Minimal News_

There is absolutely a bridge or tunnel that takes a train to Queens. Its called Hells gate. Or the East River tunnels if you're ok with routing your freight ops through Penn Station (massive short cut).

One of those mostly invisible things people don't know about is the New York and Atlantic Railroad, which is basically a private group that has been contracted to take over the freight operations that were previously run by the Long Island Rail Road. You can see some of their locomotives in the picture.

The short line connecting railroad mentioned sounds like its the NY&NJ, which is actually a barge float operation between the 65th st yard and Bayonne iirc. There are certainly ways to avoid this barge, but they are rather circuitous, and could only maybe be done at night otherwise the slow freight trains would get in the way of normal passenger service on those tracks.

And describing an extra siding on the Bay Ridge Branch as a "new terminal" is a bit misleading.

Oh, nice. That's putting fly ash in concrete, correct? That makes good concrete. Classic Roman concrete sometimes used volcanic ash and was very long-lived. If you don't have a volcano handy, fly ash from a high-temperature coal fired power plant works about the same.[1] Fly ash is captured from stack gases using electrostatic precipitators. Bottom ash is what comes out the bottom, and that's used to make cinder blocks. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and CO2 still come out as pollution, but at least they don't settle out as soot.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...

Rail is the future, for passenger travel too.

No better way to travel than sitting in a train's comfortable dining car, watching the world flash by and getting where you're going.

> They partnered with a local short-line railroad that owned a rail yard in Queens, not far from the company’s concrete customers. Then they built a terminal in the rail yard that would work for their specific needs.

So they didn't have to buy land and fight with multiple levels of government about land use, which would have been the hard part.

Some countries "destroyed" their own railways systems in favor of roads, buses and trucks. Progress they say. It's sad.

> There isn’t a bridge or tunnel to accommodate a train to Queens, although a long-planned freight tunnel is under construction.

I assume this is referring to the proposed Cross Harbor Tunnel, which the furthest it's gotten is announcing the preparation of a Tier II EIS which appears to have nobody working on it, judging from recent FOIA requests (https://bqrail.substack.com/p/no-activity-on-the-cross-harbo...).

I am trying to figure out how Switzerland has such a thriving freight rail system. My understanding is that not only do they haul bulk cargo (grain, cement, oil, coal), but also small packages at a much higher mode share than any other nation. I want to find an article describing how their operating practices make that possible. Rail switching, and even container operations adds a lot of latency vs trucking. I know that basically all of their rail, including freight is electric which helps a bit with higher reliability than diesel and better acceleration.

I have heard that rail is heavily subsidized, and trucking is possibly taxed. But their operating procedures have to account for a lot of it.

"New terminal" seems like a slightly grandiose way to describe this.

Nice bit of PR for this company, but surely traintracks and terminals are built all the time to factories? Like the Ford/Blueoval facilities in Stanton, Tennessee and Glendale, Kentucky, Scout motors in Blythewood, South Carolina, Redwood materials in Ridgeville, South Carolina, VinFast in Moncure, North Carolina, Cirba Solutions in Lancaster, Ohio, Watco in Glendale, Arizona - just some of the ones from the past few years in the US. Mostly EV/battery operations.

Only Americans call trains old fashioned

> There isn’t a bridge or tunnel to accommodate a train to Queens, although a long-planned freight tunnel is under construction.

Which one? Hope she isn’t referring to the gateway project.

This is a classic Elon musk project-problem. Hyperloop freight to NYC for the next ten years and then converting that to people travel. And then to commuter travel over the course of fifty years. Govt funding would be needed because no one would be able to predict how much travel will change in the next 50 years. But a gamble is worth it.