Roughly thirty miles of railroad track once snaked through the sprawling campus of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, according to the National Register of Historic Places. Now a hub of small manufacturing and home to hundreds of innovative businesses, the Navy Yard was once the busiest shipbuilding facility in the world. At its peak during World War II, the facility produced the largest ships from the largest dry docks using the largest cranes. Trains were essential for transporting parts and materials between the docks and the 270 buildings wthin the compound. Today, most of those railroad tracks are gone.
Some of the few remaining track remnants, Photo by Joseph Anastasio
Join urban explorer Joseph Anastasio for an illustrated virtual talk on October 1st where he will discuss the history of the this lost railroad and more overlooked sites of the Navy Yard, with photos from his decades of exploration and his book Brooklyn Navy Yard: Beyond the Wall! This talk is free for Untapped New York Insiders. Not an Insider yet? Become a member today with promo code JOINUS and get your first month free!
The Navy Yard’s internal network of rail tracks didn’t connect to any other railroad system on land. In order to recieve and send materials from outside, the rails went to the water’s edge. On the shore, carfloats—barges equipped with railroad tracts—would connect to the land tracks via a float bridge, an adjustbale drawbridge-like structure that brought the carfloat to ground level. You can see one of the last carfloat operations in action in this video!
While the Navy Yard was a naval facility, naval employees ran the railroad. After the Navy vacated in 1966, the railway was taken over by the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal railway (BEDT). SeaTrain, one of the largest shipbuilding tenants of the yard when it became an industrial park from the late 1960s through the 1980s, partially operated the railway as well. In just a couple decades, both operators would cease using the tracks. But that’s not where the Navy Yard’s railroad history ends.
A 1942 Vulcan locomotive, Photo by Joseph Anastasio
In the early 2000s, the Navy Yard was home to twelve trolley cars and 20-ton locomotive stored by The Brooklyn Historic Railway Association (BHRA). Spearheaded by transit advocate Bob Diamond, the non-profit BHRA sought to create a trolley route from Red Hook to downtown Brooklyn. This route never came to fruition and the cars were, unfortunately, likely scrapped. Interstingly, the BHRA’s trolley line isn’t the only failed transit dream with a remnant at the Navy Yard. An abandond BQX train was recently discovered at the yard!
Nicole Saraniero is the Insider-in-Chief at Untapped New York, leading our Untapped New York Insiders membership program. Nicole graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science in Televis
