The New York Connecting Railroad or NYCR is a rail line in the

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It links New York City and

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

by rail directly to the North American mainland.

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

CSX 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. ...

Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...

, Providence and Worcester Railroad and New York and Atlantic Railway (NYAR) currently use the line. It runs from the Hell Gate Bridge over the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Queens ...

Fresh Pond Junction Fresh Pond Junction is a freight yard in the Ridgewood and Glendale neighborhoods of Queens, New York City. It is operated by the New York & Atlantic Railway, which serves Long Island, New York using tracks owned by the Long Island Rail Road ...

yard in

Glendale Glendale is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Gleann Dail, which means ''valley of fertile, low-lying arable land''. It may refer to: Places Australia * Glendale, New South Wales ** Stockland Glendale, a shopping centre *Glendale, Queensland, ...

in Queens. It was completed in 1917. Amtrak uses the northernmost section of the line from

Sunnyside Junction Sunnyside Yard is a large coach yard, a railroad yard for passenger car (rail), passenger cars, in Sunnyside, Queens in New York City. Description The yard is owned by Amtrak and is also used by New Jersey Transit Rail Operations, New Jersey Tr ...

( Bowery Bay) in the

Woodside Woodside may refer to: Places and buildings Australia *Woodside, South Australia, a town *Woodside, Victoria, a town Canada *Woodside National Historic Site, the boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King *Woodside, Nova Scotia, a neighborho ...

section of

to the Hell Gate Bridge into

the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

from which it follows the line north to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. Amtrak owns the line north of Sunnyside Junction, which forms part of the

Northeast Corridor The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is an electrified railroad line in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States. Owned primarily by Amtrak, it runs from Boston through Providence, New Haven, Stamford, New York City, Philadelphia, Wilmington, a ...

. From this point to

CSX is the owner, with the line known as the Fremont Secondary. South of Fresh Pond, the line leads into the Bay Ridge Branch, a freight-only branch owned by the

Long Island Rail Road The Long Island Rail Road , often abbreviated as the LIRR, is a commuter rail system in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, stretching from Manhattan to the eastern tip of Suffolk County, New York, Suffolk Co ...

(LIRR) and operated by the New York and Atlantic Railway.

Route description

The line begins at the Hell Gate Bridge over the East River. This is a massive bridge, with a main span of and a total length of over . Continuing south, the line is on a high-level elevated viaduct over Astoria and Interstate 278 (

Grand Central Parkway The Grand Central Parkway (GCP) is a 14.61-mile (23.51 km) long parkway that stretches from the Triborough Bridge in New York City to Nassau County on Long Island. At the Queens–Nassau border, it becomes the Northern State Parkway, w ...

). The line is then on an embankment until

, where Amtrak's Northeast Corridor line branches off. The line heads south and parallels Interstate 278 (

Brooklyn Queens Expressway Interstate 278 (I-278) is an auxiliary Interstate Highway in New Jersey and New York in the United States. The road runs from US Route 1/9 (US 1/9) in Linden, New Jersey, northeast to the Bruckner Interchange in the New York ...

) for a distance. This portion of the line was completely rebuilt in 2002. Now in the section of Elmhurst, the NYCR passes under several streets in a cut. An arched concrete viaduct over Queens Boulevard is followed by cuts and overpasses over streets in

Maspeth, Queens Maspeth is a residential and commercial community in the borough of Queens in New York City. It was founded in the early 17th century by Dutch and English settlers. Neighborhoods sharing borders with Maspeth are Woodside to the north; Sunnyside ...

. After crossing under the

Long Island Expressway Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensur ...

( Interstate 495) and passing a few cemeteries, the line reaches

. This is the main facility for shipping freight by rail in and out of New York City and Long Island. The New York and Atlantic Railway, which operates freights on the Long Island Rail Road under a privatized concession, has its main offices at Fresh Pond. CSX and PW also interchange freight with NYAR here. South of Fresh Pond Junction, the line continues south as the LIRR's Bay Ridge Branch to the

65th Street Yard The 65th Street Yard, also Bay Ridge Rail Yard, is a rail yard on the Upper New York Bay in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Equipped with two transfer bridges which allow rail cars to be loaded and unloaded onto car floats, the last of ...

. The line has 3 tracks to the north of Sunnyside Junction and 1 track to the south of this point (with 2-track sections in some areas). There is a proposal to connect to the

Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad Spuyten Duyvil and Port Morris Railroad was a railroad built in what is today the West Bronx and South Bronx in New York City, United States. It ran from the junction between the West Side Line and the Hudson River Railroad near Spuyten Duyvil C ...

spur between the

at 141st Street to the

Harlem Line The Metro-North Railroad Harlem Line, originally chartered as the New York and Harlem Railroad, is an commuter rail line running north from New York City to Wassaic, in eastern Dutchess County. The lower from Grand Central Terminal to Southea ...

at 163rd Street and Melrose Avenue, as part of a

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

circumferential line called Triboro RX.

Operation

CSX serves the line with 1–3 daily round trips, with trains based out of

Oak Point Yard The Oak Point Yard is a freight railroad yard located in the South Bronx, New York City. The yard is owned by CSX Transportation, and is a base for CSX's local deliveries in the area, including to the Hunts Point Cooperative Market and for trai ...

. The CSX trains bring general freight to the interchange with the New York and Atlantic Railway at

, in Queens, and return with empties and container loads of solid waste. Providence and Worcester runs three trains per week carrying gravel from Cedar Hill Yard in New Haven, CT, to Fresh Pond.

Origins

The New York Connecting Railroad was incorporated on April 21, 1892, and was jointly owned by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (the "New Haven") and the

Pennsylvania Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR), legal name The Pennsylvania Railroad Company also known as the "Pennsy", was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was named ...

(PRR). The line opened in 1917 as a connection between the New Haven's Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad and the PRR East River Tunnels to

Penn Station Pennsylvania Station is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals. Pennsylvania Station or Penn Station may also refer to Current train stations * Baltimore Penn Station * Pennsylvania Station (Cinci ...

and the North River Tunnels under the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

. The line was dedicated on March 9, 1917 by PRR President Samuel Rea and engineer

Gustav Lindenthal Gustav Lindenthal (May 21, 1850 – July 31, 1935) was a civil engineer who designed the Queensboro and Hell Gate bridges in New York City, among other bridges. Lindenthal's work was greatly affected by his pursuit for perfection and his lov ...

. A special train took the directors of the New Haven over the line on March 25, 1917, and at that time it was turned over to the New Haven for operation, though the Southern Division (freight-only) was not yet complete. Passenger service began on April 1, 1917, with the return of the ''

Federal Express FedEx Corporation, formerly Federal Express Corporation and later FDX Corporation, is an American multinational conglomerate holding company focused on transportation, e-commerce and business services based in Memphis, Tennessee. The name "Fe ...

'' and the rerouting of two local trains. The '' Colonial'' began using it April 30, resulting in the first accident on the NYCR on August 20, 1917. Through freights to Bay Ridge began January 17, 1918, and the final work was completed August 7, 1918.

Electrification

The New York Connecting Railroad was electrified around 1927 as an extension of the New Haven's system. The NYCR system encompassed 20 route miles (32 km) of track, and was electrified, like the New Haven, using

overhead catenary An overhead line or overhead wire is an electrical cable that is used to transmit electrical energy to electric locomotives, trolleybuses or trams. It is known variously as: * Overhead catenary * Overhead contact system (OCS) * Overhead equipmen ...

at 11 kV, 25 Hz. The system received power from the New Haven

Cos Cob Power Station Cos Cob Power Station was a historic power station near the Metro-North Railroad tracks, the Mianus River and Sound Shore Drive in the Cos Cob area of Greenwich, Connecticut. The Spanish Revival style station building of 1907 was significant as ...

and

Consolidated Edison Consolidated Edison, Inc., commonly known as Con Edison (stylized as conEdison) or ConEd, is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States, with approximately $12 billion in annual revenues as of 2017, and over $62 b ...

201st generating station via the West Farms substation. Additional power was supplied from a 5 MW, 7 kVA, 11 kV, three-phase to single-phase converter installed at East New York. This unit was also operated in synchronous condenser mode for reactive power support. (''See'' Amtrak's 25 Hz traction power system.) Like the New Haven, the NYCR traction power was distributed using the 2 x 11 kV autotransformer topology. Two wires, the feeder and the catenary (often called the trolley wire), carried voltage of 11 kV to ground, but of opposite phase such that the feeder and catenary were 22 kV phase-to-phase. Six autotransformer stations, spaced an average of 3.8 miles apart along the line, converted power. Each station contained oil circuit breakers for both feeder and trolley buses, bus sectioning switches, and one All had one transformer but for Fourth Ave, which had two. 3 MVA outdoor autotransformer. The LIRR portion of the system (essentially everything to the south of Bowery Bay), along with the freight catenary from West Farms over Hell Gate to Bowery Bay, was removed in 1969-1970. By 1986 Amtrak, which had inherited the Connecting Railroad, changed the traction power system over to 60 Hz operation coincident with the

Metro-North Railroad Metro-North Railroad , trading as MTA Metro-North Railroad, is a suburban commuter rail service run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a New York State public benefit corporations, public authority of the U.S. state of New Yor ...

re-powering of the New Haven Line at 60 Hz and de-activation of the Cos Cob Power Station. The autotransformer architecture was retained, but the source of power changed from the Metro-North New Haven Line system to the Con Edison-supplied Van Nest Substation ().

References

* Morton, R.B. "Arrangements of Feeders and Equipment for Electrified Railways", ''American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Transactions of the'', Vol 47, Issue 4, pp. 1297–1301, 1928. Discusses both original and 1930s vintage PRR electrification systems along with NY Connecting RR system.

External links