Seatrain Lines - History

History

Seatrain was initially located in Hoboken, New Jersey, and owned the Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad that connected its facility to other railroads.

In 1929, Seatrain Lines began the innovative practice of hauling rail cars by ship from the Port of New York to Havana, Cuba. Their two ships Seatrain New York and Seatrain Havana were each capable of carrying 100 fully loaded railcars on their four decks. This service continued until the early 1960s when operations to Cuba were discontinued due to rising political tensions. Seatrain tried to shift its ship/rail operations to a New York to Puerto Rico run but this service was severely hampered by the inadequacies of rail transport in Puerto Rico. Following the successful introduction of intermodal container transport by Sea-Land Inc. under Malcom McLean (an unrelated enterprise), Seatrain Lines discontinued the transport of rail cars and utilized the new container technology in its service to Puerto Rico.

Transeastern Associates, a firm created in the early 1950s by Joseph Kahn and Howard Pack, bought Seatrain Lines in 1965 for $8.5 million. At the time of their purchase, Seatrain operated between New York and ports in Savannah, Georgia, Texas City, Texas, New Orleans and Puerto Rico. Transeastern was folded into Seatrain in September 1966. At the time, Seatrain had lost more than $500,000 in a four-month period before the merger, while Transeastern's fleet had netted nearly $7 million in a ten-month period.