The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
Operations on the Flushing
And North Side R. R., 1868–1872
WHEN Messrs. Poppenhusen and Locke and the Flushing members of the board of directors incorporated the Flushing & North Side R.R., it was laid down as a policy from the very beginning that only the finest materials and the very best workmanship would go into the new railroad. Although none of the men connected with the road possessed any railroad experience, all were successful business men, and some, like Locke, had an industrial background that enabled them to judge materials and men. When the Flushing & North Side R.R., therefore, was let out to contract in 1868, responsible contractors were hired and the finest construction materials sought. At the end of the Civil War the iron and steel industry in the United States, although greatly stimulated by the war, was still well behind the great Ruhr steel complex in Germany operated by Prussian magnates. Poppenhusen, being a German himself, and accustomed to making almost annual business visits to Germany, knew and appreciated the quality of Prussian steel, and awarded the contract for the steel rails of the Flushing road to the firm of Funke & Elbers in Prussia.
There was an additional local reason for this move; a branch of the Funke family had settled in College Point and had established a large silk mill there. The Poppenhusens and the Funkes mixed socially, and in fact represented the cream of local society in the village, so that the contract award was a foregone conclusion. The thousands of ties used on the road seem to have been contracted for indiscriminately, both from Long Island and from New York dealers.
It was not the custom in those days of light engines and still lighter coaches to lay down all steel rails; indeed, even the largest trunk line roads in the country used iron rails, and this was certainly sufficient for engines that weighed thirty tons at most. The Flushing & North Side R.R. settled on iron rails that were steel-topped, giving a tough running surface and weighing fifty-seven pounds to the yard. The rails were connected in what was then called "fishbone style." As the traffic on the road became increasingly heavy during 1870 and 1871, it was decided in 1872 to use heavier rail. Instead of the "vertically tired" rails, the company began using Prussian steel rails of four and one-half inch section and weighing sixty-four pounds to the lineal yard.
The completed railroad was all single track from Hunter's Point through to Whitestone. At Winfield depot was located the sole passing siding. There was considerable yard trackage at Hunter's Point and College Point, and side tracks at Whitestone depot. As traffic increased in 1870–71, it was decided to double track the line. This was scheduled to be done in two stages; first, a second track would be laid from Hunter's Point through to Woodside, and second, the unused but graded route of the old Woodside & Flushing R.R. would carry the second track on through to Flushing. Plans were laid as early as January 1871 to accomplish the project during the coming summer. In the first week of August construction got under way from Hunter's Point, the new track being laid on the north side of the older one. By November 15, 1871, the new track had nearly reached Woodside. By this time it was so late in the season that further track-work had to be suspended until spring. Not until March 29 was the double track opened to Winfield, but this immediately eliminated the old passing siding at that point and speeded up the schedule. The old graded route from Woodside to Flushing was not yet ready to receive rails, for, in March, 1872, the directors had to conclude a contract with Mr. John Higgins of Flushing to smooth out the grade and to remove as much as 30,000 or more yards of earth. The work proceeded very slowly; not till 1873 was the grading accomplished, and not till 1874 were the tracks laid. Finally, on April 27, 1874, service was opened on the line which was officially labeled The Woodside Branch of the Flushing R.R.
Another minor attempt to round out the roadbed was made in 1871–72 by construction efforts towards Whitestone Landing. In August 1870 the public dock at Whitestone was purchased in the interests of the Flushing & North Side R.R. for $1,300 with a view to extending the track to that point. The extension was to be only a half-mile in length and would have the advantage of serving the steamers which docked regularly at that point with excursionists.
In the fall of 1870 work began with the construction of a new pretentious depot at Whitestone to replace the wooden temporary structure in service. In September the foundations for a two story iron and brick building were laid. On January 30, 1871, the new building opened for use. Rather than build the Whitestone extension as simply another part of the Flushing & North Side R.R., the directors deemed it expedient to incorporate a separate company and to carry out construction under that name. Accordingly, on November 14, 1871, the Whitestone & Westchester R.R. was incorporated and a map filed. John J. Locke was named as president with Herman C. Poppenhusen, Conrad's son, as vice-president, and Elizur Hinsdale as secretary.
In August 1871 the extension was put under contract to Messrs. Smith & Ripley and a steam excavator was to be used to cut through the heavy grades near the shore. In January 1872, in the depth of winter, a large force was at work grading through the valley toward the bulkhead. In May two steam shovels, great novelties in that day, were at work cutting a very deep cut through the high land northeast of Whitestone station, and had reached 152nd Street by the end of June; two months later, in July, the steam-shovels were still chewing their way towards the dock.
Because the new right-of-way cut off five or six heavily-used Whitestone streets, the company contracted in December 1872 for the building of wooden bridges to carry each street over the railroad cut. Then, suddenly, in the midst of all this progress, all work came to a complete halt. What had happened? Weeks passed and then the story came out. It developed that in the month of July 1872 John D. Locke had made an agreement with Conrad Poppenhusen and Elizur Hinsdale for Mr. Locke to take the bonds of the Whitestone & Westchester R.R. Co. and furnish the cash for building the road. Relying on this agreement, Poppenhusen and Hinsdale turned over the management of the job to Locke. In September, when the contracts for the bridges were about to be let, the directors called on Locke to guarantee the cash for the contractors and he refused. Pressed by the village of Whitestone to open the main avenue, Poppenhusen and Hinsdale and the other directors put up the money and five bridges were installed. The breach with Locke, however, was not repaired. Whatever his motives, Locke withdrew from the company and over the summer of 1873 disposed of all his monied interests in Whitestone and removed to Flushing. The whole Whitestone & Westchester scheme collapsed, and for years thereafter the right-of-way lay unused and weed-grown until the Long Island R.R. completed the work thirteen years later, in August 1886.
Two additional major improvements along the main line in 1870 were the construction of steel bridges at Flushing Creek and over National Avenue, Corona. The old New York & Flushing bridge over the creek, inherited by the Flushing & North Side R.R. was in wretched condition. In November 1868 the company immediately razed the unsafe structure and built long pile approaches on each side and heavy timbers for a temporary draw. In the spring of 1870 plans were prepared for a new iron bridge. In the first week of June work was begun on both the creek and National Avenue sites under the supervision of the contractor Zachariah Roe of Flushing, who gathered a large force to complete the job in the stipulated two weeks. (July 5–19). By the first of July the timbers were already on the ground and in the second week the iron bridges themselves had been delivered. Sloop navigation at the creek had to be suspended for two weeks. By mid-August the two fifty-four-ton iron bridges were in position. On August 20, both jobs were completed. The new Flushing Creek span was a drawbridge eighty-eight feet long, sixteen feet wide and with sides eight and one-half feet high. The National Avenue span at Corona depot was similar.
The Flushing railroad's only other bridge, the original Woodside & Flushing structure over Flushing Creek, was new (1866) and built to the road's own specifications. All the road's bridges were of wrought iron, constructed by the Watson Mfg. Co. of Paterson, N. J. The crossing of the meadows in this day was entirely on pile work which began at about the present 108th Street, and continued to the creek. It is important to remember that the present level of Flushing Meadow Park is ten to twelve feet above the old level, because of the intensive filling operations that began in 1916 and continued to the first World's Fair in 1939.
In these early days of steam operation, turning of the trains at the terminals had to be accomplished by means of turntables and the Flushing & North Side R.R. operated such installations at Hunter's Point station, College Point, Whitestone, Great Neck, and, of course, Flushing.
The main shops for servicing and repairing the rolling stock on the road were located at College Point station at what is now Eighteenth Avenue and 127th Street. The car houses and engine house extended up to Fourteenth Avenue, and over to 128th Street, occupying in all one small block. Skilled German workmen serviced the cars and built several of the road's elegant passenger coaches in the shops. It is regrettable that no contemporary description of the place has come down to us.
The rolling stock of the Flushing & North Side R.R. was in the early Seventies perhaps the finest in the nation. Poppenhusen was determined to have only the finest of everything, and with his unlimited capital, and the abundance of skilled German artisans in the New York area of that day, he succeeded in getting what he wanted. The first locomotives, the College Point and the Whitestone, were delivered to the road in August, 1868, and did yeoman work with the construction crews. The Woodside arrived in August, 1869, the Bayside in January, 1870, the Newtown in May, 1871, and the Winfield in September, 1871. Each of these names honored one of the communities served by the line, a pleasant custom in these early days of railroading. All these engines were of the familiar 4-4-0 American pattern; they were comparatively light, weighing twenty-six to twenty-eight tons each.
We are fortunate in possessing an account of the maiden trip of the Winfield. The new engine, No. 7, had been received at the College Point shops in early September 1871 and had been readied for service. The officers of the road had informed the villagers of Winfield that the engine was to be named in their honor. The local citizenry responded by organizing a ceremony and forwarded to President Poppenhusen an invitation to a formal "baptism." At 9 A.M. on the morning of October 4 the gleaming new engine, its bells ringing and its whistle shrieking, steamed into the siding at the station under the admiring gaze of the townspeople. The general ticket agent of the road, Mr. Waldron, and the chief roadmaster. accompanied the engine as representatives of Mr. Poppenhusen, who was unavoidably absent. The whole population of Winfield and Locust Grove had turned out to greet them. The little twelve-year-old daughter of the local doctor stepped up to the engine and smashed a bottle of champagne across the cow catcher, saying at the same time, "I christen thee Winfield!" The local dignitaries then stepped forward and in an appropriate speech presented the engineer with a set of handsome colors on behalf of the village.
The passenger coaches were the pride of the line. In a lyrical description of 1872 we read that "the cars are clean, large and handsome, and have many novel improvements. The seats are either velvet-cushioned or cane-bottomed. Steam heating apparatus is supplied to each car. The old hand brakes are being replaced by steam brakes, which are controlled by the engineer. The platforms of the cars are level with the depot platforms, and the method of coupling is such as to make telescoping impossible." From the very few pictures which have survived we observe that the cars had fifteen or sixteen windows to a side, narrow open platforms, and roofs that were either flat with vents for five oil lamps, or deck-roofed with gas lamps. The trucks were wood and the wheels were wood with steel tires. Gas lighting was introduced in the spring of 1870. Several of the cars must have been unusually elegant, for they are referred to as "splendid palace cars" and "sumptuous smoking cars." All were built either at the Taunton Car Works in Taunton, Mass. or at the College Point shops of the company.
It would appear that the older passenger coaches inherited from the New York & Flushing R.R. were all disposed of as rapidly as possible during 1869–70. These are probably the cars referred to in the road's annual reports as "second class and emigrant cars."
The service and scheduling on the Flushing & North Side R.R. received exaggerated attention and special care, largely because the poor service of the old New York & Flushing was such a recent and disagreeable memory. In 1868 and 1869 before the road was opened to College Point and Whitestone only nine trains were operated each way daily, four through to Great Neck and five to Flushing. A train making all stops took forty-five minutes from Hunter's Point to Flushing and one hour to Great Neck. After the College Point and Whitestone Branch was opened, fourteen trips were made each way daily, ten trips through to Whitestone and only five through to Great Neck. In 1870 twenty trips were scheduled daily, fifteen to Whitestone and only five to Great Neck. In 1872 twenty-two trips were made daily, again with only five of these going through to Great Neck. It was obvious, therefore, that under the Poppenhusens, the Whitestone Branch had become the main line and the road to Greak Neck a branch operation; also that all the preference in scheduling was being given to College Point and Whitestone. The old North Shore road gained only one train in five years and received about the same service as under the old management. The village of Flushing with its two stations stood to benefit under any arrangement, but there began to be murmurs of dissatisfaction, complaining that uptown Flushing (Main Street) was being discriminated against in favor of downtown Flushing (Bridge Street). Real estate operators in eastern and southern Flushing experienced difficulty in retailing property because of the few trains available in that part of the village.
May, June and July seem to have been the peak months of riding. We read that in April, 1870, 75,000 people rode the trains, in May, 88,000. On a typical Sunday, June 26, 1870, 4,500 used the cars. On this day a twelve-car train drawn by two locomotives took 1,000 German excursionists home from College Point. The following year, on June 25, 1871, again a warm Sunday, 1,600 people rode the railroad. On the Fourth of July, 1871, sixty-seven trains ran on the Flushing road, starting from each terminus every half hour throughout the day; 20,000 passengers were carried without a single accident and the road took in over $5,000 in that one day. A year later in June, 1872, ten-car trains were the custom on warm summer Sundays.
Train speeds on the Flushing road were the same as on most roads of that day; the company reported twenty-five miles per hour for passenger trains, thirty for express trains and eighteen for freight runs. The first recorded speed run occurred on December 29, 1869, when the president of the road was summoned to New York by telegraph to attend a railroad meeting. He commandeered a spare engine at Main Street depot and riding over the old bumpy roadbed of the New York & Flushing, reached Hunter's Point in thirteen minutes, making a speed of 35.7 miles per hour. He had to wait four minutes for a boat and then made the passage to James Slip in fourteen minutes, making the whole run from Flushing only thirty-one minutes, far better than is possible today! A traveler writing to the editor of the Flushing Journal in November, 1869, remarks pleasurably on the new express service running non-stop from Hunter's Point to Flushing in sixteen minutes over the new roadbed via Woodside and on a rainy day. One train in the evening rush hour offered this fast service in the advertised time of eighteen minutes.
The fare structure on the Flushing & North Side R.R. reflected the liberal views of the management. For the period 1868–1873 they were as follows:
From New York to:
| Hunter's Point | 6¢ | Broadway | 31¢ |
| Woodside | 16¢ | Bay Side | 36¢ |
| Winfield | 16¢ | Nittle Neck | 41¢ |
| Newtown | 21¢ | Great Neck | 46¢ |
| West Flushing | 21¢ | College Point | 31¢ |
| Flushing | 26¢ | Whitestone | 36¢ |
Passengers usually bought their tickets from the station agents where possible, but sometimes collection of the fare was done on the trains by the conductors who wielded absolute power in their rolling domains. A conductor who disputed a passenger on fares might not always be satisfied simply with exacting the sum demanded; he might feel aggrieved, loftily reject the proferred money, and eject the passenger at some lonesome point along the tracks, as happened more than once. The conductor's hand was further strengthened in July 1870 when Governor Hoffman of New York State signed a warrant commissioning the railroad conductors on the Flushing & North Side R.R. as state constables, authorized to quell any disturbance, or make arrests for misdemeanors and crimes committed on the railroad line. The company also succeeded in inducing the governor to sign a bill authorizing the road to charge additional fare when tickets were not procured at the station.
The Flushing road made considerable effort in the direction of safety. The need for gongs and crossing signals to warn passengers of approaching trains became apparent almost during the first week of operations in Flushing when trains, rushing across Northern Bouleverd at full speed and without any warning to pedestrians and carriages, drew sharp newspaper comment. Northern Boulevard, then Bridge Street, was one of the most dangerous grade crossings on the line and had neither gates nor flagmen. In November 1870 the railroad began installing at all dangerous crossings an electric, battery-operated signal which was actuated at a distance of a half-mile by the train wheels, and which set to swinging a metal "Danger" sign. These were set up at Vernon Avenue, Hunter's Point; Queens Boulevard; Broadway, Elmhurst; and Northern Boulevard, Flushing.
As a further protection the road in March 1870 placed on one of their locomotives a continuous ringing gong as an experiment, which clanged without stopping, the idea being to relieve the fireman of ringing the bell at crossings and to make it difficult for contestants suing for damages to claim that notice of an oncoming train had not been given.
To avoid the possibility of a wreck due to an open switch, all switch bars were fitted with wires leading to a battery on one end and to a large gong placed in the nearest station. The moment a switch was turned from the main track, the gong in the depot commenced to ring, thus alerting everyone to the open switch. It was hoped this would eliminate accidents caused not only by oversight but by malice as well. Similar gongs were set up at important grade crossings to supplement the danger signals installed earlier in the year. In August 1871 the road installed at Whitestone Junction a "patent switch" whichis not described, but was guaranteed to keep passing trains from jumping the track.
The Flushing & North Side R.R. was one of the first roads in the country to equip its cars with steam brakes instead of relying on the old inadequate hand brakes. One of the company's own machinists working in the College Point foundry and car shops, Mr. S. R. Stinnard, invented a steam brake which operated very similarly to the later air brake. The invention was patented and officially adopted for use on all the Flushing & North Side trains. On September 5, 1871 the new Stinnard brake was given a spectacular public demonstration for the benefit of newspapermen. At Hunter's Point a train was made up of eight of the largest and finest passenger coaches on the road, drawn by the engine Newtown. The brake was first applied near West Flushing (Corona) on a descending grade running at a speed of nearly 30 MPH and the train stopped dead in thirty seconds within a distance of 600 feet. Again between College Point and Whitestone a second trial was made; here the passengers left the cars to observe the application of the brakes themselves. The train backed up about a mile and then rushed past the spectators at 30 MPH. Again the whole train was stopped within its own length of 600 feet. The trials were several times repeated on the return trip with pronounced success, the longest time for response being thirty seconds and with no jar or jerk being perceptible. After this exhaustive test all the trains on the road were fitted with the steam brake, and it was advertised as one of the features of the road.
Thanks to all the safety features on the road, the list of accidents on the Flushing & North Side R.R. is remarkably small. In July 1869 the road sustained its first casualty, a woman passenger who, while walking on the platform of one of the coaches, lost her footing when the wheels lurched and was killed under the wheels. In September 1872 a train pulling into Long Island City collided with a number of passenger cars but no one was hurt.
The road's biggest and most spectacular mishap occurred on a winter evening in December 1870. The night of the thirteenth was dark, thick and disagreeable. The 6 P.M. train for Great Neck, consisting of the engine Whitestone, two passenger coaches and a smoking car, pulled out as usual from Hunter's Point. At 6:12 it passed the down train on the siding at Winfield. As the train left Whitestone Junction on the meadows, it slowed down to 20 MPH on the pilework leading to the draw which lay about 700 feet ahead. As the engine came to within fifty feet of the bridge, and the beam of the headlight illuminated the timbers, the engineer was horrified to see that the draw was wide open. Recovering fron his fright, he blew "down brakes," one short sharp blast. It was too late. In moments the speed of the engine carried it over the water and into the opposite abutment. As it oveturned into the waters of the creek, it dragged down with it the tender, which landed almost upright in the water, and in turn half dragged behind it the smoking car which came to rest against the center pier.
Remarkably enough, neither the fireman nor the engineer was killed. The front part of the smoking car was badly crushed and broken, and the forward truck fell into the water, yet no one within suffered anything more than scratches and bruises. Within minutes the news reached Flushing and College Point. An engine was dispatched from College Point and took the passengers in the two undamaged coaches to Bridge Street depot, and from there carriages were hired to deliver the passengers individually to their homes. Wrecking crews worked all that night to lift the smoking car and repair the track, but in vain. The morning light revealed that the draw had been knocked seven feet off center, the castings of the swing so badly broken as to need replacement, and the main center bearing three inches out of line. The locomotive was altogether out of sight and the tender half buried. Not till six days later, on the nineteenth of December, could trains again move over the patched drawbridge.
The inquiry produced some interesting details. The bridge was in charge of a tender named McKenna who had been on the job twelve years and whose character up to now had been unassailable. For some reason he had gone drinking that afternoon, off and on, and admitted that by 6 P.M. he no longer had full control of his faculties. McKenna had opened the draw just before 6 P.M. to let a sloop pass; it had taken ten minutes to get the boat through, and twenty minutes later the fatal train approached. The rules called for placing red flags by day and red lamps by night on the track whenever the draw was to be opened. This McKenna didn't bother to do, thinking that he could close the draw before the Hunter's Point train arrived. If the track on the draw was clear, the rules called for a green flag or green lamp signifying caution, and a green and white signal for all-clear. McKenna obviously set no signal at all and forgot to close the draw. On the fourteenth McKenna was arrested but eventually freed with only the loss of his job as a penalty. The Coast Wrecking Co. under Capt. I. J. Merritt, founder of the present big Merritt-Chapman firm, and at that time an alderman in Whitestone, undertook to lift the engine which was not fished out until March 18, 1871,and not restored to service until July 4.
The ferry facilities of the Flushing & North Side R.R. were shared with the Long Island R.R. Both roads terminated at the foot of Borden Avenue, Long Island City, and were served by the East River Ferry Co., which operated boats between Borden Avenue and James Slip. The lease of this ferry was bought at auction in May 1868 by President Oliver Charlick of the Long Island R.R. Patronage from the combined roads must have been appreciable, for a year later, in June 1869, the ferry company put on the first large double deck boat on the river, the Southampton. Two years later, in January 1871, the East River Ferry Co. greatly enlarged and improved the James Slip ferry terminal on South Street in New York. A large section of the ferry house was allotted to each of the two railroads with waiting rooms, ticket, express, freight and telegraph offices. Finally, in the spring of 1872, the East River Ferry Co. built an entirely new slip at Borden Avenue to accommodate the increasing travel on the Flushing & North Side R.R. The usual crossing time on the ferry from James Slip to Hunter's Point was thirty minutes and was charged for the ride; from the foot of East Thirty-fourth Street to Hunter's Point the crossing time was only fifteen minutes and the fare the same.
A railroad post office was established on the Flushing & North Side R.R. in July 1870 with the appointment on the sixth of Mr. Samuel E. Aymar of Jamaica as Mail Route Messenger. He rode the trains and received the mails at each station on the road, sorted on the cars and delivered the mails from the city on the return trip. By this arrangement each village on the line received two mails daily. Mail from New York was received at Hunter's Point by both the Long Island R.R. and the Flushing railroad messengers, who exchanged postal matter with each other there or at Winfield station.
Telegraph service was brought in by the Western Union Co. in May 1868. Poles and wire were put in alongside the track of the New York & Flushing R.R. and the terminal office was in the Main Street depot at Flushing. In the first week of June 1868 the service was opened to the public. It was hoped to extend the service to Great Neck by winter. In July 1870 the telegraph was extended to College Point and opened to the public. At almost the same time a local firm called "The Long Island Telegraph Co." had completed and opened a wire between Flushing and Jamaica; the poles had gone up in April and the company proposed to build as far as their stock sales permitted. With the completion of these two wires, Queens County achieved telegraphic communication with the outside world for the first time.
The rather desultory and inadequate freight service of the old New York & Flushing R.R. was taken over by the Poppenhusen Judd management and greatly improved. In September 1871 the road chartered the steamer Port Royal to leave New York for Hunter's Point at 4:30 P.M. daily with freight for stations all along the road. The freight was loaded onto a special train at Hunter's Point the same evening. All freight picked up from depots along the road was henceforth delivered in New York at 8 A.M. the next morning. The freight business of the railroad was reported to have increased very rapidly, largely because new business was attracted by the unusual speed of the service.
The period just before and after 1870 was the golden age in New York City of the steam dummy, that curious compromise between the horse-drawn car and the locomotive. The South Side R.R. had pioneered its use in Brooklyn, and the ever-forward looking Flushing & North Side management decided to conduct its own experiments. The Whitestone Branch of the railroad had from the first become the road's main line, thanks to Poppenhusen's and Locke's partiality to their own villages and the location of the shops at College Point. The management, therefore, decided to use steam dummies on the Flushing-Great Neck Branch for all Sunday service (three trips) and to supplement the five daily trips with three dummy runs. The dummy was referred to as the Langdon Steam Car, after the company manufacturing it, and entered service December 1, 1870. At Christmas time the newspapers remarked that "the Langdon steam car's daily supplementary trips scarcely suffice to accommodate the fast-increasing travel. The additional Sunday trips prove a great convenience to the churchgoers." For some reason unknown to us, the Langdon steam car was withdrawn from service before the end of the winter, for it does not appear on the May 1872 timetable. No reason appears in the annual reports of the company, and the newspapers are silent, so we must assume that the operation proved inefficient. The last reference to the car appeared a year later in December 1871, when it was being used to haul ties and rails in the construction of the Central Railroad of Long Island.
It is fitting to make some brief mention of the personalities on the road whose names have come down to us. We have spoken earlier of Conrad Poppenhusen, John Locke and Orange Judd. The latter surprised everyone in April 1870 by selling his entire interest in the Flushing & North Side R.R., amounting to about $30,000, and taking real estate in Flushing village in exchange for his stock. From this time forward he invested heavily in building houses along Bowne, Parsons, Sanford and Forty-first Avenues, Flushing, and in outer sections of the village.
In these first five years 1868–1872 the Flushing & North Side R.R. had three superintendents: H. C. Moore, who was appointed in January 1869; H. A. Hurlbut, who was appointed in October 1870, and R. D. Tucker, who entered upon his duties in April 1871. Mr. Tucker had formerly been superintendent on the Boston & Providence R.R. The chief engineer on the road, Mark Brear, is often mentioned favorably in the press of the day. He was with the road from the beginning in 1868, and left it in February 1872 to become an agent for a firm producing new mechanical devices on locomotives. The staff of the road tendered him a farewell dinner and a gold watch on the occasion.
In October 1870, in obedience to a new state law, the Flushing & North Side R.R. adopted uniforms for its employees. The principal operating trainmen got a blue uniform; the others, gray. Both were provided by Brooks Bros. of New York.
In closing our survey of operations on the Flushing & North Side R.R. it is interesting to note briefly the ambitious extensions entertained by the railroad in its palmy days but never built for one reason or another. The most persistent rumor of extension concerned Huntington, and for the best of reasons. Huntington was a large village and originated enough revenue to pay for a station. The villagers disliked Oliver Charlick, president of the Long Island R.R., and regularly sought to escape his monopoly. When the North Shore R.R. Co. built eastward from Flushing to Great Neck in 1866, all the North Shore villages eagerly hoped that the road would reach them. In April 1866 three representatives of the Flushing & North Side R.R. visited Huntington and conferred with a delegation from the village. It was agreed that if the village would raise $150,000 in stock subscriptions, the directors would recommend extending the road from the proposed Roslyn terminus to Huntington. The New York Tribune reported in June that articles of agreement had actually been signed by which it was agreed to extend the North Shore R.R. through Glen Cove, Oyster Bay and Cold Spring to Huntington. The death blow to all such hopes came in July 1867 when Oliver Charlick bought out the Flushing road and its leased line, the North Shore R.R. It was certain that Charlick would never permit any road under his control to break his monopoly of the North Shore villages from Roslyn eastward. When Charlick sold his interests to the Flushing & North Side a year later, in 1868, rumors again began to circulate in Huntington. It was known that Poppenhusen, Judd and others favored such an extension. Again a year passed and in August 1869 it was reported that the North Shore R.R. was calculating the cost of crossing the Manhasset Valley. Two years later, in 1871, it was reported that the railroad was ready to build if the people of Glen Cove and eastward would pay the expenses of a huge fill across the valley. It is not hard to guess that the deep Manhasset Valley killed the whole project. The expense of a colossal fill across the ravine or an equally long and very high bridge was more than either the company or the villages could undertake. In the long run it was cheaper to pay Charlick's passenger and freight rates on the Long Island R.R. than to impoverish themselves in an undertaking estimated to cost well over $100,000.