barney avoided that and was probably electric powered, thus in keeping with the modern standards PRR had in mind in the whole Penn Station complex.  Commentary: Henry Raudenbush  07/09/2008

Sunnyside Yard  Rendering C. 1956 by Robert Wegner
Trains Magazine

LI City Station Area - Hunters Point Yard

R. F. Drahlman Steel at left LIRR #601 1970's Railfan Special

LIRR #261  LICity

C420 #227, GP38 #259, C420 #228, GP38 #267 and trains in passenger yard- L. I. City, NY - 2/9/78 Wm. Madden photo, Dave Keller archive

LI City 9/21/04 
Archive: Chris & Amy Cate

LIRR #228 01-31-79

LIRR #263  LICity

Satellite view of this area

LI City 1989

LI City Aerial View 2011

Built in 1905, as part of an enormous expansion and electrification project of the Long Island Railroad and Pennsylvania Railroad, which culminated with the completion of New York City’s Penn Station in 1910. 

First planned as two separate power stations in Jamaica, Queens and West Side Manhattan, the project was relocated to Long Island City, as this location was central to Manhattan and Brooklyn. This original power station used steam turbines, powered by burning coal, to boil water for steam. By the time Penn Station was opened, it was providing 32,500 kW of energy to tunnels into the station.

LI City Westbound to LI City Passenger Yard view NE (see map to right)
Archive: R. McEnery

Hunters Point Ave Station

Dutch Kills - Texas Oil, Kearny

 Dutch Kills Creek Area, c.1946 

Photos above of  Texas Oil:  Available from: Queenspix.com

Texas Oil: 2 track siding, PRR, Office of Chief Eng. 05/20/1946
Texas Oil: 1 track siding Emery map, 11/14/1960 
Texaco: 1 track siding 3 car capacity 06/1966, LIRR map
Texaco: gone 1978, Degnon Terminal map

Wheelspur Yard

LI City detail of Hunter's Point and Newton Creek area. Circa 1946-1954 as the Pulaski Bridge is under construction on this map.

Wheelspur Yard -1904
Collection: Art Huneke 

Wheelspur Yard - c.1948
Collection: Dave Keller

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Montauk cutoff drawbridge at “M” cabin, looking west. Photo:  Art Huneke 1955

As a point of reference, the photographer of this Wheelspur photo would have been standing approximately in front of the first or second string of passenger cars above. Info: Dave Keller

      Phelps-Dodge Copper Refining and Chemical Production Plant 1920-1983

Phelps-Dodge 06/06/1951 Aerial view Archive: Phil Goldstein

The Laurel Hill copper refinery was built in 1905 by the Nichols Refining Company for electrolytic refining of  'blister' copper.  Most of the copper was done for Phelps-Dodge Company, and came from it's smelters in Arizona.  In 1928, Nichols built another refinery near El Paso, Texas.  In 1930 Phelps-Dodge acquired both refineries.  After P-D acquisition, the Laurel Hill refinery processed scrap copper from the eastern US, and blister copper from the southwest, and possibly some from South America.  P-D closed the Laurel Hill facility in 1984.

An electrolytic copper refinery would take 'blister' copper (95-99% pure copper), and by an electro-chemical process produce 99.99% pure copper (electrical grade) cathodes.  The waste 'sludge' from this process would be mostly gold, silver and/or other precious metals. This would be treated at a precious metal refinery, often on-site at the copper refinery.
The end products at Laurel Hill would have included copper cathodes (sheets), and copper 'wirebar' (a 265-pound bar that would be melted and drawn into wire).

A photo taken in the 1950 or 60's shows standard gauge 40' boxcars with cast copper anodes being unloaded, and the anodes being placed on narrow gauge 8 wheel flatcars, appx 30 anodes on the narrow gauge rack type car. Since each anode weighs appx. 600-750 pounds,  I'd assume some type of mechanical motive power was in use.

Plymouth Locomotive Works ( a 'critter' locomotive builder in Ohio) did build at least three 21" gauge locomotives for P-D at Laurel Hill:

All were Plymouth model "RGT" with Hercules gas engines.   a 5-ton in 1959,  a 6-1/2 ton in 1959, and  a 6-1/2 ton in 1960.
I've never seen pictures of these, they probably were built open, without traditional cabs.  These would be about the size of a tractor.  There may well have been additional locomotives.

Both responses indicate use of rubber tired tractors to move the in-plant cars.  This is very probable too, as most(if not all) of the narrow gauge track would have been imbedded in pavement, or the floors of the buildings.

This style of narrow-gauge tramway was very common in older industrial plants and in other copper refineries.  Anaconda's refinery in New Jersey had 30"gauge, US Metals in New Jersey had 24"gauge, the ASARCO refinery in Baltimore had a 21.5"gauge Outside Flange tramway.  The current P-D refinery near El Paso still has 30"gauge in use.  By the 1960's plants were being built without the trams, using overhead cranes, trucks and large forklifts to do the job.

Laurel Hill Chemical Works 1881 
G.H. Nichols Proprietors later Nichols Copper Co. prior to Phelps Dodge 1930s

"Dead Man's Curve", so named because of the many workers who were killed by oncoming trains while crossing the tracks to and from work at the "Laurel Hill Works"

View west of  46th St./ Clifton Avenue crossing, site of the old Laurel Hill station. Clifton Ave crossing closed 1918 

Employees crossing the tracks to get to work got hit by westbounds not making the station stop or, after the station was discontinued, not preparing to make ANY stop!

Phelps-Dodge cars were stored in Bliss yard where the afternoon Bliss job would bring new cars in from Yard A and make up the afternoon train, following the drill order, for the Laurel Hill job. 

"...Bliss was used by LIRR freight and had an engine terminal so that steam engines did not have to run reverse all the way to Morris Park. This was also gone by 1957. In my time, Bliss yard was used to store cars for Phelps Dodge, Van Iderstine and other customers between Greenpoint Ave and PD. Also cars for Murers sidings were stored here. Crews reported at Yard A and brought cars to Bliss before making up their trains for their respectful switching areas.
The afternoon Bliss job made up the train for the crew that switched Phelps Dodge..." JJ Earl

Laurel Hill job went to work at Yard A and usually went right to Laurel Hill siding to gather all westbounds ordered out from Phelps Dodge and several other sidings in the area. These westbounds were taken to Yard A and the crew would return to Bliss, put the engine in the west end of it’s train in the yard. The conductor rode on the rear (lead) car, using a back-up hose so that he had control of the air brake. 

The move was made with hand signals. In the dark these were made using an electric lantern. 
When all was ready, the crew shoved the train the mile to Laurel Hill switch and the first customer was Phelps Dodge. 

Phelps Dodge had four tracks, all on a downgrade toward Newtown Creek and great care had to be taken that these heavy copper cars did not get away while shoving in. The usual drill called for about fifteen to twenty cars in and the same number out every night. Author: JJ Earl

Phelps-Dodge  2000
Photo: Bernie Ente

Phelps-Dodge Nichols Siding 1974
View west  Photo: Richard F. Makse

Location: The private grade crossing into the Phelps Dodge copper refinery. Nichols Siding, named after the Nichols Copper Co In the 50's and 60's. 

The lead to Phelps-Dodge is the track to the left of the train. This landmark industrial site on Newtown Creek, was long the LIRR's best freight customer and was so important as to justify its own freight clerk and station designation ("Laurel Hill"), a job that worked in one of the myriad ancient brick buildings of the complex until the early 60's. Phelps-Dodge, a company with ancient roots in NYC and a supply link to copper mines off the SP and the Tucson, Cornelia and Gila Bend in far away Arizona, signaled to the world why the ancient and fragrant colonial waterway of Newtown Creek represented the greatness of New York at the inland port of Maspeth.  Info: Richard F. Makse

Click on map to enlarge

LI Rail Road Emery Maps 1959
Click on maps/photos to enlarge

Photo: Nick Kalis Collection

But in 1910, with the opening of the East River tunnels, practically all the passenger traffic from Manhattan was carried in electric trains over the Main Line. This made it impossible to route freight trains from the old North Side yards over the Main Line, as had been formerly done, as it would interfere with passenger train operation. Accordingly, this elevated freight connection, known as the Montauk Freight Cut-Off, was built from the North Side yards to a connection with the Montauk Division at Dutch Kills Creek, a distance of over two miles. 

Felix E. Reifschneider's 1925 Long Island Rail Road History

Present day Montauk Cutoff view from the Citiwide Self-Storage Bldg, 9th Floor  Photo: Kevin Katta, November, 2007

1.  LIRR Yard A Office  Note: 3rd rail (1910) which was taken out in 1951

2.  Both views east c.1934+

Yard A view west American Steel Wool Co. behind 
Yard Office. 8/14/1981


MOW car painting yard, view west, Yard Office rear 08/21/1977 
Archive: Dave Keller

LIRR #156 with Float Reacher car view SW

LIRR #458 with High and Wide Special Train, Yard Office view east 10/06/1967

4. Yard A east -Boiler house and Honeywell Ave in background

8.  Sunnyside service Area
c. 1980  Photo: Bob Redden

5. Honeywell Ave

8a. A line up of GG1s ready to go 1971 Photo: Bill Myers