Eastern portal of the Long Dock Tunnel under Bergen Hill Jersey City

The Long Dock Tunnel is a freight rail tunnel in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.North Jersey Shared Assets Area Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO) is the commonly used name for modern-day Conrail (reporting mark CRCX), an American railroad company. It operates three networks, the North Jersey, South Jersey/Philadelphia, and Detroit Shared Assets Area ...

and used by

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

on the

National Docks Secondary National Docks Secondary is a freight rail line within Conrail's North Jersey Shared Assets Area in Hudson County, New Jersey, used by CSX Transportation. It provides access for the national rail network to maritime, industrial, and distributio ...

. The single track (formerly dual track) tunnel runs through

Bergen Hill Bergen Hill refers to the lower Hudson Palisades in New Jersey, where they emerge on Bergen Neck, which in turn is the peninsula between the Hackensack and Hudson Rivers, and their bays. In Hudson County, it reaches a height of 260 feet. Rail ...

, a section of the lower

New Jersey Palisades The Palisades, also called the New Jersey Palisades or the Hudson River Palisades, are a line of steep cliffs along the west side of the lower Hudson River in Northeastern New Jersey and Southeastern New York in the United States. The cliffs s ...

Hudson County Hudson County is the most densely populated county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It lies west of the lower Hudson River, which was named for Henry Hudson, the sea captain who explored the area in 1609. Part of New Jersey's Gateway Region in ...

History

The busiest tunnel point in the world, 1911m six Erie below four lackawanna aboveimg013

The tunnel was built under the oversight of engineer

James P. Kirkwood James Pugh Kirkwood (27 March 1807 – 22 April 1877) was a 19th-century American civil engineer, and general superintendent of the Erie Railroad in the year 1849–1850.Edward Harold Mott Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie'' Colli ...

and was started in 1856 and opened in 1861, costing 57 lives to build. The new tunnel formed became route for both the

Erie Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...

and Delaware-Lackawanna railroads to reach their respective stations, the

Pavonia Terminal Pavonia Terminal was the Erie Railroad terminal on the Hudson River situated on the landfilled Harsimus Cove in Jersey City, New Jersey. The station opened in 1861 and closed in 1958 when the Erie Railroad moved its passenger services to nearby ...

and

Hoboken Terminal Hoboken Terminal is a commuter-oriented intermodal passenger station in Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey. One of the New York metropolitan area's major transportation hubs, it is served by nine NJ Transit (NJT) commuter rail lines, one Metr ...

, located on the

North River (Hudson River) North River is an alternative name for the southernmost portion of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City and Gateway Region, northeastern New Jersey in the United States. The entire watercourse was known as the North River by the Du ...

. The tunnel runs long, high, and wide. Eight shafts, in depth were sunk down from atop the Palisades to reach the tunnel. Ripley, George; and Dana, Charles Anderson
"The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge"
via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

, 1861, D. Appleton & Company. p. 738. In 1910 the Erie Railroad replaced the Long Dock Tunnel with the Erie Cut, though primarily for use by passenger trains. Erie freight trains continued to use the tunnel as do freight railroads to this day. The northwestern portal is just northwest of where Kennedy Boulevard passes over New Jersey State Route 139. The southeastern portal is near State Route 139 between where it intersects Palisade Avenue and passes over

Interstate 78 Interstate 78 (I-78) is an east–west Interstate Highway in the Northeastern United States, running from I-81 northeast of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, through Allentown to western and northern New Jersey and terminating at the Holland Tunn ...

. Part of the viaduct which carried trains to the yards and the terminals is parallel to Boyle Plaza (the entrance and exit roads for the

Holland Tunnel The Holland Tunnel is a vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River that connects the New York City neighborhood of Hudson Square in Lower Manhattan to the east with Jersey City in New Jersey to the west. The tunnel is operated by the Port Author ...

) and now serves as an access road to Newport as the current 11th Street.

References

External links

Bergen Tunnel portal photo

{{coord, 40.7355, -74.0574, display=title, type:landmark_region:US, name=Long Dock Tunnel center Erie Railroad tunnels Railroad tunnels in New Jersey Transportation in Jersey City, New Jersey CSX Transportation tunnels Norfolk Southern Railway tunnels Tunnels completed in 1860 Tunnels in Hudson County, New Jersey

History

See also

References

External links