The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
The Flushing R. R. Goes Down Hill
THE LITCHFIELD REGIME was destined to be a brief one—only ten months in all—but it was a time of improvement. One of Litchfield's first acts was a reduction in the commutation rates, a change that immediately endeared him to the traveling public. He also made renewed efforts to give the railroad a Brooklyn outlet and better ferry accommodations. In the fall of 1859 the Brooklyn Common Council had granted to the railroad the privilege of laying tracks along Maspeth Avenue, North Second Street and Grand Street, and on Meeker and Kingsland Avenues, but the mayor had vetoed there solution. In February 1860 the Council again brought the matter to a vote and overrode the mayor's veto. Litchfield must have changed his mind about the value of these two Williamsburgh routes for he made no effort to avail himself of them. Instead, we find him penning a letter on October 15, 1860 to the Common Council, asking for permission to lay double tracks down Union Avenue, Brooklyn, to Greenpoint Avenue, west along Greenpoint Avenue to Franklin Street and south down Franklin Street and Kent Avenue to the Broadway Ferry. Steam operation would end at Newtown Creek and the cars would be pulled through Brooklyn by horses. There is no record that the Common Council acceded to this request. This, so far as is known, represents the final effort of the Flushing R.R. to penetrate Brooklyn.
Viewed in retrospect, the project of constructing a long horse car line through Brooklyn would have been of very small value, and from a financial point of view, suicidal. The grant was limited to ten years only and the expense of construction enormous. It was one thing to lay track in the open country, but quite another to install rail in Belgian block paving; in addition, the project would have involved the purchase of many new horse cars and the maintenance of a large stable of horses. Worse still, part of the route had already been occupied by the tracks of the Brooklyn City R.R. and the Grand Street & Newtown R.R. and payments would have been necessary for operating over their rails. Finally, the rapidly expanding population of Williamsburgh in the 1860's was making street travel increasingly crowded and slow. The traveler, after a long slow horse car journey from Hunter's Point through the streets of Williamsburgh, would still be faced with the prospect of a ferry ride to reach Manhattan. It was fortunate that the Flushing R.R.'s poverty prevented it from entering on a project that could only have proved disastrous.
Mr. Litchfield, unlike his predecessor Oliver Charlick, bent backward to ingratiate the Flushing road with the public. On a foggy day in late February, for example, when the boats from New York were running late and uncertainly at best, groups of Flushing-bound commuters straggled at odd times into Hunter's Point station. When the number became substantial, Mr. Litchfield authorized a special train to be made up, which bore the belated passengers to Flushing in time for their suppers, and extolling the benevolent management of the railroad.
The summer schedule of 1860 was expanded for the first time to seven trains a day each way, two via the new Thirty-fourth Street ferry and five via the Fulton Market Slip. The ferryboat Mattano, placed on the route in 1859, continued to serve the Fulton Ferry route. The superintendent, Mr. J. S. Bottorff, was also given freerein to repair all the locomotives, paint the cars and overhaul the road's physical structure. The largest repair work was earmarked for the Flushing Creek draw, which project was brought to completion in the following November.
The sole "improvement" which distressed the Flushingites was the resumption of the four Sunday excursion trains in May. Mr. Litchfield had been so gentlemanly and gracious in his dealings with the villagers that the ministers and the prominent men of the town felt some sense of delicacy as to the manner of voicing their disapproval; finally, a private committee circulated a petition, bearing the names of no less than seventy of the most influential men of Flushing Village, and on receipt of this impressive document, Mr. Litchfield, with his usual grace, withdrew the Sunday trains as of August 1.
To everyone's surprise and intense disappointment, Mr. Litchfield withdrew from the management of the Flushing road as of December 31, iB6O. Although no reason for the resignation of Mr. Litchfield was given, it is likely that one of his other railroad interests was at that time requiring his close attention, namely, the organization of the Brooklyn Central & Jamaica R.R., newly organized to take over the operation of the Atlantic Branch of the Long Island R.R., which the Long Island was about to abandon as of September 1861. Management of the Flushing road was now entrusted to two Flushing residents, Simon R. Bowne and Spencer H. Smith.
With the year 1861, important developments were taking place at Hunter's Point that would profoundly affect the Flushing R.R. The Long Island R.R., which had been operating into Brooklyn since 1836, had been, for more than a decade, the target of mounting criticism from home owners and store keepers for running steam locomotives along Atlantic Avenue. In 1859 the property owners had finally gotten a bill through the Legislature outlawing the use of steam within the city limits. The railroad, cut off from its old terminus, looked about and finally fixed on a substitute deep water terminus at Hunter's Point.
In 1859 work on the new road from Jamaica to Hunter's Point was begun, and in 1860 large new construction was undertaken at Hunter's Point. All the land on the south side of Borden Avenue was purchased; piles were driven out to the bulkhead line and scows laden with rock fill dumped their loads to create ten acres of new land in all. The effect of all this effort was to produce a new railroad yard and depot area north of, and immediately adjacent to, the Flushing Railroad's right of way and Long Dock. By August of 1860 the new Long Island R.R. depot was completed; it was 800 feet long and built of heavy timber with a substantial slate roof. In May 1861 railroad service was begun over the new road into the large new terminal.
The opening of the Long Island R.R. depot, with its ample accommodations and considerable size, threw into the shade the Flushing R.R.'s facilities, despite the great improvements that Oliver Charlick had made in the summer of 1859. The managers of the Flushing road, Messrs. Bowne and Smith, suggested to their directorate that the new facilities could easily accommodate the Flushing trains as well as the Long Island trains and that maintenance of duplicate facilities was costly and wasteful. The Flushing R.R. owners, largely Cooper, Hewitt & Co., had just purchased $56,000 worth of L.I.R.R. bonds which had been sold to raise money to finance the Hunter's Point branch, and they therefore had no difficulty in persuading the Long Island's directors to allow the use of the new depot and terminal by Flushing R.R. trains.
As of April 1, 1862 operation of Flushing trains onto the Long Dock at the mouth of Newtown Creek was discontinued, and all trains ran in and out of the L.I.R.R. depot. At the same time the Flushing R.R. got rid of its ferry operation into Fulton Market Slip and the lease of the ferryboat Mattano, and passengers now used either the James Slip Ferry or the Thirty-fourth Street Ferry.
It is interesting to note at this point that the Flushing R.R.'s former manager, Oliver Charlick, was, in his usual astute and alert way, quietly profiting by the great real estate boom at Hunter's Point set off by the location of the railroad there and consolidating his hold on everything that could be bought or leased. To secure a voice in the operations of the Long Island R.R., he bought $45,000 worth of the bonds of the road at the same time as Cooper, Hewitt & Co. He also bought up the franchise of the new James Slip Ferry and opened this service on June 13, 1860. So well planned and operated was the Charlick ferry that Mr. A. W. Winans owner of the 34th Street Ferry Co., who had started his boats on April 20, of the preceding year, united with him and ran both routes jointly. Early in 1861 Charlick also purchased from the New York & Flushing R.R. ownership of the Ravenswood, Hallett's Cove and Williamsburgh Turnpike & Bridge Company (presently Vernon Avenue in Queens and Franklin Street in Brooklyn) and then secured from the Trustees of the Village of Astoria an exclusive franchise to build and operate a horse car line along the turnpike connecting Hunter's Point and the little village of Astoria. When it came to business and the chance to make a profitable investment, no shrewder man existed than Oliver Charlick. Finally, he bought up choice parcels in the vicinity of the new station and erected rows of brick buildings including a hotel and boarding houses.
Messrs. Bowne and Smith, like their predecessor Litchfield, tried to make the service attractive. In July 1861 they added another trip, departing at 5:30 P.M. for persons wishing to return home early to Flushing. In the summer season of 1862 ten trips a day were run each way, and in addition, charter service was made available at a minimum fee of $6 including ferriage. In the 1862 season the managers astounded the public with the announcement that on and after May 5 all commutation would be abolished altogether; that a flat rate of 10¢ a trip would be charged from Flushing, West Flushing, Newtown and Winfield stations to Hunter's Point; that packages of tickets of eleven for $1 would be available, and that a reduction of 50% would be made in the freight rates. The editor of the Flushing Journal amusingly eulogized the disappearanc eof the commuters as a class. He wrote: "There is to be no commutation at all; passengers will be upon an equality, and as democratic as democracy can make them. The commuters who are thus placed hors de combat were a most interesting class and will be missed. Their pleasantries, their growlings, their exclusive privileges of finding fault with everything that ran counter to their feelings for the time being—and all their agreeable and disagreeable peculiarities have been swept away at a jerk by the broom of reform."
In the 1863 season the low rates continued and we see the revival of an excursion service; on Thanksgiving Day of that year trips were run hourly from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. In the spring of 1864 the Sunday service was again restored, this time for good. Many influential persons still strongly disapproved of the idea on moral grounds, but there was now the excuse of the war, and an increase in the number of riders. The strict Sabbatarianism of an earlier day was less in harmony now with the quickened national life, and proximity to the polyglot metropolis of New York tempered and softened the stricter moral climate of the suburbs. On May 1, 1864 five Sunday trains began running each way between Flushing and Hunter's Point with the fare set at 15¢.
It is during the years of the Civil War and its aftermath that we can first observe the gradual decline in the level of maintenance of the Flushing R.R. and in the service provided. The first inkling that all was not well appeared in December of 1861, at a time when the excitement over Fort Sumter and Bull Run was still new and fresh in the public mind. A regular rider indicted the road for old, dirty and unsafe cars, insufficient passenger cars, no smoking cars, bulky packages permitted in the trains, and want of attention to the needs of the people. Just two years later the first item was re-echoed, "dusty, musty, rickety old cars." The fault here was apparently simply a want of regular washing for the cars were only nine years old.
In the face of the gathering storm Messrs. Bowne and Smith retired from the management of the Flushing road in September 1864, and turned over the depreciated property to their successor, Mr. William Ebbitt, who had served for a decade as superintendent of the Sixth Avenue R.R. Co. in New York. It was Ebbitt's misfortune to arrive on the scene when the public outcry against the road reached a crescendo of sharpness; we can only speculate on the reasons why the Flushing R.R. was allowed to degenerate for so long a period and to such a low point. Probably one of the chief reasons for the situation was absentee ownership. Certainly the owners of the road in New York, all politicians and business men, knew nothing about the running of a railroad and believed that by entrusting the property to men with horse car experience like Charlick and Ebbitt, that all would be well. It is just possible that these men might have succeeded had it not been for the inadequate budget on which they were expected to run the road. The earnings of the property were milked for dividends and enough was allocated for minimal daily upkeep, but nothing for capital replacements or improvements. As a result, the road was producing a profit only at the price of an ever-increasing backlog of deferred maintenance. As the Civil War wore on, labor became scarcer and more costly than in the years before the war, but this scarcely explained the failure to clean the windows of the cars and wash out the floors, particularly in an age when spitting and expectorating of tobacco juice were commonplaces of American life.
The complaints against the condition of the cars became increasingly bitter in 1864. The following protests are typical: … "filth and squalor of the disgusting, worn-out, overcrowded cars" … "I call the attention of the owners to the absolutely filthy condition of their cars. The evil has been disgustingly obvious for a year past, but they are now so shamefully dirty that ladies in New York assign this as their only reason preventing them from visiting their friends in Flushing" … "Why are the cars permitted to run day after day with windows broken, ventilators destroyed, with bell cord unhung, with brakes out of order, with floors unswept, with glass unwashed, and everything about them shabby and cheap?" asks a devastatingly specific letter of December 1864.
Other complaints mention the poor class of employee, most of whom were overworked, underpaid, and gruff and surly to passengers. The service was beginning to reflect the poor condition of the road as well. From time to time the pile work would break down, causing long delays or abbreviated runs. When the Hunter's Point piling weakened, patrons were forced to change to the L.I.R.R. cars at Winfield, or to the Meeker Avenue horse cars at Penny Bridge. Since the company made no announcement of these failures, patrons paid the price of a through ride and received no rebate. When the Flushing Meadows piling broke down, patrons were evicted from the cars at Corona and had to continue on foot to Flushing.
As if the situation were not already bad enough, a series of misfortunes further weakened the road during 1863 and 1864. The wooden bridge over National Avenue caught fire on October 2, 1863 and was with difficulty repaired when the structure again took fire. On October 27, 1864, after midnight, some forty feet of the Flushing Meadows trestle on the Newtown side caught fire, probably from hot coals, and charred the trestle work sufficiently to halt all service for two days. On the quiet Sunday morning of October 30, 1864 the Flushing citizens were aroused from their beds by cries of fire from the Flushing depot. In minutes the whole structure was in flames, and tongues of fire soon communicated to the train sheds, which contained six passenger and three freight cars. The road was short of rolling stock as it was. As a result of this disaster, only three passenger coaches were left on the road. The locomotives were in another building and, by a miracle, were not harmed. By a curious coincidence four passenger cars being built for the Flushing road at Jersey City were also destroyed by fire the same week.
This series of blows was, by all means, the worst the road had suffered to date; the company had $1,500 insurance on the depot but nothing on the rolling stock. When it seemed that the road would be compelled to halt operations altogether, the Long Island R.R. came forward and loaned several passenger coaches to tide the company over the emergency.
Three weeks later the road suffered another serious setback. On Tuesday, November 29, as the five o'clock train from Flushing approached the Jack's Creek draw, the engineer failed to notice that the bridge was open to permit the passage of a sloop. A white light on the boat attracted his eye, and believing this was the all-clear signal, he allowed his engine to roll on. A moment later he caught sight of the fixed red light on the draw, but before he could stop his engine, the locomotive and tender plunged into the creek. The engine went to the bottom and the tender came to rest on top of it, while the smoking car hung half way over the edge. No one was injured, but when one considers that the road owned only four engines at this time, the loss of even one was a serious disaster.
In the winter of 1864–65 the rails, ties and superstructure of the road had reached such an obvious and dangerous state of deterioration that even the most benighted passenger could not fail to notice that something was seriously amiss. Operating the trains became so hazardous that speeds were reduced to ten miles an hour. A traveler during Christmas of 1864 reported that the 5 P.M. train from Hunter's Point reached Flushing at 7:30, and that the following day the 2 P.M. train limped into Flushing at 5 P.M.
Feeling that the condition of the Flushing railroad was now a menace to the public safety, Flushingites appointed a committee to call upon President Ebbitt and Superintendent J. O. Steams of the road. The officials received the committee courteously and frankly discussed the road's shortcomings and what they were doing about them. As to the roadbed, they conceded its wretched state, but insisted that no trouble or expense was being spared to put the track in repair. In the matter of locomotives, two had been out of service, out of a total of four, and this explained the recent delays. Cars, too, were in short supply because of military requisitions, and the officials assured the committee the present ones in use were the only cars that could be procured in the United States at any price; also that a car cleaner had at last been engaged. After the interview the committee reported back to Flushing and were instructed to hire an engineer to make an impartial inspection of the right of way.
The engineer chosen, Mr. R. T. Bailey, commenced his inspection on February 28, 1865 and turned in his report a week later. When the report was shown by the committee to the editor of the Flushing Journal, he at first hesitated to publish it, and then did so only with the approval of the committee. The revelations of the report not only confirmed the Flushingites' worst suspicions, but drew a picture of the road that would alarm the hardiest traveler. The engineer found that although the road contained a large amount of pile and trestle work in its short length, yet "no part of these important and perishable structures had within eleven years been rebuilt or properly renewed. These remarks have special application to the timber work over Flushing Creek Meadow. The trestle work and bridging near Penny Bridge … are in somewhat better condition but much of the timber work is in a state of rapid decay." As to the Flushing Creek draw, Mr. Bailey observed: "I consider it providential that no serious accident has heretofore occurred on this part of the road."
The rails and fastenings were pronounced "insecure." "The rails are very defective from wear and tear, which renders the passage of trains over them dangerous … the appearance of the track in many places clearly shows that no renewal of materials has been made since the road was built. The consequence is that on many parts of the line, the ties and the chairs and spikes afford but little security to the rail … from Flushing to West Flushing station and for a considerable distance in the vicinity of Winfield, the road is in a dangerous condition and requires immediate renewal in all its parts." Engineer Bailey concluded his report with an earnest recommendation to commence repairs at once, and to operate, if at all, at much reduced speeds.
It is to the credit of President Ebbitt of the Flushing road that he sought neither to deny nor to minimize the devastating picture of the road. Instead he and his newly chosen superintendent, Mr. Josiah O. Steams, former superintendent of the Central R.R. of New Jersey, undertook to make a start on the huge labor of restoration. Within a month he had contracted for 100 tons of iron for the road and 7000 new ties.
It was curious that despite the bad reports about the road, riding continued to increase. The calendar year 1864 was reported to yield $74,800 in gross receipts, with July 4 trains "crammed and jammed with record loads." On a typical Saturday, March 25, 1865, the passengers carried totaled 1700.
One of the most serious obstacles to the revitalizing of the NewYork & Flushing R.R. was the worn condition of its engines. The road was seriously underpowered from the beginning, with the New York and the Flushing the sole locomotives on the road from 1854 to 1864. On March 25, 1864 a third engine arrived from Danforth, Cooke & Co., which was named the Manhasset. The original two engines had suffered not only from eleven years of normal wear and tear, but from numerous accidents on the road:
May 12, 1855—Cowcatcher strikes cow and becomes entangled, almost derailing engine.
June 21, 1856—Locomotive runs onto turntable through misplaced switch and off it onto the dirt beyond.
October 8, 1859—Open switch derails locomotive and tender at Hunter's Point.
May 16, 1862—Flushing R.R. passenger train and L.I.R.R. freight train crash at Winfield Junction. Both engines badly damaged and Flushing R.R. engineer killed.
January 27, 1863—Engine and tender run through open switch into the pit of the Flushing turntable. Passenger coach damaged and fireman killed.
November 29, 1864—Engine and tender plunge into Jack's Creek.
February 14, 1865—Broken rail derails whole train; one car rolls down embankment.
July 8, 1865—Engine derails at Penny Bridge; passengers walk to Long Island City.
December 26, 1865—Night freight train loses one car, which is left on road in darkness. Next passenger train strikes it at full speed, smashing it and damaging the engine.
When one reflects that the locomotives suffered major damage not only in these publicized accidents but minor damage in numerous smaller mishaps, of which we have no record, plus the exceptionally hard wear inflicted by snow storms such as those of 1856 and 1857, it is no wonder that the engines were largely worn out.
In the press of 1865 and 1866 accounts appear at irregular intervals of engines that simply broke down and died somewhere along the line, leaving the passengers to shift for themselves. One of the engineers of the road was quizzed about the frequency of these failures and he gave it as his opinion that the road's locomotives were "worn out and past all redemption." When it became apparent that the road might have to shut down altogether, President Ebbitt and his superintendent managed to secured a third-hand locomotive called the Uncle Tom in April 1866.
Even in the face of monumental handicaps, some progress was made on the road during these trying days. In May 1865 the road renewed the lease of the Fulton Market Slip for another five years, as had been done since 1855. At the same time one new boat appeared in service at the ferries, making possible half-hourly communication with New York. The fare was 4¢. The East River Ferry Co. was building a new and enlarged ferry house at the foot of East Thirty-fourth Street with two boat slips and the luxury of ladies' saloons. It also bought a Civil War suplus gunboat from the government for $18,500 and had it extensively rebuilt by the firm's engineer, after which it went into service as the ferryboat Huntington.
In Flushing village the railroad lost no time in putting up a replacement depot in January and February 1865. In mid-March 1865 the whole road was shut down altogether for a week in order to overhaul the roadbed drastically and make major repairs to the trestlework. It was felt that this could best be done if all service on the road ceased, and for the first time in eleven years, no trains ran. In November 1865 a similar shutdown was imposed on all freight shipments, but by the end of the month the road appointed a freight agent and organized a separate freight agency to handle goods.
In July 1865 the road received its first favorable press notices in three or four years when it graciously donated free transportation to the returning heroes of Flushing's Civil War battalion, commanded by Colonel Roemer.
The advent of the year 1866 brought with it visible evidence of the Flushing R.R.'s struggle to improve itself. Flushing villagers hesitatingly congratulated themselves upon the greatly improved regularity of the trains. Even more incredible was the arrival in July 1866 of several new and handsome passenger cars, the first wholly new equipment seen on the road in twelve years. These were longer and somewhat wider than the older cars.
In the midst of these improvements the New York & Flushing R.R. changed hands, the owners having probably concluded that nothing further could be taken out of it without the prior investment of an unpleasantly large sum for rehabilitation. The road was sold in the summer of 1866 for $200,000 to the superintendent, Mr. J. O. Stearns and a party of his friends, who had acquired an underlying mortgage of $125,000 on the property.
Mr. Stearns and his fellow investors continued valiantly to rehabilitate their ailing investment. In May 1867, after intermittent requests over the years, Mr. Stearns saw fit to gratify the requests of the people of Flushing for restoring the commutation system. On June 1, 1867 depots along the line again sold commutation tickets for the first time since 1862. A chance letter from a commuter in 1866 gives us a brief glimpse of conditions at both termini at this period. After the last train on the L.I.R.R. came in at Hunter's Point, the gas lights on the platforms were extinguished, and the Flushing passengers for the two subsequent trains had to grope their way in absolute, unrelieved darkness to the ferry, because the strict economy practiced on the road made the officials reluctant to defray any portion of the expense of lighting the depot. At the Flushing terminus only one solitary lamp was lighted at the extreme end of the depot, hardly sufficient to disperse the surrounding darkness.
Nine months passed quietly, and fortunately, uneventfully, when the people of Flushing were startled in June 1867 with the news that Mr. Stearns, their able and hard-working railroad president, was dead, and that just before his death, he had sold his interest in the road to Oliver Charlick for $300,000. Rumors as to the sale were put to rest on July 13 when Charlick took formal possession of the road. As might be expected, there were considerable misgivings at the news. Flushingites had had a taste of Oliver Charlick's management once before, and feared a return of his high-handed, autocratic rule. When Charlick left the Flushing road in 1860, he was still a private individual of large means. Within months he had bought many of the outstanding bonds of the railroad, and by February 1863 was reported to have secured stock control. In April 1863 he reached new heights of power and influence by being the man selected by the Long Island R.R.'s board of directors to take over the presidency of the road. By his purchase of the New York & Flushing R.R. Charlick was now undisputed owner and monopolist of all the railroads on the island.