#Hudson River Tunnels

[supertrainstationh]

Garden Service by amtraknortheast1 Via Flickr: After NJ Transit train 3733 broke down in the North River Tunnels, Amtrak “Empire Service” GE P32ACDM 711 found its way out of the Empire State and into the Garden State. Passengers on 3733 (like myself) sat in blistering heat with no air conditioning and limited lighting for 2 hours after a pantograph on the second Arrow III married pair apparently collapsed and began arcing. After waiting for 711 to couple and the Arrow set’s brakes to release, the dead set was shoved into Secaucus Junction’s Track 3 around 9:35 PM, just over 2 hours after its originally scheduled 7:29 PM stop at the station.

[nemfrog]

"Proposd tunnel under the Hudson River." Marvelous wonders of the whole world. 1886.

Internet Archive

[rocklandhistoryblog]

📸 Warren Inglese

#FlashbackFriday

June 7, 1974 - 50 YEARS AGO in #RocklandHistory

Excerpt from The Journal News

TUNNEL FIRES CONTINUE TO BURN – DAMAGE ‘IN THE MILLIONS’

Fires continued to burn in a railroad tunnel in Haverstraw today after a Penn Central train derailment Thursday morning which caused six injuries, the evacuation of 100 people and damages estimated "in the millions of dollars.”

Firemen, hampered by intense heat and crumbling walls, had difficulty fighting the blaze. More than 100 firemen were driven out of the tunnel Thursday night by smoke, heat and falling concrete.

The 52-car train, carrying new cars and chemicals, derailed at about 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Conductor Gerald Leech of Catskill, N.Y., and brakeman Louis Lajeuness of Waterford, N.Y. suffered minor injuries in the crash. The engineer, Charles Carpenter of Catskill, N.Y., was apparently uninjured. Carpenter was the engineer of a Penn Central train which collided with a school bus in Congers in March 1972, resulting in the deaths of five Nyack High School students.

Firemen Bob Cusack, James Avaras and Brian Beckel were treated for smoke inhalation at Nyack Hospital later Thursday. A railroad employe, John Misseri, no address available, was in guarded condition at Nyack Hospital after being struck in the chest with falling concrete. Police say the accident occurred as railroad workers attempted to clear debris from the tunnel.

The derailment, which created one of the most complicated firefighting problems in Rockland's history, occurred at 7:30 a.m. just as the three lead diesel engines were approaching the south end of the tunnel.

There has been no explanation as to what caused the accident, and Penn Central officials said its investigative team, on the scene since early morning, would need "at least two or three days" to make a complete report.

Haverstraw police chief John Bubenko ordered the evacuation of residents along Riverside Avenue, near the north tunnel entrance, an area known as "Dutchtown", shortly before 1 p.m.

An estimated 100 persons, about 30 families, left the area in buses, and officials said most of them planned to stay with relatives.

Bubenko said the evacuation was ordered as a precautionary measure: "We don't know for sure what's in that tunnel —- and we're just not going to take any chances."

Traffic along 9W, one of Rockland County's major north-south arteries began to back up near Haverstraw by 9 a.m. and by noon, one motorist described it as "just one helluva mess."

State police set up detour points both north and south of Haverstraw at noon, diverting traffic to alternate routes, but sightseers and the curious still jammed the area.

At the height of the drama, as many as 500 firemen and police were in and around the scene.

Fire-fighting units from Haverstraw. West Haverstraw, Stony Point, Garnerville, New City. Valley Cottage, Congers, Nyack and Spring Valley all had apparatus at or near the blaze.

Throughout the late morning and afternoon, small drumlike explosions could be heard inside the tunnel. Firefighting officials said these were probably from exploding tires and gas tanks.

The chemicals listed on the train, besides the hydrogen peroxide, included 800 bags of Bethyl Thenol, which officials said would burn at 200 degrees and give off a noxious odor —- but was non-poisonous.

A spokesman from the Dow Chemical Co. also said the company had a report that one of the "piggy-back" trailers was carrying an insecticide petroleum substance that was not explosive but would, if burned, give off irritating fumes.

By early afternoon, Penn Central had moved giant, 100-ton cranes into position at both ends of the 1600 foot tunnel, and officials were waiting only for the heat and fire to subside before trying to remove the derailed cars.

It wasn't until about noon that a "jerry-rigged" system was set up that pumped water from the Hudson River.

Then high pressure hoses were used to "cool down" the north tunnel entrance and huge fans, called "smoke extractors" were set in place to suck out the thick black smoke.

At one point in the mid-morning, a Haverstraw fireman said: "This is the most frustrating fire I've been to —- and I've been going to them now for about 30 years.

"We don't know what's in that tunnel; we can't get the right kind of water pressure; nobody seems to know what Penn Central is going to do. It's a mess ... a real mess. . ."

For most of the morning and through the early afternoon, there was nothing the gathering of firemen could do but look at the thick, black smoke tumbling skyward from the tunnel entrance.

Penn Central spokesman Joe Harvey said the original 52-car train was bound from Kalma-zoo, Mich. to North Bergen, N.J.

He said the train was made up of three diesel engines; 38 auto carriers; and 12 flatbed cars carrying semi-trailers.

The three diesels and 14 other cars, five of them carrying new automobiles, were scattered across the tracks inside the quarter-mile-long tunnel.

He said the semi-trailers carried an assortment of cargo, including washing machines; auto parts; chemical fertilizer; glass; and cardboard.

Penn Central officials said they would not try to move the derailed cars until either the fire was put out or until it eventually "burned out.''

Harvey said the stretch of Penn Central tracks involved would "definitely" be out of commission for three or four days and that freight traffic would be re-routed.

He said it was too early to put any estimate of damage to the roadbed, the cars or the cargo. "It's obviously going to be up in the millions of dollars. We just don't know yet…”

_____

[boerum-dodge]

lower manhattan from newport // out for a walk

2021-09-16

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #26

July 5-12 2024

The IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats. The program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owned more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. Thanks to money in Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power again.

The Biden administration announced a $244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program. This marks the largest investment in the program's history with grants going out to 52 programs in 32 states. The President is focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people and more people are taking part in the apprenticeship program than ever before. Republican pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers.

The Department of Transportation announced the largest single project in the department's history, $11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel. Part of the $66 billion the Biden Administration has invested in our rail system the tunnel, the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson. Once finished it's believed it'll impact 20% of the American economy by improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast.

The Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to save auto worker's jobs and convert factories to electronic vehicles. The Biden administration will used the money to save or reopen factories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia and retool them to make electric cars. The project will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement with The Appraisal Foundation over racial discrimination. TAF is the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last year found that TAF was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black, making it the least racially diverse of the 800 occupations surveyed. Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD TAF will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

The Department of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots. The DoJ shut down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts that were linked to a Russian Bot farm. The bots used AI technology to not only generate tweets but also AI image faces for profile pictures. The effort seemed focused on boosting support for Russia's war against Ukraine and spread negative stories/impressions about Ukraine.

The Department of Transportation announces $1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses. 80% of the funding will go toward zero or low-emission technology, a part of the President's goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is part of the $5 billion the DOT has spent over the last 3 years replacing aging buses with new cleaner technology.

President Biden with Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a new agreement on the arctic. The new trilateral agreement between the 3 NATO partners, known as the ICE Pact, will boost production of ice breaking ships, the 3 plan to build as many as 90 between them in the coming years. The alliance hopes to be a counter weight to China's current dominance in the ice breaker market and help western allies respond to Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.1 billion for greater rail safety. The program seeks to, where ever possible, eliminate rail crossings, thus removing the dangers and inconvenience to communities divided by rail lines. It will also help update and improve safety measures at rail crossings.

The Department of the Interior announced $120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters. This funding is part of half a billion dollars the Biden administration has spent to help tribes build climate resilience, which itself is part of a $50 billion dollar effort to build climate resilience across the nation. This funding will help support drought measures, wildland fire mitigation, community-driven relocation, managed retreat, protect-in-place efforts, and ocean and coastal management.

The USDA announced $100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer. Known as "SUN Bucks" or "Summer EBT" the new Biden program grants the families of kids who qualify for free meals at school $120 dollars pre-child for groceries. This comes on top of the traditional SUN Meals program which offers school meals to qualifying children over the summer, as well as the new under President Biden SUN Meals To-Go program which is now offering delivery of meals to low-income children in rural areas. This grant is meant to help local governments build up the Infrastructure to support and distribute SUN Bucks. If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

USAID announced its giving $100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation. President Biden at his press conference last night said that Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a ceasefire deal that will end the war and release the hostages. US negotiators are working to close the final gaps between the two sides and end the war.

The Senate confirmed Nancy Maldonado to serve as a Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Maldonado is the 202nd federal Judge appointed by President Biden to be confirmed. She will the first Latino judge to ever serve on the 7th Circuit which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact. Allies from Japan to Iceland confirmed their support for Ukraine and deepening their commitments to building Ukraine's forces and keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders such as British Prime Minster Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit

[todaysdocument]

West entrance to Zion Tunnel. Zion Tunnel is 6000 feet long, cut through solid sandstone. It is said to be the longest highway tunnel in the world with the exception of the tubes under the Hudson River.

Record Group 79: Records of the National Park ServiceSeries: Photographs of the Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, 1929

This black and white photograph shows three working men standing in the opening of a large tunnel cut into sandstone.  The tunnel is about 20 feet tall and is held up by a wooden structure.

[transit-fag]

Your Honour, The North River Tunnels in the Hudson River that connect New York Penn Station and Weehawken New Jersey are in fact NOT failures, rather they are lovely women to me

[snappedsky]

ROTTMNT: Retired Leo AU

Casey is awoken by a loud noise.

--

BOOM!

Casey is awoken with a sudden start and shoots upright. His wide eyes dart frantically around his dark room, his heart racing.

What was that noise? It was loud, whatever it was. And distant. An explosion? But from where? And how?

His mind races as he gets out of bed and looks out of his room. Everything is quiet in the lair, except for Raph’s snoring. Nobody else seems to have noticed the loud noise.

Did Casey just dream it? It wouldn’t be the first time he was woken by a nightmare. But normally he remembers his bad dreams. This time he remembers nothing; just the loud noise.

There’s no way he’ll be able to go back to sleep right now. He needs to settle his nerves. So he crosses the hall and slips past the curtain into Leonardo’s room.

“Sensei?” he says quietly.

The turtle is awake almost as soon as Casey enters, yawning as he sits up on his forearm. “What’s up, Case?”

“Did you hear-!”

*BOOM!*

There it is again! Casey nearly jumps out of his skin, looking around frantically. “Th-that! What was that? A-an explosion? Where’d it come from?”

Leonardo blinks with surprise then smiles with amusement as he stands up. “It’s alright, Casey,” he says gently, patting the boy’s shoulder. “It’s nothing bad, it’s just thunder.” “Thunder?” Casey questions.

“Yeah. Put on some shoes and a sweater and I’ll show you.”

Casey obliges as Leonardo pulls on a pair of sweat pants and the two of them leave the lair down one of the tunnels. They enter into the sewers and continue along until they reach the end of a large pipe looking out into the Hudson River.

It is absolutely pouring rain, pounding the river in sheets as it falls from the dark sky. Casey’s seen it rain a couple times since living in this new present, but never like this. He stares through the pipe grate in amazement when the sound goes off again.

*BOOM!*

The noise seems to rock the whole planet as a bright light flashes across the sky. It makes Casey jump again as he flinches back from the grate and into Leonardo’s chest.

[railwayhistorical]

Along the Hudson River This is simply a wonderful spot on the face of the earth—we’re north of Cold Spring, New York, along the Hudson River, at Breakneck Ridge. Metro North still stops here, mainly for the benefit of hikers who want to explore the rugged landscape in this area (known as the Hudson Highlands). The “station” stop is just south of where the first photograph was taken with a few trains making stops each way, each day on the weekend. The land mass visible behind the southbound train in the first image is called Pollepel Island, and the structure thereon is called Bannerman Castle. The second photograph was taken the same afternoon at the same location—but looking south. It shows a Metro North commuter train headed north, most likely headed for Poughkeepsie. Also visible in the image, across the river, is the dramatic and massive form of Storm King Mountain. The model of locomotive, seen in both photographs, is interesting as well—the EMD FL9 was a unit designed specifically to be used for New York’s Grand Central Terminal—the destination for these trains at the time. [I believe all Amtrak trains traveling the water-level route currently end up at Penn Station now.] This unique engine is diesel-electric but also has a pick-up “shoe” for the electrified third-rail. This way the diesel prime-mover could be shut off or at least idled when in the tunnels under Madison Avenue and in the bowels of the massive terminal itself. Two images by Richard Koenig; taken in August of 1988.

[aryburn-trains]

The pair of Budd RDCs forming Penn Central Hudson Division commuter train 8827 accelerate away from their stop at Garrison, in New York's Hudson River Valley on July 23, 1972.

Here the former four-track mainline of the former New York Central divides, with the (former) eastbound tracks utilizing a tunnel, while their westbound counterparts are in an open cut.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

On June 20, after millions of Americans had suffered through a sweltering heat wave for three days, Amtrak sent an ominous warning over social media: Trains connecting the largest cities in Northeast could face up to an hour of delay from high temperatures.

Later that afternoon, after the temperature peaked at 96 degrees in Newark, Amtrak lost electricity near the New Jersey side of the Hudson River tunnels. The power failure soon shuttered a 150-mile stretch of the busiest rail corridor in the United States for more than three hours. The impact reverberated until the next day, when trains chugged through with hours of residual delays.

As the planet rapidly warms, train delays and breakdowns are becoming more frequent as America’s antiquated rail infrastructure struggles to remain functional during prolonged extreme weather events that were not typical when the system was constructed.

A New York Times analysis of Amtrak data found that the rail service’s passengers have faced record delays in recent years caused by inclement weather such as heat waves, storms, floods, high winds, low temperatures, tornadoes, lightning and wildfires.

Extreme weather events bogged down Amtrak trains for more than 4,010 hours in the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October 2022 and ended in September 2023, according to a Times analysis of more than 313,000 individual train delay data dating to September 2003. That was the highest number of weather-related delays in at least 20 years.

The biggest contributor has been intensifying heat waves. About 30 percent of trains that arrived late in the 2023 fiscal year were delayed for heat reasons, accounting for nearly 1,200 hours of overall delays. Heat delays more than doubled from the 2018 fiscal year, when Amtrak passengers spent 530 additional hours in trains after high temperatures slowed down rail travel.

Railways made from steel are prone to deformities when exposed to direct sunlight during heat waves. The changes, known as sun kinks, occur when the steel overheats and buckles, creating wobbly and dangerous curves that require railroads to drastically reduce the speed of their trains to avoid derailments.

“You get a sun kink when the train’s on it — you’re dead,” said Louis S. Thompson, a former director of the Federal Railroad Administration who led efforts to revamp Amtrak service in the Northeast. “It’s going to go off the rails.”

[hylfystt]

characters: hypatia corrigan (lone wanderer), harkness fandom: fallout 3 word count: 1.6k notes: deleted this in a fit of insecurity a few days ago but decided to reupload it and let it be. original prompt was "an exploratory kiss, testing the waters between them" from this list.

They don’t talk about it in the morning.

Camp is packed away quietly, a deliberate distance kept between them as they work. It’s been weeks now since they fled Rivet City, and by now they’ve well established their routine. Harkness checks their supplies. Hypatia checks their heading.

“We should reach the Hudson by tomorrow,” Hypatia murmurs, hunched over the worn map. 

Harkness grunts in return, slinging his pack over his shoulder. Hypatia’s gaze slides to his back as he wanders off silently, no doubt off to scout the road ahead before they depart.

Her fingers itch for a bottle.

Instead they trace the length of the river as she forces her attention back to the map, brow furrowing as she tries to shake the thoughts of him from her mind.

The Hudson River. She remembers reading about it in school. It flows north to south, cutting through the majority of New York before dumping into the Atlantic. More importantly, it marks the half-way point of their journey and another step towards the unknown.

She only hopes the next half of their journey is more bearable than the first she muses, folding the map away into her pack. She’s not sure if she can deal with another Allentown.

“Fucking disaster that was,” she murmurs, shouldering her pack and setting off after her charge.

The day passes slowly, as most do. 

One foot in front of the other, the sun beating high overhead. 

Sweat drips from her brow.

One foot in front of the other, a brief pause to check their heading and chew a piece of brahmin jerky.

Her vision tunnels some time in the afternoon, and she has to remember how to breathe.

One foot in front of the other. The sun kisses the tops of the trees. One foot in front of the other. On and on.

Harkness says nothing until they stop for the night.

“I’ll take first watch.”

Hypatia nods absently, dropping her pack at her feet as she stretches. This, too, is routine, and Hypatia has long given up on arguing with him on the matter. 

Camp is set up with the same brisk efficiency as it was torn down hours before. Hypatia lays out her bedroll beside a fallen tree, resting her back against the log as she digs for their food. Dinner turns out to be a cold and quiet affair, their encampment in the open air necessitating a lack of fire for the night. 

Hypatia picks at the chipping finish of her canteen, flakes of cracked leather littering the hard earth beneath her feet. Her mind is far away while Harkness gets up to check the perimeter, offering him a small noise of acknowledgement when he steps away. By the time he returns, she’s lying on her side, arm tucked under her head as she tries to sleep. She hears him stop beside her bedroll, and she waits, breathing stilled, for…Something. Anything. She pushes aside the disappointment she feels when he offers nothing but a small sigh and moves on, though disappointment about what she cannot say.

An hour later, she heaves a sigh and rolls onto her back.

“You should be sleeping.”

“Probably,” she agrees, groaning as she pulls herself up from the bedroll anyways. Harkness watches her as she moves to settle beside him on the fallen tree.

“Hypatia.”

“I can’t, alright?” She shoots him a sharp look, somewhere between a glare and begging for understanding. “Haven’t in months.” She drops her head back, casting her gaze up at the night sky. She can feel the weight of Harkness’ stare, can practically hear the way his brow furrows. She sighs a little, speaking softly. “Bottle’s the only thing that helps.”

Harkness stares for a few moments more, the silence between them heavy once more. She does her best to ignore it, to keep her eyes trained on the wonder of the stars in the night. She wonders idly, what it must be like to walk among them. She stretches her hand towards them, reaching for the vast infinity. How was it that mankind had the stars at their fingertips and yet wasted the Earth in squabbles below?

Greed. Pride. Power. The same way the Enclave took everything from you in an attempt to claim Purity for themselves.

Hypatia grits her teeth and casts her gaze back to the dirt, hand dropping back into her lap and fisting into the fabric of her jeans, shaking off idealistic thoughts. Those, she’s learned, would only serve to get you killed out here.

Her father taught her that, at the end.

She doesn’t realize that she’s trembling until a hand, warm, if not a bit rough, settles over one of her own. She looks down at the hand for a moment, a lump forming in her throat, before looking up at Harkness. The concern she finds there is nearly her undoing.

“What happened to you out there?”

Hypatia shakes her head, tearing her gaze away from his.

“Don’t ask me that.” She swallows, pulling her hand away from his, the touch feeling all too intimate after what happened the night before. “Not tonight.”

“Okay,” Harkness agrees, pulling his hand away. He glances at it for a moment, pursing his lips in thought. “Fine. But we need to talk about last night.”

She flinches, hands twitching in her lap. “No, we don’t.”

“I won’t let us ignore this.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hypatia, please.”

She stands, a frustrated groan falling from her lips. Her fingers itch for the familiar neck of a bottle once more, and she feels heat rising in the back of her neck under Harkness’s stare. Her nails dig crescents into the soft flesh of her palms. “Fine,” she bites out. “We slept together. Big fucking deal. The world goes on. There, we’ve talked about it.”

“Jesus—that’s not all, and you know it.”

“That’s all it needs to be.”

“And what if it wasn’t?”

She tries not to flinch when she turns around and meets Harkness’ gaze. She flicks her eyes away, brow furrowing, trying to fight the rising panic that bubbles uncomfortably in her breast. 

She doesn’t want this, doesn’t want any of this. If she were the praying type anymore, she would be on her knees, begging for God to take these feelings from her, this traitorous affection that threatens to drown her and take Harkness down with her.

“You don’t understand, Hark,” she says hoarsely, hating herself for sounding so damn small. “I can’t. You can’t.”

Harkness stands, closing the distance between them in several strides. Hypatia holds her ground, despite the urge to run, to run from him, from this and the mess she’s gotten her heart into.

“And why not?” Harkness demands. Her fingers twitch.

“Because caring about something is the only sure way to get it killed!” Hypatia shoves him back roughly but Harkness catches her hands in his, preventing her from making distance. She shakes her head, sucking in a ragged breath as she squeezes her eyes shut while she grips his hands. “Don’t make me add you to the ghosts that haunt my sleep, too.”

He’s quiet at that, drawing a long breath in and out of his lungs—so human, she thinks. Not an android. Real. Real and just as capable of leaving her as anything else.

“You aren’t built for that kind of loneliness,” he says eventually. Hypatia’s brow furrows, a protest at the ready, but any words that come to mind just feel empty. Hollow. The truth of it stings as much as it soothes, and a part of her hates him, and herself, for it. Her hands start to shake and she feels the walls start to close in once again, the edges of her brain going numb with static as her vision starts to tunnel and—

Harkness steps forward, releasing her hands to cup her face gently, and slowly the static retreats.

She watches him silently, Harkness’ expression inscrutable as he searches for…something in her gaze.

She thinks that he must find some sort of answer, because with a slowness that gives her ample room to deny him should she want to, he leans in and he kisses her.

It’s different from before. There is no urgency, no misplaced anger, no desperate need to feel something, anything, other than the battles within them. Harkness kisses her slowly, carefully, as if he’s scared that she might bolt like a startled animal into the wilds at any moment. Which, Hypatia thinks, as her eyes slip shut, lips moving softly against his, isn’t an entirely unfair assumption given her recent behavior.

He’s still gentle with her even as her tension ebbs away and her lungs find a steady rhythm, content to continue this unhurried exploration.

It doesn’t fix things between them, within themselves—not in the slightest—but it does make the canyon between them seem a little less daunting to bridge.

It’s Harkness that eventually pulls away, eyes remaining closed for a moment before their gazes meet once more. A question hangs in the air, and for a moment Hypatia considers letting it linger. But then Harkness smooths a thumb across her cheek in that gentle motion once more, and the canyon shrinks just a little further. 

“What now?” She asks quietly.

Harkness simply looks at her for a long moment, silently ruminating on his answer as he asks himself the same thing. 

“I don’t know,” he admits, tone carrying a slight edge of frustration, like he wishes he could give her more than that but can’t quite yet. “We keep moving towards Boston. After that…We’ll figure it out.”

We’ll figure it out. 

Together, she thinks, understanding the word gone unspoken. Her fingers reach for his wrists, tracing the spanse of flesh she finds there and she takes a long breath.

“Okay.”

[guerrerense]

876 At Oscawana por David Blazejewski Por Flickr: With a free weekend alone I finally took a trip long on my list and made the trek out to the Hudson Line to hunt Metro North heritage units and pay a visit to a few famous locations that I'd never before seen for myself. Tops on the list was Oscawana Island and the twin tunnels on the legendary former New York Central water level route mainline. The weather was less than ideal and far from comfortable with temps in the 90s, high humidity and thick haze making for poor shooting conditions, but I had fun nonetheless. In the short 90 minutes I spent here I shot eight trains and missed a few others before leaving as massive thunderstorms approached. Not many people shoot going away photos of trains and I'm sure this won't draw much interest. But I take a documentary approach to photography including the bad in with the good because someday once everything has changed, as it inevitably will, this will be an interesting scene for somebody. And I treat this as my trip journal and travelogue so try to include at least one shot of each train at each spot. This was the fifth of the eight trains I'd shoot, southbound Metro North train 876 the 4:31 PM departure from Poughkeepsie due at Grand Central 1 hr 46 min later. They are on Main 2 of Metro North's Hudson Line at MP 36.8 passing thru the 200 ft long west bore with P32AC-DM 226 (GE blt. Aug. 2001) shoving on the rear. This is the original New York Central Railroad mainline which opened between New York City and Albany in 1851 as the Hudson River Railroad, and the first tunnel here (the one out of sight to my left that Main 1 passes thru) dates from the line's construction through here in 1849 while the parallel one beneath my feet with Mains 2 and 4 dates from 1912 when four tracks were installed (the original tunnel had two). In 1864 the Hudson River Railroad was purchased by Cornelius Vanderbilt along with the New York and Harlem. Meanwhile in 1853 Erastus Corning had assembled a plethora of small local lines as the New York Central Railroad running from Albany to Buffalo and in 1867 Vanderbilt merged it with his road to create the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad and the rest as they say is history. By the 1950s as the railroad was showing signs of weakness but also modernizing under the leadership of A.E. Perlman. Around that era the four track mainline was equipped with CTC and reduced to three mains thru here. If anyone can fill me in the exact dates of the changes here I'd be most grateful. Hamlet of Crugers Cortlandt, New York Friday August 2, 2024

[the1920sinpictures]

1923 A full-sized section of the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel (aka the Holland Tunnel). It measured 29′ 6″ in diameter. From New York City - Vintage History, FB.

[brostateexam]

For the past decade, as the cost of building American mass transit has soared to world records, advocates have found themselves in a bind. Should they draw attention to the problem, fighting for top-to-bottom reform now so that future investments don’t make the mistakes of the past? Or should they stay quiet, because such an effort would be politically ugly and further cement the American double standard by which transit spending is endlessly scrutinized but highway widening rolls on, no matter how many times state transportation departments fudge their numbers?

So far, the country is going down the second path. Despite constant crowing from bloggers, newspaper investigations, Elon Musk starting his own tunnel company, and a scathing federal report, there has been no real effort to address spiraling transit costs, either from Washington or local authorities—even as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law starts distributing $105 billion to intercity rail and public transit. When I asked the CEO of Amtrak in 2021 about why the company’s train tunnel beneath the Hudson River would cost $11 billion—many times more than similar projects in peer countries—he disputed the premise of the question: “I don’t know that that’s an astronomical number.”

A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.

According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.

[20th-century-railroading]

New Haven Railroad EP-4 motor 360 & Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotive 4896 are seen in the open pit area situated between Pennsylvania Station and the U.S. Post Office in New York City, 7-24-1960

New Haven Railroad EP-4 motor 360 & Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 locomotive 4896 are seen in the open pit area situated between Pennsylvania Station and the U.S. Post Office in New York City, 7-24-1960. In this area you could see trains heading to the Hudson River tunnels or that are entering Penn Station, along with locomotives that are awaiting their next assignment. Today this area is now covered over and the U.S. Post Office is now part of the Penn Station facility.