Thursday, July 22, 2010

Elegantries

dave3

(Photos by Wendy Hammond)


From Dave Brigham:

These spectacular pictures were taken by my friend Wendy Hammond, who, unlike the rest of us here at The Backside of America, is a professional (not to say that the rest of us don't take great pictures, just that we don't actually, you know, get paid for doing so).

The photos depict long-abandoned Long Island Railroad gantries in Long Island City, New York. Gantries lifted freight cars from rail yards onto float bridges, which then transferred the cars to barges. The barges, or car floats, took the trains to ships or to rail lines across the river in New Jersey.


dave2

dave1

2 comments:

  1. You almost got it right.

    The gantries adjusted the heights of the slips to match the height of the barges onto which the railcars were then loaded onto. The cars were loaded by simply pulling or pushing them onto the barges, just like switching a regular industry.

    Awesome pictures though!

    A better explanation might be found here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferry_slip

    ReplyDelete
  2. Damn...thanks for the help. And the link. They are beautiful pix, aren't they?

    ReplyDelete

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