From: brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan)
Subject: Re: Bay Ridge Line and possibly other NYC lines.
Reply-To: brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 17:12:06 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.082525.33345@watson.ibm.com> mer@zurich.ibm.com writes:

>The Transit Authority used to run Freight service under the F train
>elevated (MacDonald Avenue).
>What service was that? Did they give it up because of traffic congestion?
>Did it it run on former trolley tracks?

This refers to the South Brooklyn Railway, operated by the NYCTA, and
a former component of the BMT system.  It now operates only from the
interchange with the NY Cross Harbor Rr near 2d Ave up the original
SBK right of way to the 39th St materials yard.  This is how new
subway cars are delivered, as well as rails and other large items.
Part of the line, from 4th Ave to 8th Ave, is shared with passenger
trains on the B and M lines, this part being partly in cut and mostly
in an old tunnel of mixed dates (part must go to 1890).

This is a heck of a long story.  Let's just mention that the passenger
service was from 39th St Ferry to various Coney Island roads, first by
steam and then by heavy trains using trolley-wire, but that ended by
about 1907.  The SBK company was used by the BRT and BMT systems as the
freight operator for trolley freight all around Brooklyn, and it was 
given nominal ownership of the "Culver Line".

The Culver was the Prospect Park and Coney Island, one of the Coney
Island railroads, originally steam, then electric.  Around about 1906,
it had the distinction of running LIRR steam trains, electric MU
trains from the elevated lines, and open bench trolley cars from
connecting streetcar lines, all on the same pair of tracks.  Although
located mainly in Gravesend Ave, it was not a street railway, but had
a reserved right of way with stations.  Some time after it settled
down to all-streetcar service in 1919 the area around the rails was
paved in, and it looked more like a streetcar line.  It was the last
or one of the last running in Brooklyn, maybe 1956.  No bus line
replaced it.

Freight operation continued, electric for a few more years, because
the line ran to the main shops at Coney Island Yard.  Well into the
1970's, new subway trains were delivered by means of a slow drag down
the middle of McDonald (ex-Gravesend) Ave, pulled by a diesel engine,
with a car "flagging" traffic ahead of it.  They've given that up, and
now use the New Utrecht Ave elevated instead (B and M trains).  The
tracks are still only partly paved over, though I believe the tracks
in the private right of way from 10th to McDonald Aves have been lifted.
I think it just wasn't worth maintaining all that line.  There was an
interchange with the LIRR Bay Ridge line, by a ramp in the SW quadrant
of the crossing-- that can still be seen, probably, around back of a big
flea market building.

I think the SBK still has one non-TA shipper, a pipe company near 3d
Avenue, but that info may be out of date.  Oh yeah, the reporting mark
is SBK, and it is a common carrier regulated by the ICC, one of the
reasons it is held separate from the subway system.

--Joe Brennan