Hudson Tubes

I’m at the vaunted Canandaigua YMCA yesterday (Monday, May 12, 2008).
I’m on a cardio-theater treadmill.
I have it off, but the giant wall-mounted plasma-babies above me are on.
The one to my right is tuned to CNN, silent but close-captioned, as always.
A reporter is standing in a railroad-station somewhere in north Jersey.
It looks like it may be the Corridor, because the railroad-ties are concrete.
“Currently there’s only one railroad crossing under the Hudson River from Jersey to New York City,” he says.
Well, more-or-less kerreck, although PATH is a second railroad-tunnel under the Hudson, if it’s still operating. PATH’s New York City station was under the World Trade Center. —But PATH is more a subway.
Only one railroad ever accessed New York City from Jersey, and that was the mighty Pennsylvania railroad — now the Amtrak Northeast Corridor.
A union railroad-bridge was proposed in the late 1800s, but never built. Only Pennsy crossed the Hudson; all the other railroads continued using ferries (Pennsy had ferries before the Tubes).
Pennsy opened its twin tunnels (“Tubes”) about 1910, and they remain the only viable railroad crossing; still in use.
The Tubes are electric, but the entire Corridor is electric; it’s trains powered by electric locomotives that collect current from an overhead trolley-wire (the “cantenary”).
The Tubes had to be electric, because sufficient ventilation couldn’t be built to run smoky steam locomotives. Railroads now use diesel-power instead of steam, which would be less a challenge than steam-engines, but still the Tubes lack sufficient ventilation.
The Tubes are also small; not big enough to clear the standard Amtrak double-deck passenger-car, or a freight-train.
In fact, anything that runs the Tubes has to be small enough to clear — e.g. the standard Amtrak Metroliner car, the AEM7s and the GG1. Also the Acela equipment and the HEP locomotives.
The GG1 was very long, but not very high.
The standard railroad passenger-car from the ‘50s was small enough to clear the Tubes.
New Jersey Transit also uses the Tubes. New Jersey Transit took over commuter operations from Pennsy — the Tubes became a commuter connector as well as a connection to railroads out west.
So now the Tubes are a bottleneck; which was why PATH was built long ago — to take some of the commuter pressure off the Tubes. PATH was originally built as the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, with Pennsy backing.
But it ends at Newark, and now Jersey Transit is running commuter-trains well beyond Newark.
And all they can currently use are the Tubes to get to New York City. (Plus they have to be electric.)
And all the Jersey Transit trains that use railroads that were non-Pennsy (like Erie and Lackawanna) still have to use ferries.
So now a giant project has been proposed to build an additional railroad-tunnel under the Hudson into New York City.
Well, it’s about time.
The Tubes are almost a hundred years old.
Too much traffic is being rammed through them. —And it has to come off the Corridor; the commuter-districts in north Jersey don’t cross the Hudson.
Of course, the dreaded Tubes, bad as they are, were built with private capital. Any new tunnels would be built with public funds.

A “cardio-theater treadmill” is a treadmill with a small flat-screen TV, so you can watch TV while exercising.

“Plasma-babies” are what my loudmouthed macho brother-in-Boston calls all high-definition wide/flat-screen TVs. Other technologies beside plasma are available, but he calls them all “plasma-babies.”

“The Corridor” is Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (railroad), originally Washington DC to New York City; but now to Boston. It’s very successful — the most-used Amtrak line. —The Corridor uses pre-cast concrete ties because of extreme usage: the trains run at very high speed, often over 120 mph.

“PATH” is Port-Authority Trans-Hudson.

“Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

All the railroads in north Jersey that served New York City by ferry (including Pennsy) were going to use the proposed “union railroad-bridge.” (This is late 1800s.)

“AEM7s” were the standard Amtrak electric locomotive from the ‘80s until recently. Some are still in use. It’s a Swedish design built by General Motors. The “GG1” was the standard Pennsylvania Railroad electric passenger locomotive used from the late ‘30s through the ‘70s (outlasting Pennsy). It was extremely successful, and was arguably the greatest railroad locomotive ever made. “Acela” is the newfangled electric train designed to operate the Corridor over 120 mph — often over 140. The “HEP locomotives” are an Acela-derived power unit to replace the AEM7. (The Corridor is still a very old railroad, and has limitations.)