page_title: South Brooklyn Railway
section_title: City operation
hierarchical_section_title: South Brooklyn Railway / City operation
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking northwest from Second Avenue &amp; 38th Street on a cloudy Thanksgiving afternoon, at the 39th Street Yard of the former South Brooklyn Railway connected to the Culver Trench, one of two connections between the subway and the national rail network.
context_page_description: The South Brooklyn Railway is a railroad in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is owned by the City of New York and operated by the New York City Transit Authority. Its original main line ran parallel to 38th Street from the Upper New York Bay to McDonald Avenue, and south on McDonald Avenue to the Coney Island Yards, mostly underneath the former Culver Shuttle and the IND Culver Line of the New York City Subway.
  Parts of the original line still exist. The section between the BMT West End Line's Ninth Avenue station and its interchange yard at Second Avenue and 39th Street is still open. The section under the IND Culver Line has been paved over. Today, it runs only from the 36th–38th Street Yard in the east to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the west.
context_section_description: The South Brooklyn Railway, along with the other non-rapid transit properties of the BMT, was transferred to the New York City Board of Transportation on June 1, 1940. That year, freight traffic went up significantly due to the start of World War II. The South Brooklyn Railway also got some trucks to deliver incoming freight directly to customers. In 1946, after the war, South Brooklyn Railway purchased two Whitcomb ex-U.S. Army diesel locomotives.
  Operations were transferred to the New York City Transit Authority on June 15, 1953. Passenger service on McDonald Avenue ended on October 31, 1958, and thereafter the South Brooklyn Railway started using the surface trackage solely for freight. In 1960, two more diesel electric locomotives were bought. On December 27, 1961, the line was de-electrified, due to the high cost of refurbishing the overhead trolley wire. Electric locomotives #4, 5, 6, and 7, which had third rail conduction shoes, were given to the NYCTA for subway and elevated operation.
  The switches at Kensington Junction were locked so that the branch was completely separated up to the Ninth Avenue & 20th Street Depot, which thereby became an unneeded facility because passenger streetcar operation had ended. At the same time, freight usage of the South Brooklyn Railway declined because of the increasing use of semi-trailer trucks. The McDonald Avenue trackage was no longer in use by 1978, and paved over by 1991. After the closure of the McDonald Avenue tracks, the South Brooklyn Railway's freight operations were moved from the Second Avenue yard to the 36th–38th Street Yard, where it still operates. In 1994, the last non-NYCTA customer on the line closed; the South Brooklyn Railway was then used almost exclusively for subway connections to the LIRR Bay Ridge Branch via the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, Bush Terminal, and Industry City.
caption: Second Avenue interchange yard
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