The 65th Street Yard, also Bay Ridge Rail Yard, is a rail yard on the Upper New York Bay in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Equipped with two transfer bridges which allow rail cars to be loaded and unloaded onto car floats, it is the last of once extensive car float operations in the Port of New York and New Jersey. Located adjacent to the Brooklyn Army Terminal, it provided a major link in the city's rail freight network in the first half of the twentieth century. It was later used as a conventional railroad yard at the end of the LIRR/NY&A Bay Ridge Branch. The new transfer bridges were constructed in 1999, but remained unused until the transfer bridges were activated in July 2012.
The 65th Street Yard in 2008
65th Street Yard from the harbor. These car float bridges, built in 1999, had never been in service until 2012.
Car float in operation in 2016
The Bay Ridge Branch is a rail line owned by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and operated by the New York and Atlantic Railway in New York City. It is the longest freight-only line of the LIRR, connecting the Montauk Branch and CSX Transportation's Fremont Secondary at Glendale, Queens with the Upper New York Bay at Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Looking west from 14th Avenue in Borough Park, Brooklyn
Triple track sharing an open cut with BMT Sea Beach Line (left)
Crossing Ralph Avenue