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stored by that time, with shuttle buses han- dling passengers to and from the Morris & Essex line at Summit.
NJT’s losses resulted in an interesting ex- change of cars between Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada. As Amtrak moved Amfleet coaches from Empire Service to the Northeast Corridor for the Thanksgiving week rush, the national carrier borrowed two sets of Budd long-dis- tance equipment from VIA. These included dome lounge observation cars Evangeline Park and Tweedsmuir Park, plus ten coaches, most ex-Canadian Pacific but some, ironically, for- mer Amtrak. The Budds arrived on November 18 and were assigned to the Adirondack be- tween Albany-Rensselaer and Montreal. Trav- elers heading to and from New York City changed to Amfleet equipment at Albany. The VIA cars ran from November 20 through No- vember 27.
In contrast to New Jersey Transit’s experi- ence, the Metropolitan Transportation Author-
NJ TRANSIT’S Hoboken Terminal on the Hudson River waterfront (above left) and the Mead- ows Maintenance Center (above right), located in the marshes along the lower Hackensack River in Kearny were inundated by Sandy’s storm surge. The storm’s effects were felt hundreds of miles inland from the coast as it dumped three to four feet of snow in West Virginia. On Octo- ber 31 a CSX plow extra (below) with Jordan spreader No. 914057 cleared deep snow on the for- mer Nicholas, Fayette & Greenbrier G&E Subdivision between Rainelle and Quinwood,
W.Va.
ity heavy rail systems in New York fared pretty well. Several miles up the Hudson River from New York City at Ossining, the storm surge forced a pleasure boat up onto the Hudson Line and at Croton-Harmon, 33 miles north of Grand Central Terminal, the river was over the rails at the Metro-North yards as equipment was moved to higher ground. The river-hug- ging route, owned by Metro-North as far north as Poughkeepsie and used by Amtrak between New York and Albany, was closed due to washouts and debris on the tracks until Satur- day, November 3, when limited MNCR and Amtrak service was offered. The Hudson Line suffered track damage as well as damage to the
signal system and third rail power supply, but MNCR lost little if any, equipment. The Long Island Rail Road lost no equip- ment to Sandy, having moved everything to the highest ground available, mostly around Ja- maica. Service to Penn Station was suspended until November 12 after Amtrak was able to drain the tunnels under the East River that LIRR uses to enter Manhattan. By the Monday after Thanksgiving, “near normal” weekday service had been restored on all LIRR lines. The subway system and the Staten Island Railway did not fare as well as the LIRR and MNCR did. Several subway tunnels were flood- ed and had to be pumped out, and the above- ground part of the A Line to Rockaway was sev- ered as the storm surge caused extensive washouts on its route across Jamaica Bay. Twenty cars were trucked to the isolated outer reaches of the Rockaway Line and on November 20 free shuttle service began between the Beach 90th Street and Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue stations. A bus bridge spanned the gap between Far Rockaway-Mott Avenue and the Howard Beach station. On the Staten Island Railway, the terminal at St. George sustained heavy damage to the signal system and only two of ten tracks were in service by Thanksgiving. The line’s Clifton maintenance shop also suffered heavy water damage and MTA estimated that normal service on Staten Island would not re- turn until the end of March, and repairs to the Rockaway line could take as long. The storm’s effects were felt hundreds of
miles inland as wind and record heavy snow hit West Virginia; three to four feet of the white stuff fell, slowing freight traffic as crews cleared snow and fallen trees. Norfolk South- ern and CSX briefly suspended service during and after the storm, but freight operations re- bounded quickly. — WALT LANKENAU
23
CHASE GUNNOE
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