For Sale: One Point Six Eight Mile Long Railroad

Composite aerial photo of Hoboken, New Jersey. Home of the Hoboken Shore Railroad! in collection of author

This is for you railroad grognards out there: the real estate report/sales brochure from 1954 for the Hoboken Shore Railroad (reporting marks HMR) and associated structures, equipment and property. Please contact Webb & Knapp, Inc at Plaza 9-7800. (Note: Subject to prior sale, lease or financing, change of price, terms, rental or other condition, withdrawal without notice, and correction of errors and omissions.)

As promised a few weeks back, I have scanned the entire brochure for your surveying pleasure and put on its own page accessible from the menu bar for later viewing as well. Lots of info in here!

Another aerial

Todd Shipyards and the Hoboken Shore Railroad, 1959. Collection of author.

Another aerial, but this time it is of the Hoboken Shore in 1959. The Todd shipyards can be seen at right just before the interchange tracks with the Erie at Weehawken. The Hoboken Shore's yard stretches in front of the highway ramp. A string of yellow reefers sits on the far yard track - maybe just arrived from the west coast getting ready to move to the car float and to a Manhattan Island pocket terminal for tomorrow morning's markets.

Amongst other things I haven't known about before now is a pedestrian walkway bridge behind and to the right of the blue Todd Shipyard building. It crosses the Hoboken Shore yard and the Erie approach tracks to their Weehawken Yard to the right of the photo.

One of the questions rolling around the back of my head is how to model the front edge of the layout. We will be looking from this vantage point - standing in the Hudson - and most of the interesting stuff is on this side of the tracks. A considered approach is to model only the track on the layout itself and then model the river stuff on a separate removable piece for photos and non-operational viewing. I'd probably pick a couple of areas to do this with like a shipyard and a set of docks. Too many good modeling opportunities to pass up...

28th Street Aerial

Aerial from Hudson River looking at Manhattan Island with the Liggett Building on the right, Erie's 28th Street Yard, a block of industrial buildings and then the much larger New York Central yards. Photo in collection of the author.

Just a quick post of a photo of the Erie 28th street yard and waterfront from March 13, 1929. What is interesting about this aside from the information that can be gotten from the photo itself, is that the reverse side is mislabeled. Somehow the label from another photo got attached to this one. The reverse says it is of automobile crates in Hoboken:

Reverse side of 28th Street aerial photo above.

It may be from this photo seen on eBay several months ago:

Photo seen on eBay dated 1947.

Regardless of the tag, both are fine photos for this researcher.

Gold Mine (con't)

Looking East with Hoboken in the foreground. (Photo from Pier 16 real estate folder of Webb & Knapp, circa 1950 in collection of the author)

These photos are from the Pier 16 sales brochure/report/folder. I've picked out the best to start, but again, I'll get around to posting all of them at some point. Great material to draw from!

Pier 16 is seen behind the Lipton Tea factory. (Photo from Pier 16 real estate folder of Webb & Knapp, circa 1950 in collection of the author)

Looking North with Lipton Tea at upper left. The HBS tracks can be seen just in front of Lipton breaking off to do some street running down Hudson Street. (Photo from Pier 16 real estate folder of Webb & Knapp, circa 1950 in collection of the author)

View from Hudson River. (Photo from Pier 16 real estate folder of Webb & Knapp, circa 1950 in collection of the author)

HBS tracks at left. What looks to be a boiler house is probably a part of Bethlehem Steel Shipyard. (Photo from Pier 16 real estate folder of Webb & Knapp, circa 1950 in collection of the author)

Gold Mine of Research Material

Roster shot at the General Foods and Lipton facilities in the yard at about 15th Street. (Photo from Webb & Knapp's Hoboken Shore Railroad real estate brochure, collection of the author)

It pays to keep an ear to the ground - or in my case an eye to eBay. I stumbled upon a gold mine of information in one of my weekly fishing expeditions at eBay. I have a set of terms I regularly search for on eBay having to do with railroading and other research interests, and they will sometimes turn up an amazing item.

View from Lipton Building at about 15th Street of the yard. The building to the lower right is the engine and general shop of the HBS, and the complext of buildings in the center background is the Bethlehem Steel Company's Shipyard Division between about 12th and 14th Streets. (Photo from Webb & Knapp's Hoboken Shore Railroad real estate brochure, collection of the author)

This time it was a real estate report from the owners of the Hoboken Shore Railroad generated in or around 1955 for what appears to be the sale of the entire holdings of both the Hoboken Shore Railroad and the parent company, the Hoboken Railroad, Warehouse and Steamship Connecting Co. It appears that the owners of 100% of the stock in both companies, Webb &Knapp, Inc. of 383 Madison Ave., New York, were shopping the railroad around and generated a very detailed report of the assets, operating procedures and other general bits of information.

The photos alone were worth the price of acquisition, as they provide so many details for modeling the yard and surrounding buildings. An interesting item is the tank car at the center of the overview photo and left foreground of the roster shot. Notice that the rails leading to the track it is sitting on have been removed. This guy has been put into service as a fuel tank, and I guess they have no plans to move it - ever.You bet he will show up on the layout, as well as the operating requirement to refuel before beginning the day's work.

A fold out map of the entire property and trackage. Too bad it is small, but it still is extremely useful! (map from Webb & Knapp's Hoboken Shore Railroad real estate brochure, collection of the author)

Included is a packet from the Fifty-second Annual Dinner of the Hoboken Chamber of Commerce at the Unio Club on February 5th 1956. the packet includes a plan of the table arrangement, seating assignments and listing of attendees by name and company. John H. Lerbs, Vice President of the HBS was President of the Chamber and Herbert I. Silverson, Vice President of Webb & Knapp, Inc. was a guest. Both were on the main dais with about 10 others from the railroad at a table just adjacent to the dais.

At some point I will scan the entire contents and post, as well as offer a copy to the Hoboken Historical Museum. I also managed to get a similar document for the 16th Street Pier from the same source that I will scan and post at some point, too.

Happy, happy research geek am I this month!