The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
The Flushing R. R.'s Early Years
THE FLUSHING R.R., as received from the contractors in July 1854, consisted of a road 7.47 miles long with second track of 0.4 miles, totaling eight miles in all. The rail was fifty-six pounds to the yard and rested on wooden ties which in turn were supported on wrought iron chairs 586 to the mile, weighing seven pounds each. The road was, of course, single track its entire length. From Flushing depot it was but a short distance to the creek, which was spanned by a swinging draw with a clear opening of 250 feet. Westward from this point the railroad was supported on piling for seven-tenths of a mile across the swampy meadows until one came to the Corona uplands. From here to Newtown the land elevation was at its highest, and there were several cuts of moderate length. Over National Avenue, Corona, was the sole stone bridge on the whole route. Between Newtown and Calvary Cemetery the road traversed a generally flat and featureless country, but at Laurel Hill Boulevard, a second long stretch of piling began, which continued almost to Vernon Avenue. At that time the southern margin of Calvary Cemetery had not yet been filled in and commercial establishments along the bank of the creek were very few and small in size. Two final pile bridges, each with small openings, carried the road over Dutch Kills and Jack's Creek. The motive power consisted of two small 4-4-0 type locomotives, named, appropriately, the New York and the Flushing. Both were constructed by Rogers in Patterson, N. J. in November and December of 1853 and delivered in May 1854.
The passenger equipment consisted of two smaller eight-wheel coaches, and four larger eight-wheel cars constructed by the Gilbert Car Works in Troy, N. Y. In addition the road boasted two baggage cars, three closed freight cars and three flat cars. All of this equipment was housed at the Flushing depot, where were located a large frame engine house, and two large frame car sheds.
The first timetable seems to have set the pattern for the first few years of operation; there were three morning trains departing at 6, 8, and 10 A.M. respectively, and three afternoon trains at 1, 4 and 6:30 P.M. Trains left fromboth the Flushing and the Hunter's Point terminals at these hours and passed each other at Winfield. The average running time was thirty-five minutes. To test the track and the capabilities of the new road, the superintendent on July 18 made a non-stop speed run from Flushing to Hunter's Point dock in eleven minutes; four and one-half minutes were spent by the passengers in transferring to the boat, and twelve minutes on the run to Fulton Ferry, making twenty-seven and one-half minutes in all, a record that would be hard to beat today!
When the road first began operations, a non-stop run between Flushing and New York might very well be commonplace because of the extremely thin settlement along the line. What we know today as the Corona area had been a farm until May 1853 when a group of speculators incorporated the West Flushing Land Co., bought out five farms, and staked out building lots and graded streets. In the first few years there were only a handful of inhabitants and therefore few commuters. On weekends special excursion trains carried prospective home-owners, lured by the promotional literature of the speculators.
The National Course stop at the present National Avenue originated heavy traffic on racing days, but next to nothing at other times of the year. Moving westward, the next stop was at Broadway, Newtown (Elmhurst). This was a very old and prosperous village of consequence and the railroad depended on it for way passengers. Half a mile farther was the Winfield depot at Sixty-ninth Street. This too was a developers' project started in 1853 and incapable of furnishing any regular traffic for many years to come. The developers, Andrews & Kendall, built the station building in July 1854 to accommodate the excursions which were run here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The final way station was located at Penny Bridge, where Laurel Hill Boulevard crossed Newtown Creek and became Meeker Avenue. At that date Laurel Hill Boulevard was one of the high roads leading into Queens and carried a fairly heavy traffic. In addition, the Roman Catholic Church had opened in 1848 the large new Calvary Cemetery on the slope to the west and large numbers of funerals and mourners constantly passed this way. Flushing Railroad patrons, preferring to be ticketed through to Brooklyn rather than New York, changed here at Penny Bridge station to the Calvary line of omnibuses, which carried them down Meeker Avenue and Grand Street to the Grand Street Ferry in Williamsburgh. The through fare for this route came to only 18¾¢ (counting the ⅛¢ Civil War Federal Travel Tax).
The final stop, Hunter's Point, was simply a transfer station from rail to boat. The company had built an embankment at the water's edge out into deeper water, where piling commenced and supported a wharf extending out into the river. The depot, according to a disgruntled correspondent, was "a cheap, comfortless, painted shanty, entirely open at each side and end," and chilling in cold weather. The correspondent goes on to say that "only a few minutes are allowed for the mutual transfer of passengers, no warning bell is rung, and not a few passengers are sometimes left behind." From this wharf either the Island City or the Enoch Dean ferried the patrons to the Fulton Street slip on the Manhattan side.
At the time of the opening of the road there were only three station buildings; the open one at Hunter's Point, one at Winfield, and the most substantial one at Flushing. In September 1854 the West Flushing Land Co. erected a "Gothic" station at 108th Street for the use of their villagers. The result of this move was to create two stations in the Corona area only three blocks apart, one for the National Race Course and one for the villagers. This situation continued for as long as the race course remained active.
On January 15, 1855 the Flushing R.R. announced the opening of a new stop at Maspeth at what is now Fifth-eighth Street & Fifty-fourth Drive. Maspeth Village, about a half mile to the south, was developed in 1852–53, again by speculators who bought out the former farms and laid out building lots. Although the population was extremely small at first, the railroad did not wish to neglect any opportunity for possible revenues.
The next depot building to go up, of which we have record, was that at National Course in March 1855. The lack of ticket selling facilities and shelter was an inconvenience to the race crowds and the depot was built to overcome this handicap.
The operations of the Flushing Railroad during its early years seem to have been largely uneventful. The road was, after all, only a short country affair, operating in a quiet, rural area, and was not likely to attract much attention to itself. Timetables were revised two or three times a year, but with so few trains scheduled, there could not be much variation. In January 1855 the 1 P.M. train was replacedby a through ferry run to Flushing, reducing rail service to five trips a day, but this caused universal dissatisfaction.
One of the curiosities of the Flushing Railroad was its strict observance of the Sabbath. Subscriptions to the stock had been made on the express condition that "no cars or car should be allowed to run upon said road on the Sabbath, or at least no passengers or freight shall be carried over or upon the road on that day." For the first five years this pledge was solemnly kept and not a wheel turned on the road on Sunday. On one occasion the workmen took out an engine on Sunday to touch up the pile work near Penny Bridge and suddenly came upon a group of children swinging and playing on the trestlework. On seeing them, the engineer reversed his engine but almost ran down two children, who saved themselves by dropping into the water. The newspapers, characteristically, censured not the children who were playing in a dangerous place, but the railroad management who had condoned this violation of the Sabbath. The editor primly concluded his account with the acid comment that "those who elect to go to the devil should not be allowed to distract pious people."
There was much discussion during these early years as to what fare should be charged to earn a fair return on the investment. The through fare was set at 20¢ from Flushing to New York. Passengers from West Flushing and Newtown paid 15¢, Winfield 12½¢, Maspeth and Penny Bridge 10¢. Several of the stockholders strongly objected to permitting the way passengers to pay a lower fare than the through passengers. They reasoned that though the distance was less, the accommodation furnished was the same; also that stopping entailed a loss of time and an inconvenience to the through patrons and caused additional wear and tear on the engine, besides raising the fuel consumption, and that since the road was so short and cheap to ride on, making a sliding scale of fares was unwise and uneconomical. Others protested against the grant of free passes to directors, stockholders, editors and ministers. In this case the motion was carried and all the free passes were cancelled as of January 1, 1855. The extreme view on the fare question was that of a stockholder who urged the sale of annual passes to all for 25¢ each, entitling the bearer to ride all year to and from all points! Needless to say, this drastic simplification of rate schedules met with no favor from anyone.
The freight tariffs of these early years are no longer available to us, but the rates apparently evoked some protest, for a correspondent complained in a letter to the papers that the rates were "oppressive and unprecedented." The railroad did most of its freight hauling during the midday layover between morning and evening passenger trains. Occasionally the lack of sufficient sidings delayed freight movements into the evening hours and passenger trains were sidetracked contrary to standard operating procedure. A bitter letter of May 1856 heaped abuse on the railroad management for freight delays over a week's time that lengthened the thirty-five minute run to Flushing to fifty and even eighty minutes. Passengers grumbled in the motionless cars while flats loaded with lumber were unloaded and waybilled at the several way stations.
The biggest challenge to the fledgling railroad came in the winters of 1856 and 1857. Warnings of what could happen in winter weather first came in February 1855 when the disaster that the company thought it had guarded itself against occurred nevertheless, namely, the disabling of both ferry boats at the same time. The Island City broke her shaft in the drift ice at the very time that the Enoch Dean was under repairs. This cut off all communication with New York at one blow, and it took the company three days to find an emergency boat to press into service. A reporter who observed the trouble remarked dryly that "the casualty opened up rich veins of temper and judgment in both old and young America, which kicks and makes no allowance for anything contrary to their comfort."
A week later on February 8 the Island City froze to the slip at the foot of East Tenth Street so solidly that it took the crew five hours to free her from the ice. Since the same disaster happened to another ferryboat of another company on the same day, the railroad managers felt that no particular blame attached to them.
These troubles of the road were as nothing compared with the winter of 1856. On Saturday, January 5 of that year a howling snow storm struck New York City. By evening the storm had drifted over the road and filled the cuts, especially the section between Newtown and West Flushing stations. When the storm subsided on Sunday the superintendent fired up the locomotives, hired every able-bodied man he could find and attacked the drifts. On Monday morning over 100 men with shovels and the two engines fitted with nose plows returned to the battle and at sundown reached Newtown. In the meantime a force of men from Hunter's Point started to work and on Tuesday the locomotives were able to steam into the river terminus.
Even this herculean effort was only partly useful because the Island City found itself unable to navigate through the immense fields of ice. Hasty arrangements were made with the Brooklyn City R.R. to convey passengers from the Brooklyn side of Newtown Creek down to the various Brooklyn ferries. In practice, this arrangement pleased no one, for the Brooklyn City R.R. sleighs (running from Newtown Creek to the Bushwick Creek railhead) charged 10¢ extra, even though the tickets of the Flushing R.R. specified through passage to New York. The connection was not always prompt even with the extra fare and bitter letters were penned about the ladies and young children perishing of cold in some snow banks at Hunter's Point. At this early period there were no private houses and no commercial establishments in Long Island City, and the open shanty at the depot provided the sole shelter against the elements.
As for the 10¢ extra fare, there was no doubt that the Flushing R.R. management was to blame. When the Brooklyn City rails had reached Bushwick Creek in the fall of 1854, negotiations were begun to exchange passengers between the two roads, since the Flushing R.R. owned the turnpike down to Bushwick Creek (Franklin Street). The stumbling block in the talks had proved to be the amount at which the Brooklyn City R.R. would take Flushing R.R. tickets. Unable to reach an agreement, on what proportion of ticket revenue would go to each, the negotiations had fallen through. The unexpected advent of the storm highlighted this unsettled traffic interchange arrangement.
The local newspaper, in printing the just complaints of the riders, stoutly defended the road in doing all in its power and at great expense to keep the track open with armies of men and plows, but censured the company for letting the situation at Hunter's Point deteriorate to the point where passengers were abandoned at the water's edge, or else forced to pay an overcharge.
The following January (1857), the moment the ice blocked navigation in the East River, the Flushing R.R. put on a line of omnibuses between Hunter's Point and Peck Slip Ferry at the foot of Broadway, Brooklyn, to convey passengers from their trains. The experiences of 1856 had taught the company an expensive lesson. The winter of 1856, severe as it had been, proved hardly more than a prelude to the storms of January 1857. The winter of this year has passed into history as being, if not the most severe of the nineteenth century on Long Island, then at least in second or third place. On Sunday, January 18 the thermometer plunged to the zero mark and not long after, the snow began to fall, the flakes whipped and driven by gale-force winds. One by one, the streets of the city were choked with snow and the great steam roads leading out of the metropolis stiffened to a halt. On the eastern end of Long Island, Great South Bay froze over solid, and from the beaches great chunks of ice extended seaward as far as the eye could peer. Village life in Queens came to a complete halt and the L.I.R.R. stopped running for a week. Again the Flushing R.R. disappeared under mountainous drifts of snow, and again the superintendent gathered an army of 100 snow shovelers who dug their way west from Flushing. The trackman, with a force of seventy-five men of his own, began operations at Hunter's Point and at 9 A.M. on Wednesday, the twenty-first, effected a junction. That day the 4 P.M. train made the scheduled trip and found several passengers huddled in one of the coaches at Hunter's Point who had spent the night in the car. Once again the ferry boats were out of service; the East River, for the first time in many years, had frozen over solid from shore to shore and venturesome persons were crossing on the ice. When the train attempted to return to Flushing, it became wedged in a drift at West Flushing and had to be dug out by a rescue train. Service remained disorganized on Thursday and Friday and did not return to normal till the following week, yet the road had nothing to be ashamed of. Much larger, richer and better equipped roads had been wholly overwhelmed and made far less effort to resume service.
Although these winter troubles taxed the resources of the road and often gave it a bad press, operation at more favorable times of the year was reliable and rather well patronized. Regular statistics for passenger operation for this early period are long since lost, but from chance remarks scattered in the newspapers, we can glean a few interesting figures. In the summer of 1855 patronage was as follows:
| April | 17,166 |
| May | 19,869 |
| June | 26,320 |
| July | 29,745 |
In the second week of July 1854 when the road first opened, the average daily receipts were $35.34; the same week in 1855 netted $151.26 per diem, quite an increase in travel in one year. In 1856 the July total of passengers was 26,535, or roughly 1000 persons a day; the 1856 season, as a whole, reflected, we are told, an increase of 12½% over that of 1855. Only once are we given a breakdown of the monthly figures, but these are revealing:
| Passengers | $3803.70 |
| Commutation tickets | 359.12 |
| Freight | 104.48 |
From these fragmentary statistics, it seems obvious that by far the largest proportion of the company's income came from single trip riders, who patronized the road largely during the summer months. We lack figures on winter riding, unfortunately, but the small proportion of income from commutation holders leads us to suspect that the number of regular daily riders was small. Even the income from freight appears negligible.
Under these financial circumstances, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Flushing Railroad defaulted on the interest payment on its first mortgage bonds on September 1, 1856. The road was certainly not over-capitalized, and every effort had been made to run it efficiently, but nothing could compensate for the handicaps under which it operated. We have pointed out before that the road traversed a very thinly populated area, and served only one large village, Flushing. On top of this, the company had been saddled with the cost of operating two steamboats in order to deliver its passengers to New York. Thus for the price of one fare, the company had been operating two transportation lines, one rail and one water. The company had endeavoured to get out of this expensive predicament by selling off the Enoch Dean to College Point interests in September 1855, but the rental of the Island City climbed from five dollars in 1855 to ten dollars a day in 1856 in compensation, and there was the further cost of crew, insurance, repairs, etc. The crowning blow had been the heavy expense incident to the storms of 1856 and 1857; the company had spent hundreds of dollars for extra hands to dig out the road, and more to charter omnibuses to deliver its passengers. The Island City, immobilized in the winter ice, earned no revenue, but was a heavy fixed expense. Under the weight of all these burdens it was understandable that the company drifted deeper and deeper into debt.
On September 25, 1856 the bondholders met in New York to hear the treasurer read a statement of the affairs of the road and to appoint a committee to ascertain the owners of the bonds. No publicity was given to the affairs of the road. In February 1857 the management made its first economy moves by discharging many employees; the superintendent, faced with the responsibility of running the road with minimal help, resigned in protest. At the same time the company petitioned the Legislature to be allowed to issue preferred stock in payment of the bonds issued and of the floating debt. On March 5, 1857 notice of foreclosure was served upon the company and the appointment of a receiver and notice of sale of the road was to follow. It was hoped that the road could be sold at a figure that would reduce the interest more than half and so insure future stability.
On April 6, 1857 the court appointed as receiver William M. Smith, superintendent of the road for 1856–57; he had served for many years as village clerk of Flushing and then coroner, and had proved his ability in the winter crises of 1856–57. He immediately took the enfeebled railroad into his strong hands, and as his first act, rehired many of the experienced hands discharged two months before. The judgment creditors had attempted to seize the rolling stock of the road, but the receiver faced them down and refused to interrupt the service. He personally inspected the engines and cars and walked the length of the road, assigning experienced employees to make repairs wherever needed. He also restored the original timetable of 1854 with its popular 1 P.M. train, which had been sorely missed of late.
During the summer months of 1857 several hearings were held by the court on claims, counter-claims and proposals of all sorts advanced by various bondholders and stockholders. Finally, in January 1858, the Supreme Court issued an order for the sale of the road on April 6, 1858. The prospect of better days for the railroad had a settling effect on real estate sales, and everyone hoped that the new owners would be persons of sufficient means and resources to carry the road.
The sale was held as scheduled in the Hunter's Point depot and resulted in the real estate being knocked down to a syndicate headed by Peter Cooper of New York, Conklin Brush, president of the Mechanics' Bank in Williamsburgh, and Walter Bowne of Flushing, acting as a committee of the bondholders, for $75,000. The rolling stock was sold separately and passed to Abraham S. Hewitt, the business partner of Peter Cooper, for $10,000. The sales were for cash, payable on April 21, and title passed to the new owners as of May 1, 1858.
Mr. Smith, as receiver of the property, made his accounting to the court, and to everyone's surprise, turned in over $7,000 in net profits, after paying all expenses. In May the stockholders and bondholders again met and prepared to organize a new company. Over the summer and fall conflicting rumors arose as to the disposition of the Flushing R.R., for it was well known that Peter Cooper was financially interested in the Long Island R.R. and that there was strong likelihood that the Flushing R.R. would be assigned to that company. The rumor of L.I.R.R. ownership grew stronger over the winter months, until a public announcement of February 26, 1859 cleared up all doubts as to the disposition of the road. Abraham S. Hewitt took over financial management of the road for Messrs. Cooper, Brush and Bowne, and arranged for the appointment of Oliver Charlick as president of the road. Charlick was manager of the Eighth Avenue R.R. Co. in New York (a horse car line) and a man of wealth and formidable business acumen. It is possible that Hewitt may have offered some financial inducement to Charlick to run the Flushing R.R. On March 22, 1859 Hewitt reincorporated the old road under the new name of New York & Flushing R.R. Co. and two days later transferred to the new organization all the properties of the older road.
The management of the Flushing R.R. had now passed entirely out of Flushing hands; the directors of the new road were a glittering galaxy of great wealth, social position, and commercial or political success in New York City. The list included William F. Havemeyer, mayor of New York in 1845–6 and 1848–9, and part owner of the Long Island R.R.; Walter Bowne, mayor of New York, 1829–33, millionaire merchant and grandee of Bayside, L. I.; Daniel F. Tieman, politician, and at that time mayor of New York, 1858–60; and Edward Cooper, later to be mayor of New York from 1879–80, son of Peter Cooper, and brother-in-law of his father's partner, Abraham S. Hewitt.
Oliver Charlick, the new guiding spirit on the New York & Flushing R.R., is a figure of such importance in both the history of the Flushing road and in the later Long Island R.R. as a whole, that no understanding of subsequent events is possible without an understanding of the man himself. Charlick was born in Hempstead in 1810 and as a young man entered his father's liquor business in South Street near Coenties Slip. He made the acquaintance of the politicians through business connections and in 1843 was elected Assistant Alderman from the First Ward; in 1845 he was elected Alderman and was chosen President of the Board. Charlick met William F. Havemeyer, who was then serving his first term as mayor, and a friendship grew up between the two men which lasted until death. Failing to secure a recommendation to the Board, Charlick became closely associated in business ventures with George Law, then ferry boat "king" of New York City. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, Charlick undertook the management of California steamships for Law, and made him a fortune. In 1855 Law entered thehorse car business by starting the 8th Avenue R.R. Co. and a little later, the 9th Avenue R.R. Co. Again Charlick took over the business management of the two lines and made them into highly successful ventures. It was only natural, therefore, that when an experienced and successful administrator was needed for the rehabilitation of the ailing Flushing R.R., Oliver Charlick should be chosen for the post.
Although no one questioned Oliver Charlick's business ability, sagacity and resourcefulness, there was another side to the man that was far less attractive. Charlick was one of those rare individuals who had the uncanny ability of antagonizing almost everyone with whom he came in contact. When he once formed an opinion and resolved on a course of action, nothing could deter him from pursuing his inflexible course. He cared nothing for the opinions of others, treated those who disagreed with him with scorn and contempt, and made no allowance whatever for the feelings and sensibilities of his business and social contacts. By refusing ever to conciliate anyone or compromise, he soon became almost universally disliked and possessed almost no friends. It must be said in his favor that his private life was blameless, and his reputation for honesty and integrity unquestioned. He believed in the rightness of his own actions and could not understand when others failed to share his views or applaud his actions. He lived up to the absolute letter of his agreements and then refused to budge an inch beyond them, even when charity or simple common sense suggested such a course.
It was this peculiar individual that entered upon the management of the reorganized Flushing road in March 1859. Charlick's very first action—the revision of the spring timetable inconvenienced many of his riders; then within a month he raised the rates on commutation tickets, and limited commuters to particular trains. This high-handed action shut out the laborers from their usual rush-hour trains, and made it difficult for the stage coaches from Roslyn and Manhasset that connected at Flushing.
Charlick saw at once that the chief weakness of the Flushing R.R. lay in its Hunter's Point connections and began improvements. The Island City, the rent of which had become prohibitive, and its service unreliable because of the poor cooperation of its owners, was dropped altogether, and a new and larger boat, the Mattano hired for ferry service. Between May and December Charlick also undertook the modernization of the inadequate and poorly designed depot at Hunter's Point. He built a whole new pier, some 700 feet in length, and erected a covered depot and ferry terminal upon it, and in September opened service to James Slip. Further improvements in ferry service occurred on April 20, 1859 when a private operator, A. W. Winans, inaugurated the first ferry service to East Thirty-fourth Street.
Whatever favorable sentiment these improvements may have attracted was completely dissipated when Charlick flew in the face of all community sentiment and outraged public opinion by running Sunday train service beginning June 18, 1859. Charlick was actuated purely by motives of profit, but the Flushingites saw in his action an opening of the floodgates to every vice and abuse. Not only would the serenity and repose of the Flushing Sabbath be destroyed, but hordes of youthful rowdies would be conveyed into town, filling the taverns with drunken brawling, and exposing the far-famed gardens and orchards of the village to acts of vandalism.
Charlick's offenses against the village had been borne up to now with subdued resentment and forebearance, but when he ventured upon this flagrant blow at the town's most cherished traditions and feelings, the townspeople broke out in open revolt and determined upon swift retaliation. Flushing's peculiar situation upon the water freed it from the humiliating necessity of depending wholly upon Charlick's railroad for getting to and from New York. For 200 years Flushingites had reached Manhattan by water and could do so again if need be.
As early as the first days of May a grass roots movement had started to establish a fast line of steamboats between Flushing, College Point and New York. Now the whole village seized on the idea with enthusiasm, and the newspapers rallied public opinion to the cause. A capital of $50,000 was set as a goal, a company was quickly organized, and 830 shares of stock at $10 a share were sold at the first meeting. With his usual generosity Conrad Poppenhusen, the founder of College Point, and its wealthiest citizen, contributed $20,000 to the cause. In the succeeding days the money flowed in and it became almost an act of patriotism to support the cause. At a mass meeting on June 18 the full goal of $50,000 was reached. With remarkable speed a board of directors and officers were elected, and the Enoch Dean was purchased for immediate service. Title was taken as of July 1 and service opened in August.
Public opinion against the railroad was now at its height. A whispering campaign, alleging dangerous conditions on the road, circulated about, centering on the supposed rotten piling along the meadows and the imminent collapse of the drawbridge. The editor of the Flushing Journal, out of a sense of fair play, personally investigated the charges and proved them false; however, he advocated a boycott of the railroad and urged his readers not to patronize any merchants who remained open on Sunday to accommodate Charlick's irreligious customers.
Stung by the vehemence of the opposition, Charlick withdrew his advertising from the Flushing paper, but the editor had the satisfaction of noting that Charlick's own superintendent, William M. Smith, ex-receiver, and conductor Thomas Corning, found Charlick's autocratic rule intolerable, and resigned their posts on the road. Flushingites also had the satisfaction of seeing Charlick's Sunday service prove a financial failure. There were too many other resorts elsewhere where accommodations were cheaper and the patrons more welcome than in Flushing. The spectacle of numerous uniformed sheriff's deputies at the depot and along Main Street, ready to pounce on violators of the Sunday liquor laws, was not calculated to stimulate Sunday excursions to Flushing.
The hostile newspapers also publicized incidents on the railroad damaging to Charlick. When the ticket-sellers were slow to issue tickets and forced the patrons to pay full fare on the cars, or when the conductors arrogantly abused their authority and ejected passengers, the incident received full coverage in the press. When a passenger who stepped out on the platform of a way station for a moment was adjudged to have broken his trip and liable for an additional ticket, the papers dryly suggested that the conductor was merely aping the manners of his master. In September Charlick again revised his timetable and again without consulting the interests of the riding public. By the end of the year, however, the steam ferry competition of the Enoch Dean was obviously causing some concern and there were rumors that Charlick was about to start a counter-campaign by buying new engines and cars and offering hourly service at a reduced fare.
Before any such change could be undertaken, the owners of the New York & Flushing R.R. decided on the removal of Oliver Charlick from the management of the road. Although he had made physical improvements at Hunter's Point, in twelve short months he had brought the road to the lowest point in its history, more lightly patronized than ever before, and actively disliked by the very community on which it depended for support. In February 1860 Oliver Charlick left the road and was succeeded by Electus B. Litchfield, like Charlick a wealthy man and knowledgeable in railroad matters, but of utterly different temperament.