The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-17

the Pennsylvania railroad, the Long Island railroad and the New York Con- meeting Railroad company in the neigh
 Iborhood of twenty-five million dollars, are in addition to the extensive new 1 construction on the New York, New 1 Haven and Hartford railroad above the Harlem river and the passenger termi-
 nals to provide for the transfer of traf- 1 f1c between the New Haven system and
 the tunnels under Manhattan Island. New York city has always formed a ] great barrier to New England freight movements. All freight for southern | New England, grain from the west, l coal from the mines of Pennsylvania,
 cotton from the south, wends eastward | in the long trains until the Hudson river is reached. There the cars are ! shipped on heavy floats and lowed la
 boriously through the Hudson and East
 rivers and the tortuous channels of Hell Gate, where in spring the tide swirls through at seven and seven and one-half miles an hour, and at other seasons at six miles. Naturally this 1 method of transfer is a tedious and l cumbersome process. There is always a great jam of llarhor traffic through
 which the numbering floats must care fully pick their way, and in winter the
 rivers are often choked with heavy ice 1 foes, so that channel must be broken 1 by the straining tugs with the unwieldy
 barges behind.
 When the new plans are completed l the crowded river channel will be eliminated. From Greenvile on the
 New Jersey side of New Yorlx's upper 1 bay, a new car float ferry will carry l the freight cars across to the Long
 Island railroad terminal at Bay Ridge,
 a distance of less than four miles on a l route never crowded with traffic. | Thence the freight will move along the
 sixteen and one-haif miles loop around Brooklyn and Long Island City and up 1 to Hell Gate, and thence to Mott Ha-
 ven over great bridges that will cross
 Wards and Randall's islands. On the
 map this route seems to he a considera-
 ble detour, but it is estimated that it 1 will save from twenty-four to sixty
 hours in handling New England
 freight. To shippers these figures are | impressive.
 The Improvement properly begins at 1 Greenville. where the Pennsylvania | railroad is building into the bay a pe- ninsula almost mile and a half long, and about one-half mile broad. The 1 land thus made will he used as a great freight terminal. The work has now progressed for five years, and day af- ter day dredges and suction engines are pumping the silt and soft ooze from the bottom of the bay into the re- claimed area. It will require twenty million cubic yards of filling to com- plete the work, and about three-quar- ters of this amount has now been gath
 cred Making land in this way is an
 expensive undertaking. It costs $12,- 132 an acre. In addition to the materi- al procured by dredging, many thou sands of cubic feet of earth have been
 obtained from the sweepings of New
 Yorks street cleaning department and
 more from cellar excavations in the
 city. Ten great piers, including one for
 lighterage, which will eventually be
 four-fifths of a mile long, will be built out from the land, giving a water frontage of about eight linear miles.
 The work will cost between eight and
 ten million dollars.
 Across the bay, at Bay Ridge, the
 Long Island railroad is about to forge another link in this railroad chain. It is constructing another great freight
 terminal which will cover an area of about eight city blocks with a water frontage of five hundred and sixty-five
 feet and will cost one million dollars
 A part of the construction of the Bay Ridge yard will be the removal of
 large hill.
 About half way between Bay Ridge and Hell Gate in the district called
 East New York, another big yard will
 be constructed with capacity of be-
 tween three and four thousand cars.
 Here the long freights from the west will be classified and divided into trains
 to go up the Naugatuck valley and
 along the Shore Line, the. Air Line and
 other branches of the New York, New
 Haven and Hartford railroad. Like wise trains coming from New England laden with manufactured products of
 that section will be sorted and changed and will steam out under a new make. | up for their various destinations in the south and west,