Re:(erielack) Re: Marine equipment modeling

["Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>]

Lighterage also allowed cargo to be transferred from freight cars -- or ships, for that matter -- to lighters for forwarding to customers' piers or to freight stations.  Maps of the era showed "lighterage limits" pretty far up the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers.  It was all covered by tariff, of course.

Randy Brown
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  Hi Paul!
   
  The term stems from "lightening" the load of a frieghter. In the early days of the harbor, not only did the ships have a deeper draft and keel, but the shoreline and docks were not as "manicured", for lack of a better term, to recieve the loaded vessels without fear of them running aground. Hence, smaller craft were designed (covered barges, open deck scows, stick barges, hold barges, express lighters, ect.) to break down the freight car load at the dock into or onto them, and take them out to the ship moored off shore. As time went on, it became cheaper and more time efficent to allow the lighters to go out to a moored vessel than to spend the time and effort (and thus money) to dock them first. Unlike the NYC shore line, New Jersey (until more more modern times) did not have an extensive pier system to dock large vessels, hence the need for said lighters. As we all know, as shipping practices changed to containerization, the system no longer made 
sense. Of course, the sy!
 stem was
 a financial drain on the railroads LONG before the system itself was outmoded, as the cost of maintaining a wooden, steam powered fleet of craft was by no means cheap, and steel has it's own set of problems when it come in contact with sea water of course. The reason the NY Harbor railroads had to "stay in the game" was to remain competitive with Boston, Philly and Baltimore in relation to the free lightage fees they offered - but that's a whole other ball of wax to get into, but not here.
   
  I know I may have made some broad strokes here to explain this system, so I hope I have not only stated it clearly, but correctly.
   
  Ralph Heiss
   


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