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A railroad car float or rail barge is a specialised form of lighter with railway tracks mounted on its deck used to move
rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles ca ...
across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise go. An unpowered
barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...
, it is towed by a tugboat or pushed by a
towboat A pusher, pusher craft, pusher boat, pusher tug, or towboat, is a boat designed for pushing barges or car floats. In the United States, the industries that use these vessels refer to them as towboats. These vessels are characterized by a squar ...
. This is distinguished from a train ferry, which is self-powered.


Historical operations


U.S. East Coast

During the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
, Union general Herman Haupt, a civil engineer, used huge barges fitted with tracks to enable military trains to cross the Rappahannock River in support of the Army of the Potomac. Beginning in the 1830s, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) operated a car float across the Potomac River, just south of Washington, D.C., between Shepherds Landing on the east shore, and Alexandria, Virginia on the west. The ferry operation ended in 1906. The B&O operated a car float across the
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
Inner Harbor until the mid-1890s. It connected trains from
Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...
to Washington, D.C. and points to the west. The operation ended after the opening of the Baltimore Belt Line in 1895. The
Port of New York and New Jersey The Port of New York and New Jersey is the port district of the New York-Newark metropolitan area, encompassing the region within approximately a radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. It includes the system of navigable wate ...
had many car float operations, which lost ground to the post-
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
expansion of trucking, but held out until the rise of containerization in the 1970s. These car floats operated between the Class 1 railroads terminals on the west bank of
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 Ne ...
in Hudson County, New Jersey and the numerous online and offline terminals located in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
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 ...
,
Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey b ...
,
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 ...
, and
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
. Class 1 railroads in the New York Harbor area providing car float services were: * Baltimore and Ohio Railroad * Bay Coast Railroad * Central Railroad of New Jersey * Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad *
Erie Railroad The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in the northeastern United States, originally connecting New York City — more specifically Jersey City, New Jersey, where Erie's Pavonia Terminal, long demolished, used to stand — with Lake ...
and Erie Lackawanna Railroad *
Lehigh Valley Railroad The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad built in the Northeastern United States to haul anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Pennsylvania. The railroad was authorized on April 21, 1846 for freight and transportation of passengers, goods, ...
* Long Island Rail Road * New York Central Railroad * New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad * Pennsylvania Railroad * Reading Railroad As well as the offline terminal railroads: * Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal * Bush Terminal/Industry City * Brooklyn Army Terminal *
Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad Hoboken Shore Railroad , initials HSRR, was a New Jersey railroad which was created around 1954. It took over the activities of the Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad , initials HMRR. This railroad owned only of mainline but leased about 1906 the lon ...
* Jay Street Connecting Railroad *
New York Dock Railway New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
* Pouch TerminalFlagg, 2002, p. 117. * East Jersey Railroad and Terminal Co. Car float service was also provided to many pier stations and waterfront warehouse facilities (that did not engage in car floating service directly) by the above-mentioned railroads. At their peak, the railroads had 3,400 employees operating small fleets totalling 323 car floats, plus 1,094 other
barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...
s, towed by 150
tugboats A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, su ...
between
New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
and
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 ...
. Abandoned float bridges are preserved as part of this history at: *
Gantry Plaza State Park Gantry Plaza State Park is a state park on the East River in the Hunters Point section of Long Island City, in the New York City borough of Queens. The park is located in a former dockyard and manufacturing district, and includes remnants of fa ...
in Long Island City, Queens; (former Long Island Railroad), * West 26th Street float bridge (former Baltimore & Ohio) and the only surviving wood Howe truss float bridge in New York Harbor * North River Pier 66a, and 69th Street Transfer Bridge (former New York Central) Several other abandoned but unrestored float bridges exist in other locations around New York Harbor. A complete list is available a
Surviving Float Bridges of New York Harbor
Freight cars do not run in the East River Tunnels nor 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 Ne ...
), in part due to inadequate tunnel clearances of the New York Tunnel Extension. The Bay Coast Railroad formerly operated a 2-barge car float connecting
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...
's Eastern Shore with the city of Norfolk, Virginia across the Chesapeake Bay.


U.S. Midwest

Between 1912–1936, the Erie Railroad operated a car float service on the
Chicago River The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). Though not especially long, the river is notable because it is one of the reasons fo ...
in
Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
.


U.S. West Coast

* Santa Fe Railroad:
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...
* Southern Pacific Railroad: (?) *
Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...
: (?) *
Western Pacific Railroad The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route dire ...
: San Francisco * Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad: Seattle; Tacoma, Washington; Bellingham, Washington; Port Townsend, Washington * Seattle and North Coast Railroad: Seattle; Port Townsend, Washington


Canada

*
Prince Rupert, British Columbia Prince Rupert is a port city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Its location is on Kaien Island near the Alaskan panhandle. It is the land, air, and water transportation hub of British Columbia's North Coast, and has a population of 1 ...
Whittier, Alaska ('' Aquatrain'', Service ended in April 2021.) * Various inland lakes of
British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...
( Okanagan, Arrow, Kootenay) ( Canadian National Railway and
CPR Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spont ...
) *
Port Maitland, Ontario :''There is also a Port Maitland in the province of Nova Scotia; see Port Maitland, Nova Scotia.'' Grand River, Ontario Port Maitland is a community of approximately 100 people in Haldimand County, Ontario, Canada. It is on the North shore of L ...
Erie, Pennsylvania 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 ...
( TH&B Navigation Company) * Port Burwell, Ontario
Ashtabula, Ohio Ashtabula ( ) is a city in Ashtabula County, Ohio, United States, and the center of the Ashtabula micropolitan area. It is located at the mouth of the Ashtabula River on Lake Erie, northeast of Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, the cit ...
(CN) * Cobourg, Ontario
Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
( Ontario Car Ferry Company) * Sarnia, OntarioPort Huron, Michigan – rail-barge – (CN, until the opening of the Paul Tellier Tunnel). The rail ferries '' Pere Marquette 12'' and ''Pere Marquette 10'' were converted to barges (''PM 10'' in 1974, ''PM 12'' in the 1980s) and used until 1995 to carry dangerous cargoes and oversize cars. *
Windsor, Ontario Windsor is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Essex County, it is the southe ...
Detroit, Michigan ( Grand Trunk, CN, CPR, Michigan Central, Wabash, until the 1980s) * BC Rail. until 1955 railcars were barged from North Vancouver to Squamish. * A large number of isolated BC pulp mills had chemicals and freight moved by car floats. * In the Victoria Harbour to Ogden Point


Existing operations


Alaska

The Alaska Railroad provides the Alaska Rail Marine rail barge service from downtown Seattle to Whittier on the central
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...
n mainland.', CN Rail provided the '' Aquatrain'' rail barge service from
Prince Rupert, British Columbia Prince Rupert is a port city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Its location is on Kaien Island near the Alaskan panhandle. It is the land, air, and water transportation hub of British Columbia's North Coast, and has a population of 1 ...
to Whittier. Service ended in April 2021.


New York / New Jersey

The only remaining car float service in operation in the
Port of New York and New Jersey The Port of New York and New Jersey is the port district of the New York-Newark metropolitan area, encompassing the region within approximately a radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. It includes the system of navigable wate ...
is operated by New York New Jersey Rail. This company, operated by the bi-state government agency
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, PANYNJ; stylized, in logo since 2020, as Port Authority NY NJ, is a joint venture between the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, established in 1921 through an interstate compact authorized b ...
is the successor to the New York Cross Harbor Railroad. Car float service operates between 65th Street / Bay Ridge Yard in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
and Greenville Yard in Jersey City, New Jersey.


See also

* Bay Ridge Branch *
Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel The Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel (also known as the Cross Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel) is a proposed freight rail transport tunnel under Upper New York Bay in the Port of New York and New Jersey between northeastern New Jersey and Long Island, inclu ...
(proposed) * Ferry slip (includes examples of rail ferry and barge slips) * Linkspan * New York tugboats * Santa Fe Dock and Channel Company


References


External links

*
Railroad ferry, Hudson River, New York
',
Andreas Feininger Andreas Bernhard Lyonel Feininger (December 27, 1906 – February 18, 1999) was an American photographer and a writer on photographic technique. He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures ...
, 1940. Still Photograph Archive, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.
NYNJ Rail
– official site
Industrial & Offline Terminal Railroads of Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx & Manhattan
{{ModernMerchantShipTypes Ship types Train ferries