The famed and now extinct shipyard of Oyster Bay Long Island, Jakobson Shipyard built 4 tugboats for the Lehigh Valley Railroad in the late 1940s. The four tugs were part of a postwar fleet modernization, and their design and construction were coordinated by GM Diesel Power. The 105 foot long tugs, each powered by a sixteen cylinder Cleveland Diesel 278A main engine rated at 1600 horsepower, were designed by noted tug designer Joe Hack of TAMS Inc.
The tugs Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton were conventional car-float handling tugs, used in the cross-harbor interchange of car-floats (barges with tracks on deck that transported railroad freight cars and locomotives) and the servicing of waterfront freight terminals that had no connecting trackage. They were equipped with high pilothouses and stacks, to allow visibility over strings of railroad cars on the floats.
The tugs Lehigh and Cornell were fitted with lower pilothouses and stacks, and also had ballasting tanks to allow them to trim down in the water, for service to terminals on the Harlem River that required passing under low-clearance bridges.
The four tugs were considered very successful, and were joined by two more vessels that were near-copies, the Bethlehem and the Capmoore. This fleet of six diesel tugs served the Lehigh Valley Railroad capably until carfloat traffic began to drop off in the 1960s, and railroad mergers resulted in connecting land routings for freight cars going to New England. They were gradually sold off to commercial marine towing companies, where they provided many more decades of useful service.
Of the original four, only the Cornell survives in private ownership today and serves as the training platform of the East End Maritime Institute.
