RE: (erielack) RE:Hoboken Shore/EL (was: Interline Switching Waybill)

["Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul)" <paul.tupaczewski_@_alcatel-lucent.com>]

Ralph Heiss wrote:


> Sorry if this has already been covered in recent posts. What 
> you are inquiring about is, I believe, called Reciprocal 
> Switching. In the NY Harbor area (and really from what I can 
> tell, any large urban area) had many such areas like this. 
> What it boils down to is that certain industries either 
> allowed/gave/arranged to have more than one railroad switch 
> the industry, regardless of weather the factory was located 
> on the PRR in Jersey City, the Erie still had the ability to 
> serve it directly.

I don't think that's exactly what we're talking about here. The original waybill was an EL waybill for customer "Maxwell House, Hoboken, NJ."  Now, the EL never switched (to the best of my knowledge) anything on the HBS, but from list discussion, it appears that Maxwell House gave EL (not HBS) its business, and the HBS only acted as a terminal switching line that received a flat fee for performing the switching task and getting the cars to the EL at its Weehawken interchange. The same thing appeared to be in place for the Morristown & Erie as well, but apparently NOT for the NYS&W (a fact the puzzles/intrigues me) - at least circa 1975.



> This wouldn't be like the Erie having the 
> ability to directly switch a customer in Bayonne (even though 
> it potentially had access to it via the National Docks), but 
> more like the Erie switching a company that was located in 
> say the Marion section of Jersey City, where the tracks of 
> PRR and Erie were all but side by side, and said industry was 
> located literally across the street. I believe some if not 
> most of these old switching agreements go back to the old 
> days of  leased railroads, and joint operations, etc. Case in 
> point - The Erie-NYS&W situation, or the CNJ-RRRR operation. 
> The HBSR was, at least in the early years of the Port 
> Authority, considered part of "Belt Line 13", and thus part 
> of a large, "open-access" terminal railroad. Belt Line 13 was 
> in effect, the LV National Docks from Bayonne, all the way to 
> the NYS&W at Edgewater. This was the PA's attempt to operate 
> of unified terminal RR operation, but as we all know, the 
> respective railroads kept control of their own trackage. But 
> it is for this very reason why I believe the HBSR and Maxwell 
> House were treated this way in your initial inquiry.

Now that would make sense if the PA treated all the roads as one big terminal road. But I assume in this case that the HBS must have gotten some switching fee out of this, yes?

Now, of course, how does the aforementioned example of the Morristown & Erie fit into this? It was a shortline that really didn't run in the same area as any other road, and (by 1975) only had a connection to the outside world via the EL in Morristown. The Port Authority had no play here... so why would it allows the EL to be the "provider"?



> A good 
> breakdown of all this in regards to understanding it in order 
> to model it was covered in the OpSIG journal The Dispatcher's 
> Office a few years back.

Speaking of which, excellent article on modeling waterfront operations in the most recent issue!

	- Paul

	The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List
	http://EL-List.railfan.net/
	To Unsubscribe: http://Lists.Railfan.net/erielackunsub.html

------------------------------