Freight Trains to Long Island - Trains Magazine

Freight from Flordia if routed on CSX, which has the greatest share of the Florida freight business, would probably be routed north to Selkirk Yard near Albany, then south via the CSX daily train from Selkirk to Fresh Pond Junction in Queens, located at the intersection of the Hell Gate - Bay Ridge freight line (owned by New York Connecting Railroad north of Fresh Pond Junction and the Long Island Railroad south and west of Fresh Pond Junciton but mainly operated by the New Haven and foremerly electrified at 11000V 25Hz AC, the location of the New Haven's ex Virgininian freight locomotives and there previous electric locomotives, now Amtrak north of the junction but maintained by CSX)  with the secondary Long Island City - Jamaica line, never electrified, which sees freight service and two rush hour passenger trains each way each weekday,  and then turned over to the New York and Atlantic Railroad which is the privately owned freight carrier with rights on all Long Island lines exept into Penn Station from Sunnyside.   If Norfolk Southern gets the business, say by interchange from the Florida East Coast at Jacksonville, then it would move to Greenville, New Jersey, via the old B&O-Reading-CNJ-Lehigh Valley route, where it would be switched by a Cross Harbor Railway switcher on to a car float to Bay Ridge, where the Cross Harbor would turn it over to the New York and Atlantic.   This car float rout was formely operated by the Pennsy, and Long Island labeled B6 0-c-0 (0-6-0) electric switchers operated the Bay Ridge yard, and Pennsy laveled switchers the Grrenville Yard for both PRR and LV traffic.   The CXT train to Fresh Pond does not use the wye at Mott Haven but uses a new connecting track that runs under the Metro North approach to the Harlem River vertical lift bridge, and into the old New Haven Oak Point Yard past the old Willis Avenue location where the Harlem River Shuttle and the New York Westchester and Boston connected with the 2nd and 3rd Avenue el shuttle train to 129th St. Elevated station.   Hell Gate Bridge had four electrified tracks, the wester-sourthern two for passenger service and the eastern-northern for freight, with only one freight track in use now, without catenary over this track.  In addtion to CSX, CP (D&H) and Providence and Worcester have rights to operate of the bridge to Fresh Pond Junction, the CP with trackage rights south from Schenectady, and the Providence and Worcester on the NE Corridor from New Haven and New London.