> There isn’t a bridge or tunnel to accommodate a train to Queens, although a long-planned freight tunnel is under construction.

I assume this is referring to the proposed Cross Harbor Tunnel, which the furthest it's gotten is announcing the preparation of a Tier II EIS which appears to have nobody working on it, judging from recent FOIA requests (https://bqrail.substack.com/p/no-activity-on-the-cross-harbo...).

There is absolutely a bridge or tunnel that takes a train to Queens. Its called Hells gate. Or the East River tunnels if you're ok with routing your freight ops through Penn Station (massive short cut).

One of those mostly invisible things people don't know about is the New York and Atlantic Railroad, which is basically a private group that has been contracted to take over the freight operations that were previously run by the Long Island Rail Road. You can see some of their locomotives in the picture.

The short line connecting railroad mentioned sounds like its the NY&NJ, which is actually a barge float operation between the 65th st yard and Bayonne iirc. There are certainly ways to avoid this barge, but they are rather circuitous, and could only maybe be done at night otherwise the slow freight trains would get in the way of normal passenger service on those tracks.

And describing an extra siding on the Bay Ridge Branch as a "new terminal" is a bit misleading.

Only Americans call trains old fashioned

Oh, nice. That's putting fly ash in concrete, correct? That makes good concrete. Classic Roman concrete sometimes used volcanic ash and was very long-lived. If you don't have a volcano handy, fly ash from a high-temperature coal fired power plant works about the same.[1] Fly ash is captured from stack gases using electrostatic precipitators. Bottom ash is what comes out the bottom, and that's used to make cinder blocks. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and CO2 still come out as pollution, but at least they don't settle out as soot.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213...

> They partnered with a local short-line railroad that owned a rail yard in Queens, not far from the company’s concrete customers. Then they built a terminal in the rail yard that would work for their specific needs.

So they didn't have to buy land and fight with multiple levels of government about land use, which would have been the hard part.

Some countries "destroyed" their own railways systems in favor of roads, buses and trucks. Progress they say. It's sad.

Rail is the future, for passenger travel too.

No better way to travel than sitting in a train's comfortable dining car, watching the world flash by and getting where you're going.