Car Float Roster Information

From April 1957 Erie Magazine

I [re]found a site about shipbuilding while searching for car float numbers for the Erie. Shipbuildinghistory.com has an extensive listing of where and when ships were built at major yards around the United States. In particular, I found under Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company and New York Shipbuilding Company listings for several car floats for the railroads serving the Port of New York and New Jersey.

In particular, the Erie had several floats built by NY Shipbuilding: 4429, 4529 in 1929(plus two other unnumbered) and 5048, 5148 in 1948 (see the numbering pattern?). The Erie had no car floats built at Federal, but several other railroads did. The Pennsylvania had numerous car floats built by both companies. I wonder if they ended up leasing some of them to other railroads, or if their volume was really so much larger than everyone else?

Also listed are barges, dredges, cargo ships, etc. -anything that floated and was built there seems to be on the record. Of note are the large number of military craft constructed during WWII. Landing craft, destroyers, cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers are all represented. Makes for an interesting browse.Through the main page there is a huge collection of information on all types of ship building activities including current news updated very frequently.