Among U.S. mass transportation systems the cable cars have the most accidents per year and per vehicle mile, with 126 accidents and 151 injuries reported in the 10 years ending 2013. In the three years ending 2013 the city paid some $8 million to settle four dozen cable car accident claims.


The system was shut down in March 2020 to protect operators during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cable cars do not offer a compartment separating them from passengers (unlike Muni buses, which kept running). , service on the Powell–Hyde line is expected to resume in fall 2021.


There are four separate cables: one length and one length for the Hyde and Mason segments, a length for their common Powell section, and one length for the California Street line.


Apart from the cable itself (which exerts a braking force when going downhill), the cable cars use three separate braking systems:


The current cable car network consists of three routes. The Powell–Hyde and Powell–Mason lines use "single-ended" cars, which must be looped or turned around like a bus at the end of the line; the single-ended cable cars use manual non-powered turntables to rotate the car. There are three street turntables to do this, one at the end of each of the three terminals: at Market & Powell Streets, Taylor & Bay Streets, and Hyde & Beach Streets, with a fourth turntable located inside the car barn on Washington and Jackson Streets.


There is also a set of non-revenue tracks from the California Street line along Hyde Street to join the Powell–Hyde line at Hyde and Washington. This connection exists to enable California Street cars to reach the car barn.


A small signal tower controls the crossing of the lines at the intersection of California Street and Powell Street. It has been rebuilt in 1907, 1937, 1967, and 2020–2021.


The system generally starts operating at 5:32am each day and shuts down at 1:30am.


The cable car system connects at both its terminals on Market Street with the F Market heritage streetcar line. The Taylor and Bay terminal, and the Hyde and Beach terminal, are both short walks from the F Market line. The system connects with other MUNI lines and BART at the Powell & Market and California & Drumm terminals.


As of January 1, 2020, riding a cable car costs $8 for a single ride, except for seniors riding before 7am or after 9pm when the senior fare is $4. $8 Cable Car Souvenir Tickets are sold in advance and include a San Francisco souvenir as well as a single ride. Beside these single ride tickets, cable car rides are included in monthly Muni passes, as well as 1-day, 3-day, 7-day passes, and the CityPASS program. Passes loaded on a Clipper card can be read by the conductor with a mobile device. Transfers or fare receipts are not accepted. In the 1960s, the fare for a single ride was 15 cents.


In budget year 2012, sales of $6 Cable Car Souvenir Tickets totaled $4,125,386. $6 single rider tickets sold by the cable car conductors totaled $9,888,001. Based on both tickets only, daily ridership of the cable car system was more than 6400. By 2017, the San Francisco Chronicle described the cable cars as a "cash cow" for Muni, yielding a yearly revenue of around $30 million.


There are 27 cars in rotation when the system is operating. They come in two kinds:


Both types of car ride on a pair of four-wheel trucks, to fit the track's narrow gauge. The term "California Street car", as in a car running on the California Street line, should not be confused with the term "California Car". The latter term applies to all the cable cars currently operating in San Francisco, and is a historical term distinguishing this style of car from an earlier style where the open grip section and the enclosed section were separate four-wheel cars (known as the grip car and trailer).


There are 28 single-ended cars available for operation on the Powell lines and 12 double-ended cars on the California Street line. The cable cars are occasionally replaced with new or restored cars, with the old cars being moved to storage for later restoration. There are two cable cars in storage in the cable car museum / power house inside the car barn: car numbers 19 and 42, which were used on the Sacramento-Clay and O'Farrell, Jones and Hyde Street lines, respectively.


The cable-car barn is located between Washington and Jackson Streets just uphill of where Mason Street crosses them. Cars reverse into the barn off Jackson Street and run out into Washington Street, coasting downhill for both moves. To ensure that single-ended cars leave facing in the correct direction, the car barn contains a fourth turntable. Cars are moved around the car barn with the assistance of a rubber-tired tractor.


As of 2018, the cable-car barn was staffed with 17 mechanics, six custodians, three carpenters, two painters, two supervisors and one superintendent.


The car barn is situated directly above the power house and the Cable Car Museum. The museum's entrance is at Washington and Mason. It contains several examples of old cable cars, together with smaller exhibits and a shop. Two galleries allow the visitor to overlook the main power house, and also to descend below the junction of Washington and Mason Streets and see the large cavern where the haulage cables are routed out to the street via huge sheaves.


The car is driven by the "grip", whose job requires strength, coordination, and balance. The grip must smoothly grip and release the cable, know the points at which the grip must be released to coast over intersecting lines or places where the cable does not follow the tracks, and maintain clearance from other traffic. The "conductor" collects fares, manages crowding, and controls the rear-wheel brakes on some hills.


On the second or third Thursday each July, a cable car bell-ringing contest is held in Union Square between cable car crews, following a preliminary round held during the second to last or the last week of June. The preliminary round determines which contestants go on to the finals in Union Square, by a process of points awarded by a panel of judges.


Originally, the cables were powered by stationary steam engines. For the initial three cables, the Ferries & Cliff House Railway constructed a three-story structure to house two 450-horsepower coal-burning steam engines. The building was complete with a 185-foot-tall smokestack to vent away the heavy black smoke created by the Welch anthracite coal that the company burned. Expansion of service required two additional 500-horsepower coal-fired steam engines in 1890, and the number and type of engines continued to vary over time. Coal consumption in 1893 was about 10 tons per day. The system was converted to oil in 1901, and the lessened amount of smoke allowed the smokestack to be shortened to 60’; this shortened smokestack still exists at Washington-Mason today.


Electric energy started to come in by 1912, when a 600-horsepower General Electric motor came on-line. By 1926, all steam operation of the cable ended when a second complete electrical drive was installed, a 750-horsepower General Electric product. With reduction in the number of cable car lines, the single 750-horsepower electric motor took over the job of running all of the lines. The problem with that configuration was that if one cable car on one line broke down, all lines had to be stopped.


After the 1984 reconstruction, each of the four cables for the three lines (California, Hyde, Mason and Powell) is separately powered by its own 510-hp electric motor.


The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between Manhattan Island and Brooklyn on Long Island. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River. It was also the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its opening, with a main span of and a deck above mean high water. The span was originally called the New York and Brooklyn Bridge or the East River Bridge but was officially renamed the Brooklyn Bridge in 1915.


The Brooklyn Bridge is the southernmost of four toll-free vehicular bridges connecting Manhattan Island and Long Island, with the Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro bridges to the north. Only passenger vehicles and pedestrian and bicycle traffic are permitted. A major tourist attraction since its opening, the Brooklyn Bridge has become an icon of New York City. Over the years, the bridge has been used as the location of various stunts and performances, as well as several crimes and attacks. The Brooklyn Bridge has been designated a National Historic Landmark, a New York City landmark, and a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.


The Brooklyn Bridge, an early example of a steel-wire suspension bridge, uses a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge design, with both horizontal and diagonal suspender cables. Its stone towers are neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches. The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), which maintains the bridge, says that its original paint scheme was "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although a writer for "The New York Post" states that it was originally entirely "Rawlins Red".


To provide sufficient clearance for shipping in the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge incorporates long approach viaducts on either end to raise it from low ground on both shores. Including approaches, the Brooklyn Bridge is a total of long when measured between the curbs at Park Row in Manhattan and Sands Street in Brooklyn. A separate measurement of is sometimes given; this is the distance from the curb at Centre Street in Manhattan.


The main span between the two suspension towers is long and wide. The bridge "elongates and contracts between the extremes of temperature from 14 to 16 inches". Navigational clearance is above mean high water (MHW). A 1909 "Engineering Magazine" article said that, at the center of the span, the height above MHW could fluctuate by more than due to temperature and traffic loads, while more rigid spans had a lower maximum deflection.


The side spans, between each suspension tower and each side's suspension anchorages, are long. At the time of construction, engineers had not yet discovered the aerodynamics of bridge construction, and bridge designs were not tested in wind tunnels. It was coincidental that the open truss structure supporting the deck is, by its nature, subject to fewer aerodynamic problems. This is because John Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge's truss system to be six to eight times as strong as he thought it needed to be. However, due to a supplier's fraudulent substitution of inferior-quality cable in the initial construction, the bridge was reappraised at the time as being only four times as strong as necessary.


The main span and side spans are supported by a structure containing six trusses running parallel to the roadway, each of which is deep. The trusses allow the Brooklyn Bridge to hold a total load of , a design consideration from when it originally carried heavier elevated trains. These trusses are held up by suspender ropes, which hang downward from each of the four main cables. Crossbeams run between the trusses at the top, and diagonal and vertical stiffening beams run on the outside and inside of each roadway.


An elevated pedestrian and cycling promenade runs in between the two roadways and above them. It typically runs below the level of the crossbeams, except at the areas surrounding each tower. Here, the promenade rises to just above the level of the crossbeams, connecting to a balcony that slightly overhangs the two roadways. The path is generally wide.


Each of the side spans is reached by an approach ramp. The approach ramp from the Brooklyn side is shorter than the approach ramp from the Manhattan side. The approaches are supported by Renaissance-style arches made of masonry; the arch openings themselves were filled with brick walls, with small windows within. The approach ramp contains nine arch or iron-girder bridges across side streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn.


Underneath the Manhattan approach, a series of brick slopes or "banks" was developed into a skate park, the Brooklyn Banks, in the late 1980s. The park uses the approach's support pillars as obstacles. In the mid-2010s, the Brooklyn Banks were closed to the public because the area was being used as a storage site during the bridge's renovation. The skateboarding community has attempted to save the banks on multiple occasions; after the city destroyed the smaller banks in the 2000s, the city government agreed to keep the larger banks for skateboarding. When the NYCDOT removed the bricks from the banks in 2020, skateboarders started an online petition.


The Brooklyn Bridge contains four main cables, which descend from the tops of the suspension towers and help support the deck. Two are located to the outside of the bridge's roadways, while two are in the median of the roadways. Each main cable measures in diameter and contains 5,282 parallel, galvanized steel wires wrapped closely together in a cylindrical shape. These wires are bundled in 19 individual strands, with 278 wires to a strand. This was the first use of bundling in a suspension bridge and took several months for workers to tie together. Since the 2000s, the main cables have also supported a series of 24-watt LED lighting fixtures, referred to as "necklace lights" due to their shape.


In addition, 1,520 galvanized steel wire suspender cables hang downward from the main cables, and another 400 cable stays extend diagonally from the towers. These wires hold up the truss structure around the bridge deck.


Each side of the bridge contains an anchorage for the main cables. The anchorages are trapezoidal limestone structures located slightly inland of the shore, measuring at the base and at the top. Each anchorage weighs . The Manhattan anchorage rests on a foundation of bedrock while the Brooklyn anchorage rests on clay.


The anchorages both have four anchor plates, one for each of the main cables, which are located near ground level and parallel to the ground. The anchor plates measure , with a thickness of and weigh each. Each anchor plate is connected to the respective main cable by two sets of nine eyebars, each of which is about long and up to thick. The chains of eyebars curve downward from the cables toward the anchor plates, and the eyebars vary in size depending on their position.


The bridge's two suspension towers are tall with a footprint of at the high water line. They are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The limestone was quarried at the Clark Quarry in Essex County, New York. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New York by schooner. The Manhattan tower contains of masonry, while the Brooklyn tower has of masonry.


Each tower contains a pair of Gothic Revival pointed arches, through which the roadways run. The arch openings are tall and wide. The tops of the towers are located above the floor of each arch opening, while the floors of the openings are above mean water level, giving the towers a total height of above mean high water.


The Brooklyn side's caisson, which was built first, originally had a height of and a ceiling composed of five layers of timber, each layer tall. Ten more layers of timber were later added atop the ceiling, and the entire caisson was wrapped in tin and wood for further protection against flooding. The thickness of the caisson's sides was at both the bottom and the top. The caisson had six chambers: two each for dredging, supply shafts, and airlocks.


The caisson on the Manhattan side was slightly different because it had to be installed at a greater depth. To protect against the increased air pressure at that depth, the Manhattan caisson had 22 layers of timber on its roof, seven more than its Brooklyn counterpart had. The Manhattan caisson also had fifty -diameter pipes for sand removal, a fireproof iron-boilerplate interior, and different airlocks and communication systems.


Washington Roebling himself suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of caisson disease shortly after ground was broken for the Brooklyn tower foundation. His debilitating condition left him unable to supervise the construction in person, so he designed the caissons and other equipment from his apartment, directing "the completion of the bridge through a telescope from his bedroom." His wife Emily Warren Roebling not only provided written communications between her husband and the engineers on site, but also understood mathematics, calculations of catenary curves, strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction. She spent the next 11 years helping supervise the bridge's construction, taking over much of the chief engineer's duties, including day-to-day supervision and project management.


After the caissons were completed, piers were constructed on top of each of them upon which masonry towers would be built. The towers' construction was a complex process that took four years. Since the masonry blocks were heavy, the builders transported them to the base of the towers using a pulley system with a continuous -diameter steel wire rope, operated by steam engines at ground level. The blocks were then carried up on a timber track alongside each tower and maneuvered into the proper position using a derrick atop the towers. The blocks sometimes vibrated the ropes because of their weight, but only once did a block fall.


In 1875, while the towers were being constructed, the project had depleted its original $5 million budget. Two bridge commissioners, one each from Brooklyn and Manhattan, petitioned New York state lawmakers to allot another $8 million for construction. Ultimately, the legislators passed a law authorizing the allotment with the condition that the cities would buy the stock of Brooklyn Bridge's private stockholders.


Work proceeded concurrently on the anchorages on each side. The Brooklyn anchorage broke ground in January 1873 and was subsequently substantially completed in August 1875. The Manhattan anchorage was built in less time, having started in May 1875, it was mostly completed in July 1876. The anchorages could not be fully completed until the main cables were spun, at which point another would be added to the height of each anchorage.


By December 1876, a steel contract for the permanent cables still had not been awarded. There was disagreement over whether the bridge's cables should use the as-yet-untested Bessemer steel or the well-proven crucible steel. Until a permanent contract was awarded, the builders ordered of wire in the interim, 10 tons each from three companies, including Washington Roebling's own steel mill in Brooklyn. In the end, it was decided to use number 8 Birmingham gauge (approximately 4 mm or 0.165 inches in diameter) crucible steel, and a request for bids was distributed, to which eight companies responded. In January 1877, a contract for crucible steel was awarded to J. Lloyd Haigh, who was associated with bridge trustee Abram Hewitt, whom Roebling distrusted.


Further complicating the situation, Washington Roebling had failed to appear at the trustees' meeting in June 1882, since he had gone to Newport, Rhode Island. After the news media discovered this, most of the newspapers called for Roebling to be fired as chief engineer, except for the "Daily State Gazette" of Trenton, New Jersey, and the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle". Some of the longstanding trustees, including Henry C. Murphy, James S. T. Stranahan, and William C. Kingsley, were willing to vouch for Roebling, since construction progress on the Brooklyn Bridge was still ongoing. However, Roebling's behavior was considered suspect among the younger trustees who had joined the board more recently.


Construction on the bridge itself was noted in formal reports that Murphy presented each month to the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. For example, Murphy's report in August 1882 noted that the month's progress included 114 intermediate cords erected within a week, as well as 72 diagonal stays, 60 posts, and numerous floor beams, bridging trusses, and stay bars. By early 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was considered mostly completed and was projected to open that June. Contracts for bridge lighting were awarded by February 1883, and a toll scheme was approved that March.


There was substantial opposition to the bridge's construction from shipbuilders and merchants located to the north, who argued that the bridge would not provide sufficient clearance underneath for ships. In May 1876, these groups, led by Abraham Miller, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the cities of New York and Brooklyn.


In 1879, an Assembly Sub-Committee on Commerce and Navigation began an investigation into the Brooklyn Bridge. A seaman who had been hired to determine the height of the span, testified to the committee about the difficulties that ship masters would experience in bringing their ships under the bridge when it was completed. Another witness, Edward Wellman Serrell, a civil engineer, said that the calculations of the bridge's assumed strength were incorrect. The Supreme Court decided in 1883 that the Brooklyn Bridge was a lawful structure.


The New York and Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on May 24, 1883. Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East River for the occasion. Officially, Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge. The bridge opening was also attended by U.S. president Chester A. Arthur and New York mayor Franklin Edson, who crossed the bridge and shook hands with Brooklyn mayor Seth Low at the Brooklyn end. Abram Hewitt gave the principal address.


Though Washington Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and rarely visited the site again), he held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening. Further festivity included the performance by a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed the span. Less than a week after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, ferry crews reported a sharp drop in patronage, while the bridge's toll operators were processing over a hundred people a minute. However, cross-river ferries continued to operate until 1942.


The bridge had cost in 1883 dollars (about US$ in ) to build, of which Brooklyn paid two-thirds. The bonds to fund the construction would not be paid off until 1956. An estimated 27 men died during its construction. Since the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the only bridge across the East River at that time, it was also called the East River Bridge. Until the construction of the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, one and a half times longer than any built previously.


By 1890, due to the popularity of the Brooklyn Bridge, there were proposals to construct other bridges across the East River between Manhattan and Long Island. Although a second deck for the Brooklyn Bridge was proposed, it was thought to be infeasible because doing so would overload the bridge's structural capacity. The first new bridge across the East River, the Williamsburg Bridge, opened upstream in 1903 and connected Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This was followed by the Queensboro Bridge between Queens and Manhattan in March 1909, and the Manhattan Bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan in December 1909. Several subway, railroad, and road tunnels were also constructed, which helped to accelerate the development of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.


While the rebuilding of the span was ongoing, a fallout shelter was constructed beneath the Manhattan approach in anticipation of the Cold War. The abandoned space in one of the masonry arches was stocked with emergency survival supplies for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union; these supplies remained in place half a century later. In addition, defensive barriers were added to the bridge as a safeguard against sabotage.


Simultaneous with the rebuilding of the Brooklyn Bridge, a double-decked viaduct for the BQE was being built through an existing steel overpass of the bridge's Brooklyn approach ramp. The segment of the BQE from Brooklyn Bridge south to Atlantic Avenue opened in June 1954, but the direct ramp from the northbound BQE to the Manhattan-bound Brooklyn Bridge did not open until 1959. The city also widened the Adams Street approach in Brooklyn, between the bridge and Fulton Street, from between 1954 and 1955. Subsequently, Boerum Place from Fulton Street south to Atlantic Avenue was also widened. This required the demolition of the old Kings County courthouse. The towers were cleaned in 1958 and the Brooklyn anchorage was repaired the next year.


In August 2016, after the renovation had been completed, the NYCDOT announced that it would conduct a seven-month, $370,000 study to verify if the bridge could support a heavier upper deck that consisted of an expanded bicycle and pedestrian path. , about 10,000 pedestrians and 3,500 cyclists use the pathway on an average weekday. Work on the pedestrian entrance on the Brooklyn side was underway by 2017.


Horse-drawn carriages have been allowed to use the Brooklyn Bridge's roadways since its opening. Originally, each of the two roadways carried two lanes of a different direction of traffic. The lanes were relatively narrow at only wide. In 1922, motor vehicles were banned from the bridge, while horse-drawn carriages were restricted from the Manhattan Bridge. Thereafter, the only vehicles allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge were horse-drawn.


Since 1950, the main roadway has carried six lanes of automobile traffic. Because of the roadway's height ( posted) and weight ( posted) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using the Brooklyn Bridge. The weight restrictions prohibit heavy passenger vehicles such as pickup trucks and SUVs to use the bridge, though this is not often enforced in practice.


On the Brooklyn side, vehicles can enter the bridge from Tillary/Adams Streets to the south, Sands/Pearl Streets to the west, and exit 28B of the eastbound Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. In Manhattan, cars can enter from both the northbound and southbound FDR Drive, as well as Park Row to the west, Chambers/Centre Streets to the north, and Pearl Street to the south. However, the exit from the bridge to northbound Park Row was closed after the September 11 attacks because of increased security concerns: that section of Park Row ran under One Police Plaza, the NYPD headquarters.


Vehicular access to the bridge is provided by a complex series of ramps on both sides of the bridge. There are two entrances to the bridge's pedestrian promenade on either side.


Formerly, rail traffic operated on the Brooklyn Bridge as well. Cable cars and elevated railroads used the bridge until 1944, while trolleys ran until 1950.


The New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway, a cable car service, began operating on September 25, 1883; it ran on the inner lanes of the bridge, between terminals at the Manhattan and Brooklyn ends. Since Washington Roebling believed that steam locomotives would put excessive loads upon the structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, the cable car line was designed as a steam/cable-hauled hybrid. They were powered from a generating station under the Brooklyn approach. The cable cars could not only regulate their speed on the % upward and downward approaches, but also maintain a constant interval between each other. There were 24 cable cars in total.


Following the unification of the cities of New York and Brooklyn in 1898, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway ceased to be a separate entity that June and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) assumed control of the line. The BRT started running through-services of elevated trains, which ran from Park Row Terminal in Manhattan to points in Brooklyn via the Sands Street station on the Brooklyn side. Before reaching Sands Street (at Tillary Street for Fulton Street Line trains, and at Bridge Street for Fifth Avenue Line and Myrtle Avenue Line trains), elevated trains bound for Manhattan were uncoupled from their steam locomotives. The elevated trains were then coupled to the cable cars, which would pull the passenger carriages across the bridge.


The BRT did not run any elevated train through services from 1899 to 1901. Due to increased patronage after the opening of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT)'s first subway line, the Park Row station was rebuilt in 1906. In the early 20th century, there were plans for Brooklyn Bridge elevated trains to run underground to the BRT's proposed Chambers Street station in Manhattan, though the connection was never opened. The overpass across William Street was closed in 1913 to make way for the proposed connection. In 1929, the overpass was reopened after it became clear that the connection would not be built.


A plan for trolley service across the Brooklyn Bridge was presented in 1895. Two years later, the Brooklyn Bridge trustees agreed to a plan where trolleys could run across the bridge under ten-year contracts. Trolley service, which began in 1898, ran on what are now the two middle lanes of each roadway (shared with other traffic). When cable service was withdrawn in 1908, the trolley tracks on the Brooklyn side were rebuilt to alleviate congestion. Trolley service on the middle lanes continued until the elevated lines stopped using the bridge in 1944, when they moved to the protected center tracks. On March 5, 1950, the streetcars also stopped running, and the bridge was redesigned exclusively for automobile traffic.


The Brooklyn Bridge has an elevated promenade open to pedestrians and cyclists in the center of the bridge, located above the automobile lanes. The promenade is usually located below the height of the girders, except at the approach ramps leading to each tower's balcony. The path is generally wide, though this is constrained by obstacles such as protruding cables, benches, and stairways, which create "pinch points" at certain locations. The path narrows to at the locations where the main cables descend to the level of the promenade. Further exacerbating the situation, these "pinch points" are some of the most popular places to take pictures. As a result, in 2016, the NYCDOT announced that it planned to double the promenade's width.


A center line was painted to separate cyclists from pedestrians in 1971, creating one of the city's first dedicated bike lanes. Initially, the northern side of the promenade was used by pedestrians and the southern side by cyclists. In 2000, these were swapped, with cyclists taking the northern side and pedestrians taking the southern side.


Pedestrian and bicycle access to the bridge from the Brooklyn side is from either the median of Adams Street at its intersection with Tillary Street or a staircase near Prospect Street between Cadman Plaza East and West. In Manhattan, the pedestrian walkway is accessible from crosswalks at the intersection of the bridge and Centre Street, or through a staircase leading to Park Row.


While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians, the promenade facilitates movement when other means of crossing the East River have become unavailable. During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005, people commuting to work used the bridge; they were joined by Mayors Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg, who crossed as a gesture to the affected public. Pedestrians also walked across the bridge as an alternative to suspended subway services following the 1965, 1977, and 2003 blackouts, and after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.


During the 2003 blackouts, many crossing the bridge reported a swaying motion. The higher-than-usual pedestrian load caused this swaying, which was amplified by the tendency of pedestrians to synchronize their footfalls with a sway. Several engineers expressed concern about how this would affect the bridge, although others noted that the bridge did withstand the event and that the redundancies in its design—the inclusion of the three support systems (suspension system, diagonal stay system, and stiffening truss)—make it "probably the best secured bridge against such movements going out of control". In designing the bridge, John Roebling had stated that the bridge would sag but not fall, even if one of these structural systems were to fail altogether.


Other notable feats have taken place on or near the bridge. In 1919, Giorgio Pessi piloted what was then one of the world's largest airplanes, the Caproni Ca.5, under the bridge. In 1993, bridge jumper Thierry Devaux illegally performed eight acrobatic bungee jumps above the East River close to the Brooklyn tower.


On March 1, 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16-year-old student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge. Halberstam died five days later from his wounds, and Baz was later convicted of murder. He was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron massacre of Palestinian Muslims a few days prior to the incident. After initially classifying the killing as one committed out of road rage, the Justice Department reclassified the case in 2000 as a terrorist attack. The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was subsequently dedicated as the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp.


Several potential attacks or disasters have also been averted. In 1979, police disarmed a stick of dynamite placed under the Brooklyn approach, and an artist in Manhattan was later arrested for the act. In 2003, truck driver Iyman Faris was sentenced to about 20 years in prison for providing material support to Al-Qaeda, after an earlier plot to destroy the bridge by cutting through its support wires with blowtorches was thwarted.


On October 1, 2011, more than 700 protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested while attempting to march across the bridge on the roadway. Protesters disputed the police account of the events and claimed that the arrests were the result of being trapped on the bridge by the NYPD. The majority of the arrests were subsequently dismissed.


On July 22, 2014, the two American flags on the flagpoles atop each tower were found to have been replaced by bleached-white American flags. Initially, cannabis activism was suspected as a motive, but on August 12, 2014, two Berlin artists claimed responsibility for hoisting the two white flags, having switched out the original flags with their replicas. The artists said that the flags were meant to celebrate "the beauty of public space" and the anniversary of the death of German-born John Roebling, and they denied that it was an "anti-American statement".


The 50th-anniversary celebrations on May 24, 1933, included a ceremony featuring an airplane show, ships, and fireworks, as well as a banquet. During the centennial celebrations on May 24, 1983, President Ronald Reagan led a cavalcade of cars across the bridge. A flotilla of ships visited the harbor, officials held parades, and Grucci Fireworks held a fireworks display that evening. For the centennial, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited a selection of the original drawings made for the bridge's construction, including those by Washington Roebling. Media coverage of the centennial was declared "the public relations triumph of 1983" by "Inc."


The 125th anniversary of the bridge's opening was celebrated by a five-day event on May 22–26, 2008, which included a live performance by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, a special lighting of the bridge's towers, and a fireworks display. Other events included a film series, historical walking tours, information tents, a series of lectures and readings, a bicycle tour of Brooklyn, a miniature golf course featuring Brooklyn icons, and other musical and dance performances. Just before the anniversary celebrations, artist Paul St George installed the Telectroscope, a video link on the Brooklyn side of the bridge that connected to a matching device on London's Tower Bridge. A renovated pedestrian connection to Dumbo, Brooklyn, was also reopened before the anniversary celebrations.


At the time of construction, contemporaries marveled at what technology was capable of, and the bridge became a symbol of the era's optimism. John Perry Barlow wrote in the late 20th century of the "literal and genuinely religious leap of faith" embodied in the bridge's construction, saying that the "Brooklyn Bridge required of its builders faith in their ability to control technology".


The Brooklyn Bridge has been listed as a National Historic Landmark since January 29, 1964, and was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. The bridge has also been a New York City designated landmark since August 24, 1967, and was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 1972. In addition, it was placed on UNESCO's list of tentative World Heritage Sites in 2017.


A bronze plaque is attached to the Manhattan anchorage, which was constructed on the site of the Samuel Osgood House at 1 Cherry Street in Manhattan. Named after Samuel Osgood, a Massachusetts politician and lawyer, it was built in 1770 and served as the first U.S. presidential mansion. The Osgood House was demolished in 1856.


Another plaque on the Manhattan side of the pedestrian promenade, installed by the city in 1975, indicates the bridge's status as a city landmark.


The Brooklyn Bridge has had an impact on idiomatic American English. For example, references to "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity. George C. Parker and William McCloundy were two early 20th-century con men who had perpetrated this scam successfully on unwitting tourists.


As a tourist attraction, the Brooklyn Bridge is a popular site for clusters of love locks, wherein a couple inscribes a date and their initials onto a lock, attach it to the bridge, and throw the key into the water as a sign of their love. The practice is officially illegal in New York City and the NYPD can give violators a $100 fine. NYCDOT workers periodically remove the love locks from the bridge at a cost of $100,000 per year.


To highlight the Brooklyn Bridge's cultural status, the city proposed building a Brooklyn Bridge museum near the bridge's Brooklyn end in the 1970s. Though the museum was ultimately not constructed, the plans had been established after numerous original planning documents were found in Williamsburg. These documents were given to the New York City Municipal Archives, where they are normally located, though the documents were briefly displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1976.


The bridge is often featured in wide shots of the New York City skyline in television and film, and has been depicted in numerous works of art. Fictional works have used the Brooklyn Bridge as a setting; for instance, the dedication of a portion of the bridge, and the bridge itself, were key components in the 2001 film "Kate & Leopold". Furthermore, the Brooklyn Bridge has also served as an icon of America, with mentions in numerous songs, books, and poems. Among the most notable of these works is that of American Modernist poet Hart Crane, who used the Brooklyn Bridge as a central metaphor and organizing structure for his second book of poetry, "The Bridge" (1930).


The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in numerous media sources, including David McCullough's 1972 book "The Great Bridge" and Ken Burns's 1981 documentary "Brooklyn Bridge". It is also described in "Seven Wonders of the Industrial World", a BBC docudrama series with an accompanying book, as well as "Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge", a biography published in 2017.


The Abraham Lincoln, also known as Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad Business Car No. 101, is the oldest operable passenger car in the United States. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


In 1910, with Robert Todd Lincoln as the company president, the Pullman Car Company suddenly changed from the 60 foot varnished wood railroad cars to the 80 foot, riveted-steel design. The new technology of the time was electric lighting, so the new cars required the addition of electrical wiring, switches, switchboards, generators, and batteries. Wood and steel trucks were replaced with massive structural steel castings.


It was September of this year that coach 895 was manufactured for the Western Pacific Railroad (WP) at an original cost of $13,624.50. The car was configured as an 84-seat coach and was the culmination of the most modern design and construction of heavyweight steel cars from the Pullman Company. Pullman passenger cars such as the WP 895 were the ultimate in travel prior to World War I.


The 101 was built and initially assigned to the president of the D&RGW and is a unique example of rail cars at the turn of the century. It has survived almost a hundred years as a rare example of "state of the art" 1910 railroad technology. The interior was distinguished by its hand crafted satin walnut lightly accented with bronze hardware and richly tailored fabrics.


In September 1964, the car was retired and sold to Golden West Rail Tours. At this time, it had a book value of $47,659.60, and accrued depreciation of $44,409.60, for a net value of $3, 250. The car was later sold for scrap value.


This car is named in honor of President Abraham Lincoln and should not be confused with the first private car in America, which was built for President Lincoln as a means to unite the nation after the civil war. Lincoln's private car was used for his funeral train in 1865, leaving Washington on April 21, 1865, and arriving in Springfield, Illinois, on May 3. Lincoln's funeral car was destroyed by fire in 1911 shortly after this car (as the Western Pacific coach 895) went into service. Quite by coincidence, the D&RG 101 had been built 101 years after President Lincoln was born.


The extensive restoration of the "Abraham Lincoln" has returned it to the simple elegance of the 1920s. In July 1988, the "Abraham Lincoln" was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which records the tangible reminders of the history of the United States and is the official list of the nation's cultural resources worthy of preservation.


Northland is a historic railroad passenger car built in 1916 for the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway to transport managers and important guests. The car was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 for its state-level significance in the theme of transportation. It was nominated for being one of the last operating examples of a private business railcar.


In 2003 "Northland" was acquired by the Lake Superior Railroad Museum and moved to the Duluth Depot in Duluth, Minnesota.


Tweetsie Railroad is a family-oriented heritage railroad and Wild West amusement park located between Boone and Blowing Rock, North Carolina, United States. The centerpiece of the park is a ride on a train pulled by one of Tweetsie Railroad's two historic narrow-gauge steam locomotives. The park also features a variety of amusement rides, live shows, a zoo and other attractions geared towards families with children. The park also hosts a variety of special events throughout the year including their Halloween and Christmas themed events.


Two years after the narrow-gauge portion of the ET&WNC ceased operations in 1950, the locomotive was purchased by a group of railroad enthusiasts and taken to Penn Laird, Virginia to operate as the Shenandoah Central Railroad, which opened in May 1953. Rains from Hurricane Hazel washed out the Shenandoah Central in October 1954, and Locomotive #12 was once again put up for sale. Cowboy actor and singer Gene Autry optioned the locomotive with the intent to move it to California for use in motion pictures. However, Autry ultimately determined that the transportation and restoration costs made his plan impractical.


Grover Robbins, an entrepreneur from Blowing Rock, North Carolina, purchased Autry's option and bought the locomotive in August 1955. Robbins moved the #12 locomotive back to its native Blue Ridge Mountains as the centerpiece of a new "Tweetsie Railroad" tourist attraction. One mile of track was constructed near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and on July 4, 1957, the locomotive made its first public trip over the line. In 1958, the track was extended to a 3-mile loop around the mountain, and the trains at Tweetsie Railroad have traveled that circuit ever since. Grover Robbins' brothers, Harry and Spencer, were also involved with the operation of Tweetsie Railroad, and the park is still controlled and operated by the Robbins family.


In 1960, Tweetsie acquired another coal-fired steam locomotive, USATC S118 Class #190, the "Yukon Queen" from Alaska's White Pass and Yukon Route. Also built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1943 for the US Army, the engine was part of an 11-locomotive fleet of "MacArthur" 2-8-2s originally purchased for use overseas. During World War II, the locomotives were sent to Alaska for use on the White Pass and Yukon. Locomotive #190 celebrated its 75th birthday in 2018.


Tweetsie Railroad became a popular tourist attraction, and quickly evolved into the first theme park in North Carolina—and one of the first in the nation. A western town and saloon were built around the original depot area. A train robbery and cowboy-and-Indian show were added to the train ride, playing off the Wild West theme that was very popular at the time on television and in movies. The theme was enhanced by regular visits from Charlotte's WBTV television personality/singing cowboy Fred Kirby, who hosted a popular children's show. In 1961, a chairlift and amusement ride area was constructed on the central mountain inside the rail loop, and over the decades the park has been expanded with additional rides, attractions, shops, zoo, and restaurants.


Tweetsie Railroad is open from early April through October, and on select nights in late November through December for the Tweetsie Christmas event. In addition to the Wild West train adventure and the amusement rides, Tweetsie Railroad has a variety of live entertainment shows featuring talented performers selected from the immediate area and from the Southeast. The park hosts numerous special events each season, including Letterland-themed days in May for school groups, visits by Thomas the Tank Engine, and a very popular nighttime "Ghost Train" Halloween event in October. In 2017, Tweetsie Railroad's 60th anniversary season, the park introduced the "Tweetsie Christmas" holiday-themed event.


In 1961, Grover and Harry Robbins built another train ride and tourist attraction called "Rebel Railroad" in the Smoky Mountains near Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Originally featuring a Civil War theme, the park was renamed "Goldrush Junction" in 1966 and re-themed to a Wild West concept very similar to Tweetsie Railroad. The Robbins brothers sold Goldrush Junction in the late 1960s, and it subsequently went through various owners. In 1976, Jack and Pete Herschend of Branson, Missouri bought the Pigeon Forge facility and redeveloped it as "Silver Dollar City". In 1986, country music star Dolly Parton became a part-owner with the Herschends, and the theme park became today's Dollywood.


Tweetsie Railroad's Wild West themed operating season is from early April to the late October, The park is open weekends in the spring and autumn, as well as daily from Memorial Day weekend until mid-August. In addition, the park is open on Friday and Saturday nights in from late September through the month of October for the very popular "Ghost Train" Halloween event. The park then closes for daytime operations, then re-opens on Friday and Saturday evenings starting in late November for "Tweetsie Christmas", which runs through the month of December. Other special events are held throughout the season, including a large firework display on the Independence Day Fourth of July, and Railroad Heritage Weekend in August, which focuses on the history of Tweetsie Railroad's narrow gauge locomotives.


Tweetsie Railroad is located on US 321 between Boone and Blowing Rock, North Carolina.


Tweetsie Railroad also have their own locomotive workshop to maintain their two locomotives as well as overhauling other steam locomotives from several different amusement parks such as Walt Disney World, Busch Gardens, Six Flags and Dollywood.


Other attractions at Tweetsie Railroad include the Tweetsie Palace Saloon and Diamond Lil's Can-Can Revue, other live shows, gold panning and gem mining, Deer Park zoo, a variety of specialty shops and food service locations, and a game arcade.


ET&WNC #12 is notable in the modeling world as being the prototype for the famous Bachmann "Big Hauler" G scale 4-6-0, which has been in production (with many revisions) since the 1980s and has long been one of the most popular models in the garden railroad hobby. Bachmann also produces an On30 scale version of the model.


Track Bus No. 19 is a motorized rail car built on a White Motor Company standard truck chassis. It was built by A. Meister & Sons in 1919 for the Hetch Hetchy Railroad and used as an ambulance to transport sick, injured or dead workers, and to carry passengers. An additional five similar railcars were ordered, none were exactly the same.


The car sat unused for 32 years before being restored and housed in Modesto then El Portal and in 1997 moved to the Railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown California.


"Dinwiddie County" Pullman Car is a historic Pullman car located near Midlothian, Chesterfield County, Virginia. It was built in 1926 as the "Mt. Angeles" by the Pullman Company; one of thirty cars on Lot 4998, all to Plan 3521A. It is a heavyweight, all-steel sleeping car with ten sections and one observation lounge. In June 1934 Pullman rebuilt it to Plan 3521F and changed the name of the car to "Dinwiddie" and again in April 1937 the name was changed to "Dinwiddie County", which name it retains to this day. These name changes represent the car's transfer to service on the Norfolk and Western Railway's trains operating to and from Virginia.


The car was sold to the National Railway Historical Society in 1965. It appeared in the 1976 television movie "Eleanor and Franklin" as the funeral car for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.


It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.


Golden Spike National Historical Park is a U.S. National Historical Park located at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake in east-central Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The nearest city is Corinne, approximately east-southeast of the site.


It commemorates the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad where the Central Pacific Railroad and the first Union Pacific Railroad met on May 10, 1869. The final joining of the rails spanning the continent was signified by the driving of the ceremonial Golden Spike.


Although the line was abandoned in 1904 (bypassed by the Lucin Cutoff) and the original rails were removed in 1942 to serve the war effort, the site presently includes of rebuilt track from the summit area (where the rail systems were joined) to a train storage building. The rebuilt track was designed to be an authentic representation of the 1869 rails.


In 2002, it received 49,950 visitors. annual visitation ranges from 48,000 to 64,000.


The first monument erected at the site was a concrete obelisk built by the Southern Pacific Railroad (successor to the Central Pacific) . It has since been moved several times, but can presently be seen near the 1969 Visitor's Center.


It was authorized for federal ownership and administration by an act of Congress on July 30, 1965, as Golden Spike National Historic Site. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed into law March 12, 2019, redesignated it as a national historical park. Historic sites are typically a single building, while historical parks include multiple landmarks in a larger district.


28,000 visitors attended the centennial anniversary of the completion ceremony on May 10, 1969, including Bernice Gibbs Anderson. The Visitor's Center had just been completed. On that day, the locomotives "Genoa" and "Inyo" were loaned from the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to recreate the completion ceremony. That year, the railroad grade was named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.


In 1978, a general master plan for the site was adopted with the goal of maintaining the site's scenic attributes as closely as possible to its appearance and characteristics in 1869. The functioning replicas of the "Jupiter" and "No. 119" locomotives were brought to the site in time to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the joining of the rails in 1979.


In 2006, a petition to the Board on Geographic Names resulted in a name change for Chinaman's Arch, a limestone arch at Golden Spike National Historical Park. Named Chinaman's Arch in honor of the 19th century Chinese railroad workers, the arch was officially renamed in the same year as the Chinese Arch to mollify sensitivities about the original name.


On May 10, 2019, a 150th anniversary celebration was held in commemoration of the completion of the railroad. This event was attended by several notable local leaders, including Utah governor Gary Herbert and the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Russell M. Nelson.


A mail sack or mailsack is a mail bag used to carry large quantities of mail.


Different handling and security requirements for different classes of mail is integral to the postal rate structure.


A mail sack is not a locked bag since they need little security. In contrast to a similar "mailbag" referred to as a mail pouch (for more sensitive mail such as personal letters and military mail) that employs a locking mechanism on the top of the bag. A "mail pouch" has special closely spaced eyelets and a strong strap to secure the top where access into the bag is closed off and locked, where a "mail sack" has none of these features.


During World War I it was typical of German soldiers to write postcards to their family to keep in touch to let them know where they were and what they were doing. The various ultimate destinations of the postcards were sorted into German "mail sacks" of that time period (1914–1918) by behind the scenes "post-office troops."


In the United Kingdom, the term "mail sack" is more expansive and generic, and typically involves larger bags that contain mail destined for one destination.


A Singapore judge held that mail sacks are considered to be part of the postal system and are protected by Chinese law; interference with them can be the subject of criminal prosecution.


Second-class mail that would be carried in a "mail sack" is periodical publications issued at stated intervals and is issued a minimum of four times a year. This type of mail must have a date of issue and a consecutive numbering system. It also must have a real office where the publication comes from that is open during normal regular hours of business. The printed matter can not be stenciled, mimeographed or through a hectograph process. Second-class mail must be publications for distributing information of a public character ("e.g.", literature, sciences, industry information). The people that receive this second-class mail must be subscribers that are on some sort of list or in a customer database.


Third-class mail that would be carried in a "mail sack" is printed material weighing less than 16 ounces. Examples are circulars that are not of a personal nature (e.g. mass general public advertising, direct advertising mailing campaigns). Other third-class mail that would be carried in a "mail sack" is bulk mail that is presorted individually addressed letters that come in quantities of at least 50 pounds or mailings of over 200 pieces.


Fourth-class mail that would be carried in a "mail sack" is printed material weighing over 16 ounces. An example would be library books transferred through the interlibrary loan system.


A mailbag used to transfer mail to a country other than the United States is defined as a "foreign mail sack". The normal design is that the top is closed with a drawstring like a leather strap. It is sealed using a lead seal (not a lock as in a mail pouch).


The Camp Chase Railway is a short-line switching and terminal railroad in and near Columbus, Ohio, United States, running past the former Camp Chase. Was owned by Indiana Boxcar Corporation from 2015 to 2019, and by Midwest and Bluegrass Rail since. It was previously known as Camp Chase Railroad and was owned by Carload Express, Inc. when it acquired a former New York Central Railroad line between Columbus and Lilly Chapel from Conrail in 1994. Through trackage rights, the CCRA interchanges with the Norfolk Southern Railway at Buckeye Yard.


CCRA owns three EMD GP9 engines, numbers 7042, 7076, and 7225, which are painted orange and black, with white "Camp Chase" lettering, and an older orange and white engine, number 752 with orange "Camp Chase Railway" lettering.


The Columbus, Springfield and Cincinnati Railroad opened the line between Columbus and London in 1872, and it became part of the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway's (Big Four's) main line west from Columbus to St. Louis and later part of the New York Central Railroad. The Penn Central Transportation Company shifted traffic to the ex-Pennsylvania Railroad line between Columbus and London, and the portion of the old Big Four line west of Lilly Chapel was not included in Conrail in 1976. The remainder was kept as a minor branch line, the Camp Chase Industrial Track. On October 11, 1994, the new Camp Chase Industrial Railroad bought the line from Conrail.


The Camp Chase Industrial Railroad has been marketed under the name Camp Chase Railroad beginning around 2009. On September 30, 2015, Carload Express, Inc. announced that its Camp Chase Railroad Company has sold its line of railroad to Camp Chase Railway Company, LLC; a wholly owned subsidiary of Indiana Boxcar Corporation. Camp Chase Railway ("CAMY") assumed operations of the 14-mile rail line, which runs from Columbus to Lilly Chapel, Ohio, beginning on Thursday October 1, 2015. Most of CAMY freight revenue comes from grain being transported along the rails going either to some of the grain elevators along the track, or to be interchanged with NS at the Buckeye Yard.


. The Camp Chase Railroad was featured on the COLUMBUS NEIGHBORHOODS Columbus' Railroad History on November 16, 2017.,


The Alabama and Florida Railway was a short-line railroad headquartered in Andalusia, Alabama. It was owned and operated by Pioneer Railcorp of Peoria, Illinois. It operated a former Louisville and Nashville Railroad branch line from Andalusia to Geneva, Alabama. The company abandoned the entire line in 2011.


The company was organized in 1992 when parent Pioneer Railcorp acquired the entirety of the Alabama and Florida Railroad. This included between Georgiana and Geneva, Alabama and a line in the vicinity of Andalusia which had been leased from the Andalusia and Conecuh Railroad. Operations began on November 23, 1992. of track from Georgiana to Andalusia, including the track within Andalusia, was sold to Gulf and Ohio Railways and named the Three Notch Railroad on June 11, 2001. On August 9, 2011, the AF filed an exemption notice with the Surface Transportation Board to abandon its entire line.


The Fore River Transportation Corporation is the operator of the Fore River Railroad, a class III railroad in eastern Massachusetts owned by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.


The railroad runs from the Fore River Shipyard in the Quincy Point neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Greenbush Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail system. It was constructed in 1902 to serve the Fore River Shipyard. In 2015, the railroad received a $500,000 grant from the state of Massachusetts to improve its tracks.


In 1987 the MWRA acquired the railroad and shipyard. MWRA contracts the operation of the railroad to the Fore River Transportation Corporation. MWRA uses the railroad to transport fertilizer that is produced by a privately owned processing facility, NEFCO Biosolids, from solid sewage waste (sludge). The sludge is transported to NEFCO from the MWRA's Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant via a pipeline system under Boston Harbor that also transports sewage to Deer Island. The railroad also serves a Twin Rivers Technologies plant, shipping fatty acid products from the facility.


The Niagara Junction Railway (reporting marks NJ, NIAJ) was a switching railroad serving Niagara Falls, New York.


The company was created in 1898 as a subsidiary of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company. In 1913 the line was electrified. In 1948 the Niagara Falls Power Company sold the railroad to its connecting companies: the New York Central, the Erie, and the Lehigh Valley. After a series of mergers in the 1960s, the Niagara Junction was finally dissolved as an independent company in 1976 when the Consolidated Rail Corporation was formed to take over operations of bankrupt railroads in the Northeast. The line was dieselized in 1979. After over a year of storage, three electric locomotives were overhauled in December 1980 and transferred to Grand Central Terminal in New York City.


Just after 9:30 am on Wednesday , a tank car exploded while being switched at the Niagara Junction's yard on Porter Road. The blast injured at least 60 people, and left a crater in diameter and deep. The cause was never determined.


The Alabama Railroad is a class III railroad as reported by the Association of American Railroads. The ALAB is owned and operated by Alabama Railroad LLC. The railroad operates of railroad from Flomaton, Alabama to Peterman, Alabama.


On April 18, 2019, the railroad filed to abandon its entire line. In 2020, the line was saved and purchased intact by Alabama Railroad LLC.


The Alabama Railroad operates of railroad from Flomaton to Peterman.


The BRC has 28 miles (45 km) of mainline route with interchanges to each of its owner railroads, and over 300 miles (500 km) of switching tracks. The vast majority of the latter are located in the Clearing Yard.


The Clearing Yard, located on the boundary between Chicago and Bedford Park, Illinois, just south of Chicago Midway International Airport, is one of the largest hump classification facilities in the United States. Some 5.5 miles in length and covering 786 acres (3.2 km²), the yard supports more than 250 miles (400 km) of track. It has six main subdivisions; one arrival, classification, and departure yard in the eastbound and westbound directions.


At the heart of the yard is the wicket-shaped tower which straddles the hump and from which are controlled the switches and retarders of both east- and westbound classification yards to either side of it. Using computer controls, the hump tower efficiently dispatches more than 8,400 rail cars per day. Operating around the clock, employees are able to classify between 40 and 50 miles of consists daily.


The BRC was noted for a fleet of Alco-built locomotives, even though Alco did not build locomotives in the United States after 1970. Specifically, the BRC owned six 2400HP C424's numbered 600-605. All six locomotives were removed from BRC's roster and sold. 600 and 601 have been scrapped. BRC currently operates rebuilt Electro-Motive Diesel locomotives, such as the SD38, SD40, GP38, and 1500-series switchers. As is popular in large hump yards, slugs are used in Clearing Yard to shove the hump.


The Belt Railway Company of Chicago has been honored several times with E. H. Harriman Awards, in the switching and terminal railways category, for employee safety, including a gold award for 1999.


The Denver Rock Island Railroad , formerly known as the Denver Terminal Railroad, is a Class III terminal railroad in Commerce City, Colorado. The DRIR works around Denver's stock yards and many industries in that area.


The DRIR has two SW1500 locomotives, two NW2 locomotives, one SW1 locomotive and one EMD GP16 locomotive.


The locomotive fleet has a varied history. DRIR 417 (NW2) is ex BN 417 and was originally SLSF (Frisco) 257. DRIR 1211 (SW1500) is ex-UPY (Union Pacific) 1211, exx-SP (Southern Pacific) 2646. Purchased from UP on April 22, 2003. DRIR 1083 (SW1500), ex-UPY 1083, exx-SP 2480, which was also purchased from UP on April 22, 2003. DRIR 996 (NW2) which is ex-BN (Burlington Northern Railroad) 419, exx-SLSF 259. DRIR's SW1, with no number, was ex-BN 88 and originally CB&Q 9143


In May 2010 the railroad acquired GP16 1606. This engine was previously on the Aberdeen, Carolina and Western Railroad with the same number and before that was CSX 1835 ex Seaboard Coastline 4789. SCL 4789 was rebuilt from GP7 867 and was originally Charleston and Western Carolina 213


The Indian Creek Railroad is a short-line railroad in Madison County, Indiana, United States. The line is owned by Kokomo Grain Company, an agricultural products and services company, and connects their property at with the Norfolk Southern Railway's Marion Branch in northern Anderson, carrying outbound grain and inbound fertilizer.


The company's sole locomotive is an Alco RS-11 diesel numbered 6002, delivered new to the Southern Pacific Company in May 1959. The Indian Creek Railroad acquired it in 1982 and rebuilt it in 1996.


The Chicago Terminal Railroad was a switching and terminal railroad that operated over former Milwaukee Road/Canadian Pacific and Chicago and North Western/Union Pacific trackage in northern Illinois. The railroad began its operations on January 2, 2007. The railroad rostered a total of three locomotive units, all of EMD design.


The Jefferson Warrior Railroad was a terminal railroad as reported by the AAR. The JEFW began in 1895 as the Marylee Railroad took its current name in 1985. It operated about of railroad in and around Birmingham, Alabama. The railroad was taken over by Watco Companies and renamed the Alabama Warrior Railway in 2009.


The South Brooklyn Railway is a railroad in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is owned by the City of New York and operated by the New York City Transit Authority. Its original main line ran parallel to 38th Street from the Upper New York Bay to McDonald Avenue, and south on McDonald Avenue to the Coney Island Yards, mostly underneath the former Culver Shuttle and the IND Culver Line of the New York City Subway.


Parts of the original line still exist. The section between the BMT West End Line's Ninth Avenue station and its interchange yard at Second Avenue and 39th Street is still open. The section under the IND Culver Line has been paved over. Today, it runs only from the 36th–38th Street Yard in the east to the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the west.


The South Brooklyn Railroad and Terminal Company was incorporated September 30, 1887 to build from the end of the Brooklyn, Bath and West End Railroad (West End Line) at 38th Street and 9th Avenue northwest to the foot of 38th Street, and was leased to the BB&WE, allowing BB&WE trains to run to the 39th Street Ferry. The land purchases were completed in 1892, and the South Brooklyn Railway & Terminal Company built a terminal station and freight house at Third Avenue. The company was not a "railroad" in the strictest sense, as it did not own any rail vehicles, but instead owned several city blocks to lease to other railroads that wished to connect to the ferry terminal at 39th Street.


The Prospect Park and South Brooklyn Railroad connected the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad (Culver Line) to the South Brooklyn Railroad in 1890, and the latter was bought by the Long Island Rail Road in 1893. The LIRR obtained the South Brooklyn Railway & Terminal Company lease on the land in 1897 and used steam powered locomotives. As these locomotives could not be used for freight operations, the line was electrified in 1899; however, the LIRR occasionally ran steam-powered special trains to the Brooklyn Jockey Club Racetrack at Kings Highway and Ocean Parkway. After foreclosure of the South Brooklyn Railroad & Terminal Company in December 1899, the company was reorganized as the South Brooklyn Railway on January 13, 1900.


The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company acquired the railway on August 31, 1902, but the LIRR still ran the trains until 1903 or 1905. After the cessation of LIRR operations, the BRT started passenger service and transferred freight service to a subsidiary, Brooklyn Heights Railroad, which provided freight service with three locomotives, with a fourth delivered in 1907. It carried mail for the U.S. Post Office Department, as well as lumber, cement, sand, stone, ashes, pipe, marble for headstones, and granite for curbstones.


At its greatest extent, the line ran along Second Avenue, then merged with the BMT West End Line from Fourth Avenue to the Ninth Avenue station. From there, it ran at street level under the BMT Culver Line down McDonald Avenue to Avenue X.


On February 28, 1907, the South Brooklyn Railway and the Brooklyn Heights Railroad were split from each other, but both were still owned by the BRT. The South Brooklyn Railway was a separate subsidiary company that carried both passengers and freight, to avoid the BRT from being operated under Interstate Commerce Commission regulations. The Brooklyn Heights Railroad leased the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad, which included the Prospect Park and South Brooklyn Railroad, giving it a line to Coney Island.


In 1909, the South Brooklyn Railway was granted a request by the Public Services Commission to discontinue the use of the Third Avenue freight yard and station, on the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad's property. The freight house, which was leased from the LIRR, was deteriorating, and the South Brooklyn Railway did not want to build a new one on LIRR property, instead preferring to build a replacement on the property of the New York and Sea Beach Railroad, using Sea Beach trackage to access the new terminal. The South Brooklyn Railway bought another locomotive. In 1913, all of the BRT's lines were reorganized, and all ownership of freight operations was transferred to the South Brooklyn Railway.


The location of the South Brooklyn Railway helped in the construction of new BRT subway and elevated lines in Brooklyn, as materials could be brought in via its trackage. A temporary connection at 38th Street and Fourth Avenue allowed South Brooklyn Railway equipment to enter the BMT Fourth Avenue Line construction site. In June 1922, the South Brooklyn Railway bought much of the LIRR-owned Prospect Park & Coney Island Railroad. By 1923, the Prospect Park & Coney Island Railroad and the New York & Coney Island Railroad were merged into the South Brooklyn Railway. The BRT filed bankruptcy that year and was reorganized into the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, which still operated the South Brooklyn Railway.


The South Brooklyn Railway, along with the other non-rapid transit properties of the BMT, was transferred to the New York City Board of Transportation on June 1, 1940. That year, freight traffic went up significantly due to the start of World War II. The South Brooklyn Railway also got some trucks to deliver incoming freight directly to customers. In 1946, after the war, South Brooklyn Railway purchased two Whitcomb ex-U.S. Army diesel locomotives.


Operations were transferred to the New York City Transit Authority on June 15, 1953. Passenger service on McDonald Avenue ended on October 31, 1958, and thereafter the South Brooklyn Railway started using the surface trackage solely for freight. In 1960, two more diesel electric locomotives were bought. On December 27, 1961, the line was de-electrified, due to the high cost of refurbishing the overhead trolley wire. Electric locomotives #4, 5, 6, and 7, which had third rail conduction shoes, were given to the NYCTA for subway and elevated operation.


The South Brooklyn Railway has two locomotives, N1 and N2, a pair of GE 47T Diesels. They can also be used on the subway when not needed for the SBK.


A refurbishment of the interchange with New York New Jersey Rail, LLC at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal Second Avenue Yard was completed in May 2012. A new ramp was installed at the 38th Street Yard at Fourth Avenue to allow receipt of new R156 locomotives and other subway rolling stock that were delivered on flat cars.


The Decatur Junction Railway is a Class III railroad which operates in the state of Illinois. It is one of several short-line railroads owned by Pioneer Railcorp.


On September 23, 1993, the Decatur Junction Railway Co. (DT) signed a lease agreement for the lease rights of two segments of track in east central Illinois from Assumption to Cisco owned by a consortium of grain dealers. The railroad's principal commodities are grain, fertilizer and plastics.


In January 2017, short-line operator OmniTrax, via subsidiary Decatur Central Railroad, took over operations of of track north of Decatur to Cisco that had previously been part of the Decatur Junction. The change in operators left the Decatur Junction with a line running from Elwin, near Decatur, south to Assumption.


The Winamac Southern Railway is a short-line railroad in northern Indiana, United States, operated under lease by the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway. It owns two lines radiating from Logansport to Kokomo and Bringhurst, and formerly a third to Winamac, all former Pennsylvania Railroad lines acquired from Conrail in 1993. It hauls mainly outbound grain and inbound agricultural supplies, connecting with the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway at Logansport and with the Central Railroad of Indianapolis at Kokomo. Until 2009, the Central Railroad of Indianapolis (a RailAmerica subsidiary) operated the company as agent.


As the Pennsylvania Railroad assembled its system in northern Indiana, Logansport became a major hub, with seven lines radiating in all directions (the only other service to the city was a line of the Wabash Railroad, now Norfolk Southern Railway). Conrail took over four of these in 1976, and abandoned the line to Marion in the 1980s. The remaining lines to Winamac, Kokomo, and Bringhurst, known as the "Logansport Cluster", were spun off to the Winamac Southern, which began operations in March 1993. The new railroad was controlled by Daniel R. Frick of Frick Services, a storage and handling company, who also owned J.K. Line, Inc. to the north.


In September 1995, Winamac Southern sold the line from Winamac to the yard at 18th Street in Logansport to A&R Line, Inc., another new shortline owned by Frick, which was operated by J.K. Line employees using a locomotive leased from that company. Winamac Southern retained trackage rights through Logansport, in order to connect its Bringhurst and Kokomo lines. Subsequently, the Central Railroad of Indianapolis (CERA), which serves Kokomo, began operating the remaining Winamac Southern lines as agent.


The arrangement between Winamac Southern and CERA was to end at the end of 2008, and the U S Rail Corporation filed with the Surface Transportation Board to lease and operate the Winamac Southern, as well as a CERA-operated segment near Kokomo owned by the Kokomo Grain Company. However, the parties discovered that the trackage rights over A&R, which had since been merged into the Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway, had never been authorized, and concurrently filed for approval of the 1995 agreement. The STB rejected the latter notice of exemption, citing the opposition of the TP&W to continuance of trackage rights, thus requiring a more extensive proceeding. U S Rail began operating the Winamac Southern as its Kokomo Division in early 2009.


As of 2019, WSRY is operated by Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway(TPW)


The Keokuk Junction Railway Co. , is a Class III railroad in the U.S. states of Illinois and Iowa. It is a subsidiary of Pioneer Railcorp.


The present company was incorporated in 1980 as the Keokuk Northern Real Estate Co., formed in May 1980 to purchase of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad yard track in Keokuk, Iowa. The KJRY obtained that trackage in 1981. In December 1986, the KJRY bought, from the Santa Fe Railway, of trackage consisting of the LaHarpe line and Warsaw line from Keokuk/Warsaw, Illinois to LaHarpe, Illinois, formerly owned by the Toledo, Peoria and Western.


Pioneer Railcorp filed with the Surface Transportation Board to acquire 66.62% of KNRECO, Inc. (the KJRY) from majority shareholder John Warfield, and purchased KNRECO in March 1996.


The KJRY bought from LaHarpe to Lomax, Illinois plus assigned trackage rights from Lomax to Fort Madison, Iowa in December 2011; and from the Toledo, Peoria and Western from LaHarpe to Peoria, Illinois in February 2005.


Brookhaven Rail Partners acquired Pioneer Rail corporation on July 31, 2019.


The Brandywine Valley Railroad is a class III railroad operating in Pennsylvania.


It was established in 1981 by the Lukens Steel Company to operate trackage at Coatesville, Pennsylvania and the neighboring town of Modena. It was acquired, with the rest of the Lukens properties, by Bethlehem Steel Corporation in 1998.


The Brandywine Valley's main line was originally built by the Wilmington and Northern Railroad, largely following the Brandywine Creek, to connect Reading with Wilmington, Delaware. By the time of the Brandywine Valley's formation, the line had been abandoned north of Valley Station, just north of Coatesville. BVRY took over the line from this point, the site of an interchange with Amtrak's Keystone Corridor, south to Modena, below which the ex-W&N was owned by PennDOT and operated by a number of shortlines over the years.


Under Bethlehem operation, BVRY took over operation of the Delaware Valley Railroad, then operating the remainder of the ex-Wilmington and Northern, in early 1999. This gave the railroad interchange access not only to Conrail at Coatesville (subsequently replaced by the Norfolk Southern Railway), but to CSX Transportation at the southern end of the line at Elsmere, Delaware. It also thus began to operate a connecting branch of the former Pennsylvania Railroad from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on the W&N, to Nottingham.


After the acquisition of Bethlehem Steel's assets by International Steel Group in 2003, Brandywine Valley began to scale back its operations. The ex-PRR line, also known as the Octoraro line, was taken over in that year by the Morristown and Erie Railroad. In 2005, the ex-W&N line south of Modena was turned over to the East Penn Railroad, reducing the Brandywine Valley to its original extent.


With the merger of ISG in 2005, the railroad and steel plant were taken over by Mittal Steel Company, which became ArcelorMittal in 2006.


An article in "Progressive Railroading" dated November 9, 2020 announced that Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. "intends to acquire control of six short lines owned by ArcelorMittal USA LLC," which will include the Brandywine Valley Railroad.


The Brandon Railroad is a switching and terminal railroad that operates 17.3 miles of former South Omaha Terminal Railway track outside of Omaha, Nebraska. This railroad started out as the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha in 1897. In July 1927 it became the South Omaha Terminal Railway and then was taken over by the BRAN in 1978. The BRAN has connections to the BNSF Railway and the Union Pacific Railroad.


The Fort Smith Railroad is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Fort Smith, Arkansas.


FSR operates an line in Arkansas from Fort Smith (where it interchanges with Kansas City Southern Railway, Union Pacific Railroad, and Arkansas and Missouri Railroad) to Fort Chaffee.


FSR traffic generally consists of grain, food products, paper products, scrap and finished steel, lumber, peanuts, alcohol, military equipment, and charcoal.


The FSR currently operates with three ex-Santa Fe Railroad EMD GP20 locomotives.


The original line, consisting of to Paris, Arkansas, was built in the 1890s by a Union Pacific predecessor, and was leased to FSR in 1991. The portion between Fort Chaffee and Paris was abandoned in 1995. FSR is a subsidiary of Pioneer Railcorp.


Founded in 1899, the Colorado and Wyoming Railway is a subsidiary of the Evraz North America. It hauls coal, ore and steel products on about five miles of track inside ERVAZ - Pueblo, CO Steel Mills facility (formerly Colorado Fuel and Iron's Minnequa plant) in Pueblo, Colorado, and connects to the Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway. The railway used to be a much larger railroad, serving the CF&I's mills, steel plants that were the only vertically integrated steel mills west of the Rockies until World War II.


The Midland Terminal Railway was a short line terminal railroad running from the Colorado Midland Railway near Divide to Cripple Creek, Colorado. The railroad made its last run in February 1949.


From 1887 to 1918, Colorado Midland Railroad operated rail service along a 222-mile line from Colorado City (now Old Colorado City), through Ute Pass and across the Continental Divide, to New Castle a coal mining town that was west of Glenwood Springs. It was the first standard gauge railroad through the Rocky Mountains. Travelers heading for Cripple Creek would get off the train at Divide and take the Hundley Stage along the toll road to the town. In 1892, passengers could also travel to Cripple Creek from Canon City via the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad, a narrow gauge line.


When gold was discovered in Cripple Creek and Victor in 1890, some of the Colorado Midland owners formed the Midland Terminal Railroad, a standard gauge spur line from Divide to Cripple Creek. This allowed for passenger travel to and from Cripple Creek, shipment of equipment into the area, and the transport of ore to processing mills in Colorado City beginning in 1895. It was the only standard gauge railroad into Cripple Creek and Victor, which made for easy transfer of material at the Divide junction with the Colorado Midland Railway.


Some of the old buildings at the Midland Terminal headquarters in Colorado Springs are in use today, notably the old roundhouse, which was purchased by Van Briggle Pottery in 1955, and the machine shop, which is now the Ghost Town Museum. U.S. Route 24 follows the former railroad's route over Ute Pass.


Two miles of the former railroad's right of way is currently used by the Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad. Another segment is being converted to a multi-use trail connecting the Pikes Peak Greenway to Manitou Springs. Portions of the roadbed and right of way from Divide, Colorado, to Cripple Creek, Colorado, are in use as Highway 67. A former wood-shored Midland Terminal tunnel was used as a one-lane highway tunnel on CO 67 until the 1990s; after a partial collapse the tunnel was bypassed with a new cut and the tunnel remains as a landmark, its ends are closed with a grille so the interior and shoring can be seen today.


The Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha was a 90-year-old company first founded in South Omaha, Nebraska in 1878 by John A. Smiley. After being moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa and dissolved within a year, the company was reorganized and moved to South Omaha in 1883. Six local businessmen responded to a request by Wyoming cattle baron Alexander Swan showing interest in a livestock market closer than the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, Illinois. The Company's Union Stockyards in South Omaha were once a fierce rival of Chicago's Union Stock Yards. The Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha was bought out in 1973.


Six local businessmen, including William A. Paxton, Herman Kountze and John A. Creighton, formed the Union Stockyards on December 1, 1883 and purchased of land. At that same point the businessmen formed the South Omaha Land Company, platting the city of South Omaha that same year over the remaining . The City of Omaha annexed South Omaha in 1915. At that time related businesses in South Omaha included the Union Stockyards Bank of South Omaha, South Omaha Terminal Railway, the Union Elevator, the Union Trust Company, and the South Omaha Land Syndicate. In 1927 the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha constructed the Livestock Exchange Building to house its operations.


The meatpacking industry of South Omaha was closely reliant on the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha, and South Omaha relied solely on both of those industries for its growth for more than 100 years. In 1957 it was estimated that combined the industries employed fully one-half of Omaha workers. After a downturn in the market and changes in the livestock industry, the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha lost value through the 1960s.


In 1973 the Union Stock Yards Company of Omaha was sold to the Canal Capital Corporation of New York. In 1999 the Union Stockyards were closed by the City of Omaha, and replaced with a business park.


The Allegheny Valley Railroad is a class III railroad that operates in Western Pennsylvania, and is owned by Carload Express, Inc.


The AVR owns the Glenwood Yard in the Hazelwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh. They operate five GP11 engines, and three SD40 engines. AVR has also begun to conduct transloading operations within Glenwood Yard itself, handling limestone unit trains and also sand for fracking.


The current company, established in 1992 is a separate entity from the original Allegheny Valley Railroad, which was established in the 1850s. That line, affiliated with the Pennsylvania Railroad system, followed the present company's tracks to Arnold and continued beyond, along the right upstream (southeastern) bank of the river to Oil City.


The original Allegheny Valley Railroad transported oil from the vicinity of Oil Creek and Titusville. On February 20, 1861, "The Pittsburgh Post" printed "The Allegheny Valley Railroad (Extracts from the Eighth Annual Report, which is important for the light thrown on the transportation of oil)." On February 5, 1862, "The Pittsburgh Gazette and Commercial Journal" published "Allegheny Valley Railroad—Annual Meeting of Stockholders."


In October 1995, the Allegheny Valley Railroad began operations when Trimax (now Carload Express) acquired Conrail’s Valley Cluster in the Pittsburgh area. The railroad began interchanging with CSX at the Glenwood Yard in Pittsburgh in 2001. In December 2003, the Allegheny Valley Railroad expanded by leasing and operating of track from CSX, consisting of the P&W Subdivision and the W&P Subdivision. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan caused $3.2 million in damage to a section of the P&W Subdivision, which the railroad repaired and restored. In 2006, the Allegheny Valley Railroad restored and began interchanging with the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway in Bruceton. The railroad began a $10 million renovation of switching operations at Glenwood Yard in 2008. Positive train control began being implemented along the railroad in 2014.


On May 15, 2019, the Allegheny Valley Railroad acquired of track from CSX that it had leased and operated since 2003. Under this acquisition, the Allegheny Valley Railroad gained ownership of the Glenwood Yard, the W&P Subdivision, the Tylerdale connecting track, and the P&W Subdivision.


The Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is itself a subsidiary of USS Corp, more popularly known as United States Steel. The railroad's primary customers are the three plants of the USS Mon Valley Works, the USS Edgar Thomson Steel Works (blast furnaces, basic oxygen steelmaking, and continuous slab casting), the USS Irvin Works (hot and cold rolling mills and finishing lines) and the USS Clairton Works (producer of coke for blast furnace ironmaking).


Four years later, Carnegie formed the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad under this exclusive ownership and arranged to lease PS&LE for 999 years. This arrangement stayed in place with the formation of U. S. Steel in 1901, which bought out Carnegie interests.


The Union was expanded to include the several other mills in the Mon Valley Region. The Union was responsible for the various switching task within each mill, for delivering raw materials to each mill (which would arrive on the Union via interchange with the Bessemer & Lake Erie, another US Steel owned and operated railroad) and for delivering the finished products to interchange with the major railroads in the area (most notable the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie).


In 1906, B&LE leased, and later sold, to Union Railroad the portion of line between North Bessemer and East Pittsburgh.


Union Railroad continues to serve the Mon Valley and have since expanded its customer base to include Dura-Bond pipe coating in the former Duquesne Works site and General Electric in West Mifflin hauling special oversize generators.


Prior to 1980 Reading from the northernmost point south.


From 1941 until 1953 the URR would gradually replace their fleet of steam locomotives with diesel motive power.


In the years after 1970 some used engines (eleven EMD SW9 and six EMD SD9 from the DM&IR, five SD38-2 from the B&LE and few from other roads) and three new EMD SW1001 joined the URR.


The current roster is made up completely of second generation EMD Switcher Units. Majority of the switchers are painted blue but numerous units are painted different colors including #3 and #17 are painted green, while #1 and #33 have a new yellow and red scheme.


The Union Railroad was unique given that it was basically a switching railroad and yet its loads were incredibly heavy made up of either; ore, coke, coal, slag or steel. This unique combination in addition to the steep grades around Pittsburgh demanded some special tractive force.


In 1898 the largest locomotive of the time was built for the Union Railroad. This 2-8-0 had more weight on its drivers (208,000 pounds) than any built up to that time. This was locomotive 95 in the U.R.R. stable and according to the article was built by Pittsburg(h)(sic) Locomotive Works.


In the 1930s the Lima Locomotive Works began to build oversized 0-6-0s for use on the URR. These were among the largest 0-6-0s ever built.


The 0-10-2 wheel arrangement was named the Union type after the railroad and produced over 100,000 pounds of tractive effort. Built for the Union RR by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, they boasted the title of "largest steam switch locomotive ever produced". The Union RR took delivery of 10 such locomotives. Only one survives today and is on static display in Greenville, Pennsylvania, painted as Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range (DM&IR) #604.


The Alton and Southern Railway is a switching railroad in the Greater St. Louis area in Illinois. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad.


The Alton and Southern "Railroad" was formed in 1910, and in 1913 it absorbed the Denverside Connecting Railway (founded in 1910), and the Alton and Southern "Railway" (founded in 1911). The company was operated as a subsidiary of the Aluminum Ore Company, which was itself a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), to serve the Bayer process bauxite-to-alumina refinery at Alorton, Illinois.


Alcoa sold the line to the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW) in 1968, and it was reorganized as the Alton and Southern "Railway". In 1972, CNW's share was sold to the St. Louis Southwestern Railway. In 1982, the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) took ownership of the Missouri Pacific share and then became full owner in 1996 with the acquisition of SSW parent Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The Alton and Southern is still a legally separate entity but is wholly owned by UP.


The Dallas, Garland and Northeastern Railroad is a railroad headquartered in Richardson, Texas.


DGNO operates over rail lines totaling approximately , including industrial leads. The line extends from Trenton, Texas to Garland, Texas, then from Garland to Dallas via trackage rights over Kansas City Southern Railway and Union Pacific. DGNO also operates from Sherman to McKinney, from Carrollton to Murphy and from Dallas to Lake Dallas. Of the total trackage, approximately 51 miles are leased from Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), and DGNO leases 129 miles from Union Pacific.


The company is a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming, having been acquired when Genesee & Wyoming purchased RailAmerica in 2012.


Most of the railroad's traffic comes from stone products, scrap metal and wood products. The DGNO hauled around 60,000 carloads in 2008.


The Ironton Railroad was a shortline railroad in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Originally built in 1861 to haul iron ore and limestone to blast furnaces along the Lehigh River, traffic later shifted to carrying Portland cement when local iron mining declined in the early 20th century. Much of the railroad had already been abandoned when it became part of Conrail in 1976, and the last of its trackage was removed in 1984.


The railroad was originally incorporated on March 4, 1859 to run from Ballietsville to a connection with the Lehigh Valley Railroad or the Catasauqua and Fogelsville Railroad. The charter also allowed the railroad to own land along the right-of-way containing iron ore or limestone. Its charter was amended on May 16, 1861 to change the terminus from Ballietsville to Ironton, and was also given the power to buy connecting branch railroads and lay its own branches of up to to iron ore mines.


The railroad was surveyed by George B. Roberts, later president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Grading began at Ironton on 2 August 1859, and rails were laid by the end of January 1860. The ballasting of the railroad could not be finished until spring, and the first train ran on 24 May 1860. Regular service began in July or August. At the beginning of 1861, Roberts was elected one of the directors; Jay Cooke and his partner EW Clark, who financed the railroad, were also directors.


During the summer of 1861, the railroad obtained permission under its amended charter to extend a branch to Siegersville and Orefield. Lying to the southwest of Ironton, these two towns were also the site of extensive ore mining. The right-of-way left the main line near Ormrod, and followed Coplay Creek to around Meyersville Road, then cut cross-country to Siegersville, turning south and descending the hill to Orefield.


The Siegersville Branch was completed to Siegersville by 1862, and reached Orefield soon thereafter. The company also bought out Jeter's lease and began independent operation on January 1, 1862. By the beginning of 1863, Cooke had been replaced on the board by his brother-in-law, William G. Moorhead, and Jeter had become a director.


Another charter amendment on January 30, 1866 allowed the railroad to lease ore lands along the right-of-way as well. On February 1, 1882, all of the Ironton's stock was bought by the Thomas Iron Company, which owned several mines along the right-of-way.


In 1884, shortly after its purchase by Thomas Iron, the first shipment of Portland cement was made over the railroad. Extensive cement deposits lie in the vicinity of the line, and cement became an increasing part of the railroad's traffic. This proved to be its saving grace as the local iron mining industry began to decline. The Siegersville Branch was cut back from Orefield to Siegersville sometime between 1876 and 1900. However, passenger service began on the railroad on November 1, 1898.


In 1902, the Ironton leased all of the trackage owned by Thomas Iron, including its line from Hokendauqua to West Catasauqua, and performed its plant switching. On December 21, 1906, Thomas Iron incorporated all of the trackage it owned, except for that immediately around the plant, as the Thomas Railroad. This was leased to the Ironton in 1907, and that year, a new branch was built off the Ironton near Egypt along Coplay Creek to reach the Thomas Railroad at West Catasauqua. The Ironton also built a large yard along the creek in West Catasauqua and a new interchange with the Catasquaua and Fogelsville, by that time controlled and operated by the Reading Company.


The Ironton switched from steam to diesel power between October 1948 and 1949. In late 1955, the Siegersville Branch was abandoned, due to increasing truck competition, minimal on-line industry, and the construction of the Northeast Extension across its right-of-way. In 1961, it was cut back about from Ironton to a farmers' co-operative. A further abandonment, from the co-op to Ormrod, took place in the late 1970s or early 1980s. In 1976, the Ironton followed the Lehigh Valley and the Reading to become a part of Conrail, but in 1984, the last remaining trackage was abandoned.


In 1996, Whitehall Township purchased of the right-of-way from Conrail, transforming it into the Ironton Rail-trail.


The following stations existed along the railroad:


The Ironton also had trackage rights over the Lehigh Valley from Coplay to Lower Coplay, .


The Fort Worth and Western Railroad is a Class III short-line railroad headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. Operating only within the state of Texas, its main freight service route is between Carrollton, Fort Worth and Brownwood.


Much of the company's route originally belonged to the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway, which began construction from Fort Worth in 1886 and reached Brownwood in 1891. In 1901, the FW&RG was bought by the Frisco Railway, which sold it to the Santa Fe Railway in 1937. The Santa Fe sold the line to an affiliate of the South Orient Railroad in 1994.


The FWWR began operations in 1988, with of track that it had bought from the Burlington Northern. By the mid-1990s, the railroad operated of track, the result of numerous minor acquisitions. In 1996, the FWWR more than doubled its total trackage with the lease of a route from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and in 1998 purchased of track from South Orient Railroad, now Texas Pacifico Transportation. The FWWR leased two Union Pacific Railroad properties, a yard and branch line, in 2002 and 2003 respectively.


The FWWR operates a total of of track between Carro and Ricker, Texas, with branch lines from Dublin to Gorman and from Cresson to Cleburne, as well as trackage rights in the Fort Worth area and between Ricker and San Angelo Junction, Texas. Since 2007, the railroad has been in the process of resurfacing its trackage, as well as installing new sidings and upgrading the route, eventually to allow speeds over the entire line.