http://www.losttracksoftime.com/p97017160


All,

With a tie to standard gauge railroading, follow the above link to 4 of my images from 9/11 in New York City last night.

Part of the remembrance of September 11, 2001 is two towers of light, composed of two banks of high wattage spotlights - 44 for each beam that point straight up from Ground Zero; recreating a ghostly image of the World Trade Center. Illumination is only from dusk on September 11 until dawn on September 12.

The red, white, and blue building on the left in the first photo is the new Freedom Tower, more simply known as 1 WTC; when finished will be 104 stories, and 1776 feet tall.

This vantage point is across the Hudson River in my home state of NJ, the brick building and lamp posts, and boat slip in the foreground are part of the former Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) waterfront train/ferry terminal in Jersey City.

Never forget. Never.

Matthew

Beautiful shots of the renewal. Thanks for posting.

Four planes, twin towers, over 3,000 innocent lives lost. It is engraved on our souls forever.

To bring even a stronger tie to a rail preservation theme, two PATH cars were unearthed from under the debris pile and stored with other material from the towers at Hanger 17 at JFK airport.

A couple of links shed some light on what was stored in the hanger:

http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2011 ... steel?lite

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14789146/ns ... mains-day/

There has been an effort to preserve these cars here in NJ. I visited the Hanger a couple of years ago as part of that effort and I'll never forget it. Much of the key material will find a home in the 9-11 museum at ground zero.

Actually, just to set the record straight, total death toll, which was horrible enough, was 2,983 for everything that day, the WTC toll was under 2,800. Sharpsburg (Maryland), Battle of Antietam Creek, is still the bloodiest single day in U. S. history, at 3,600+.

Thanks for posting the images.

I know some chunks of steel from the towers were melted down and became part of the new tower and some was used for the prow of a new destroyer. But is all the rest just going to sit there? I think it should all be reused, even if the steel goes into cars and razor blades. At least it would be doing something useful. I would only request that it be used domestically and not be sent off to steel mills in, say, China.

Steve

To be honest Steve, I believe the surviving artifacts in Hangar 17 have been earmarked for the 9/11 Memorial Museum. I can't seem to find any sort of listing of the larger artifacts that are museum bound, but their website is linked below.
http://www.911memorial.org/

Tens of thousands of tons of steel and other debris are, IIRC, in a landfill in Jersey. You can't fit the entire mass of the two towers in any hangar! Probably just a selected assortment.

Steve

The steel seen in hanger 17 was only a small portion of the total steel in the building, something well under 10% if I recall correctly. Key pieces used in the investigation were there along with a lot of steel that was used by NIST to determine dynamics or physics of how the building came down.

One section stood out for me. It was actually broken in two and were twisted badly. This was the actual point where the first plane came into the building. This will be in the museum.

Many of the tridents, which gave the building its classic look down low, were saved. Each weighed 75 tons, again if memory serves me right. A couple are already in place in the museum, many went back to the original manufacturer (I believe in PA). A lot of steel went to fire departments and other organizations around the country upon request.

Again, only a small amount of the steel from the building was in the hanger. I do not know what happened to the rest of it.

The Port Authority should be commended for their efforts to preserve the history found in the rubble. It was really a case of not knowing what might be valuable so they saved just about everything they could to include things like the bike rack, complete with bikes, which were never claimed by the way. As to the PATH cars, again they had no idea if they should be saved or not, so they saved them.

One key problem with the PATH cars was that they were fairly modern. They certainly don't fit well the usual museum mold we see today so kind of a hard sell.

J.R.

Steve -

The City of Schererville, Indiana recently started construction of their 9/11/01 Memorial and the key item with be a beam from the World Trade Center. I seem to recall reading about other places that have used pieces of the WTC for local memorials.

Les

The USS New York has some WTC steel in it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_York_(LPD-21)

There are some pieces of the steel on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space (Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) museum. That display might also include some pieces of the aircraft.

Bob