January 31, 2007 Mystery Freight Train Out of Queens? It May Soon Be a Familiar Sight By COREY KILGANNON EASTPORT, N.Y. — Gritty freight trains may be a familiar sight out West and in cowboy movies, but in Queens and Brooklyn and the neat suburbs of Long Island, they are a roaring, sooty cause for a big double take. “We go through here every day, and everyone still looks at us like ‘What the heck is this?’ ” said Tom Materka, a rail freight engineer, as the train approached the Hicksville station, one of the Long Island Rail Road’s busiest commuter stops, one recent afternoon. “People are always shocked to see a freight train coming through here.” Mr. Materka, 30, an engineer for the New York & Atlantic Railway, one of the few remaining short-line rail freight companies in the region, was running two screaming 120-ton diesel locomotives towing a string of sooty boxcars from Queens out to eastern Long Island. Well-dressed commuters looked up from their newspapers and coffee and stared as the smoky train roared by and transformed the suburban station into Tumbleweed Junction. The line uses obscure rail tracks in Queens and Brooklyn and tracks of the Long Island Rail Road in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Since freight trains are far outnumbered by commuter trains, few people glimpse the bulky, graffiti-covered boxcars as they lumber past the sleek silver commuter cars rushing passengers to or from Pennsylvania Station. But passengers can expect to see more of these trains soon. Transportation experts, government officials and rail freight advocates say conditions are suddenly in their favor. New York’s new governor, Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, favors expanding rail freight, as does United States Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Mr. Nadler, a longtime champion of building a rail freight tunnel under New York Harbor to reduce truck traffic, helped obtain $100 million in federal money in 2005 to study the tunnel project, and his power has increased now that the Democrats have a majority in Congress. Given that political climate, and the effect high fuel costs have on prices of goods trucked in, experts say they expect a huge increase in rail cargo in the New York area. The city gets roughly 2 percent of its goods by rail, compared with a 40 percent average figure nationally, experts say. Also, a new waste management plan for New York City calls for more reliance on rail freight to ship waste out. The city is set to activate a rail freight line on Staten Island and is seeking to expand rail activity in Bay Ridge, where a short-line railroad floats rail cars from New Jersey across New York Harbor to Brooklyn to be picked up by New York & Atlantic. Since taking over the Long Island Rail Road’s freight operation in 1997, New York & Atlantic has managed to navigate the tricky, obscure rail tracks in Queens and Brooklyn and dodge the thick traffic of the Long Island Rail Road, the busiest commuter line in the country. Annual totals have increased to about 22,000 carloads last year from 9,000 in 1997. This little-noticed suburban rail line has become the little engine that could, and proposed increases in rail freight could thrust it into a much larger role, as would plans to create new depots on Long Island to reduce truck traffic on the Long Island Expressway. “Rail freight is expanding here and we’re going to grow with it,” said New York & Atlantic’s general manager, Mark Westerfield. “We’re connected to the national network, and the rest of the country relies on rail freight.” Operations are limited by the size of the main yard at Fresh Pond Junction in Glendale, Queens, he said, and by the capacity and condition of the tracks, overpasses and aging signal systems for the line’s fleet of 13 locomotives, some of them a half-century old. Mr. Westerfield said he was seeking government money to help the railway expand operations. The company has 10 years left on its exclusive contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for track use; after that, it has the right to renew for another 20 years, he said. One morning this month at the Fresh Pond yard, next to a neighborhood of homes, a crew connected the 50-foot-long hoppers and boxcars to be delivered to Long Island: baking flour headed to Lindenhurst, oats bound for Belmont Park racetrack, plastic pellets and bricks headed for Hicksville, and chicken feed for Eastport. The conductor, Jeremy Lally, 31, of Bohemia, on Long Island, and his burly brakeman, Sean McCarthy, 29, of Huntington, swung on and off the train and threw hand switches, just as in old movies. Mr. Materka, of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, nimbly handled a set of old valves and heavy handles on the control stand, to maneuver the diesel from track to track, picking up the cars by ramming into their massive steel couplings. The other two men hoisted themselves up the steep metal steps onto the hulking locomotive and along a catwalk into the engine’s cab, and soon the train was chugging east toward the Jamaica rail hub, carefully avoiding the path of oncoming rush-hour commuters speeding toward Penn Station. The winter sun streaked through the locomotive cab’s narrow windows as Mr. Lally thumbed through his huge book of rail schedules to see which trains were ahead and behind them. Passenger trains have priority, and the freight conductor’s biggest priority is finding gaps in the commuter train schedule. Mr. Lally constantly called and radioed to control towers to see when the train could pass through stations between commuter trains, while Mr. Materka pulled the near-deafening horn incessantly to warn cars and pedestrians at traffic crossings. The freight line, with its 10 train crews on duty each day, serves about 80 businesses in Brooklyn and Queens and on Long Island. It extends to Bridgehampton on the South Fork of Long Island and Southold on the North Fork. Its cargo includes produce, lumber, asphalt, paper, plastics, rice, beer, onions, road salt, building materials, recyclables, chemicals, iron, steel. Most cars come down from upstate New York or Connecticut through the Bronx, across the Hell Gate Bridge over the East River, and through Queens. They pass highways and dense urban landscape and, as the Manhattan skyline recedes, the scenery turns to a blur of backyards, ball fields and strip malls. The locomotive is a 2,000-horsepower diesel, about 30 years old, with a 3,000-gallon diesel fuel capacity. Two or three locomotives are usually hitched together so that the huge train can accelerate to avoid the commuter trains. The crew members hopped out to throw large levers connected to antiquated-looking track switches, to allow the train to enter various sidings and yards for deliveries and pickups. Many spur lines and off-ramps are now rusted and overgrown, but lately the crew members have seen signs of revival, as some companies build new sidings to make way for rail service.