The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
The Heyday of the Poppenhusens
WITH THE COMPLETION of the Central R.R.'s line into Babylon, the era of expansion on the Popenhusen railroad system reached its apogee. The network now stretched from the East River thirty-five miles east to Babylon, with seven miles additional of the old main line to Great Neck. There were in addition two branches: the four mile spur to Whitestone and a shorter one of one and one quarter miles to Hempstead. The Flushing Creek area was the throat of the system with two main junction points: Whitestone Junction on the west side, where the Whitestone Branch began, and Central Junction on the east bank, where the Central trains turned off for Babylon. When the Woodside Branch opened in April 1874, four more miles of single track were added, plus an additional trestle bridge and connecting spur from Central Junction to the Flushing Bay dock.
The vast expansion of the road eastward and southward had the effect of making the former legal title inappropriate, and in the directors' meeting for 1874, it was further suggested that all the subsidiary roads should be merged at the same time that the new title be adopted. This plan met with the approval of the stockholders, and in July of that year 13,000 of the 16,000 shares were voted as in favor of consolidating the subsidiary roads into one and under a new name. As a result, the Flushing & North Side R.R. (Poppenhusen's), the North Shore R.R. (Flushing to Great Neck), the Central R.R. Extension Co. (Babylon extension), the Central Railroad of Long Island (Flushing to Garden City and Hempstead), the Whitestone & Westchester R.R. (unbuilt), the North Shore & Port Washington R.R. (unbuilt) and the Roslyn & Huntington R.R. (unbuilt) were all consolidated into the Flushing, North Shore and Central R.R. as of July 20, 1874. Mr. Stewart's Central R.R. was obtained by purchase, Stewart accepting about $700,000 of the bonds of the new company in payment.
In the fall of 1873 the South Side R.R. of L.I., one of the three big systems on the island, the main line of which tapped all the southern villages, began to experience financial difficulties. In November 1873 the railroad went into receivership and in September 1874 was put up at auction. A property of this size and importance proved an irresistible temptation to Conrad Poppenhusen and his compliant board of directors, and at the sale, Elizur B. Hinsdale, the treasurer, bought in the South Side road for $200,000. It was an easy purchase; no one else appeared anxious to buy a road that had slipped into a tangle of financial difficulties. Oliver Charlick of the Long Island R.R., the only other railroad tycoon likely to rise to such tempting bait, lay ailing and sickly in his Flushing home, with death but a few short months away, his old time aggressiveness and uncanny skill at manipulation blasted by sickness.
On September 25, 1874, the South Side R.R. of L.I. formally became a Poppenhusen subsidiary and was reorganized as The Southern Railroad Co. of Long Island. Within days the telegraph wires of the North Side and Southern systems were connected and two track connections were made: one in Long Island City through Van Alst Avenue, and the more important one at a point west of Babylon, now called Belmont Junction. The reason for the unusual haste in carrying out this latter change was to enable the managers to make use of the Southern R.R. rolling stock on the day of the International Rifle Match at Creedmoor on September 26; as it turned out, this proved a wise precaution for 8,000 persons used the road to attend the meet.
The joining of the two systems at Belmont Junction created another change of importance. On November 1, 1874, with the change of timetables, the Southern R.R. tracks from Babylon east to Patchogue were detached from the control of the Southern R.R. and added to the Central's main line, and all Central trains were henceforth routed from Long Island City to Patchogue. This meant that the former Babylon station of the Central R.R. on Fire Island Avenue ceased to be a terminus only eleven months after its completion. It is probable that the station was not immediately abandoned; there is some reason to believe that the Central R.R. continued to operate at least some service into this depot in the summer of 1875 for the Fire Island traffic and to service the Watson House across the street. In any case, the change effectively ended all schemes of moving the Central depot down to the Steamboat Dock, seriously considered only four months before. To bring the railroad between Babylon and Patchogue up to Central R.R. standards, much of the line was rebuilt with fresh ballasting and new rails.
The change of terminus from Babylon to Patchogue was no doubt motivated partly by optimism and partly by vanity. The directors hoped to court the east end trade by giving high-speed, limited-stop service to New York, something that the South Side and Long Island R.R. could not do; there was also an element of vanity in still further extending the range of the road and flaunting its superior rolling stock and roadbed in an era unaccustomed to such splendors. Poppenhusen followed up his purchase of the South Side R.R. with purchase of the controlling interest in the subsidiary Hempstead & Rockaway railroad in June 1875.
The urge to extend and enlarge the Poppenhusen system was by no means sated with the absorption of the South Side network in 1874. The officers and directors of the company were tirelessly seeking to extend the North Side system still further eastward to tap the remaining areas still monopolized by the Long Island R.R. It will be remembered that when the railroad was first projected in 1868, Poppenhusen and Locke expressly stated in the incorporation papers their intention of reaching Roslyn. The scheme lay fallow for awhile, partly because construction of the main line absorbed all the energy and money of the company. In the summer of 1871 the directors were stirred into action by the appearance on the scene of a potential rival, the North Side R.R. of L.I., which published grandiose plans for building from Richmond Hill to Orient Point all along the North Shore.
With the arrival of good spring weather in 1872 surveyors were sent out for the first time to sound out the territory to the eastward. In March a team surveyed from Farmingdale to Huntington with the idea of extending the Bethpage brickyard spur north through the hills to the shore. A second team surveyed south from Flushing through Jamaica to Rockaway. A month later in May a route was traced out from Floral Park northeast to Glen Cove. It was reported that the property owners along the line were willing to donate the land, that the route avoided the hills, and would sweep in a broad arc at Sea Cliff Grove. We hear of one further spur in the 1872 season: a two-mile branch to (Old) Westbury from the Stewart road to the south, this latter advocated by the farmers of the area.
In the spring of 1873 extension fever was again in the air. A survey to Northport, the most distant point yet, was made for the Stewart road. It was also rumored that the citizens of Cold Spring were offering to take $100,000 in stock should the road be run to the center of their village regardless of whether or not it continued on to Huntington. With the year 1874 the strongest effort of all was made to push on eastward. In April the directors sent Superintendent Barton to address a large meeting of the farmers and dairymen of Westbury. Mr. Barton stated on behalf of the company that they were willing to construct a branch road to Westbury from East Meadow and that it would cost about $25,000. Of this sum $18,000 was subscribed upon the spot and a committee of seven was appointed to solicit subscriptions for the balance. The spur was reported ready to build at once.
On June 19, 1874, the North Side directors took the step of organizing two new companies for the express purpose of building eastward: the North Shore & Port Washington R.R. and the Roslyn and Huntington R.R. The route of the former was published in the newspapers. Starting from Great Neck it would run east to Manhasset, thence northeast across to the Middle Neck Road where would be located Port Washington station, then on a trestle along Bar Beach and over Hempstead Harbor and then along the level beach through Sea Cliff to Glen Cove.
In July 1874 Mr. I. D. Barton addressed the citizens of Huntington at their invitation and told them that if the people east of Roslyn would extend a reasonable amount of aid to the enterprise in respect of right-of-way and stock subscription, that his company would build the road that summer. He intimated that the Town of Huntington would be expected to furnish about two and one-half miles of right-of-way and take about $25,000 worth of stock. If this seems presumptuous to us today, it is well to remember that the Towns of Brookhaven and Southampton did as much for the South Side and Long Island R.R. only five years before.
To reinforce Mr. Barton's campaign, the directors sent out EJizur Hinsdale to Cold Spring, Huntington and Northport and even Herman Poppenhusen toured the district. Within a few days $17,000 had been subscribed toward the stock of the Roslyn & Huntington R.R.; the goal was set at $25,000. By mid-August all the stock had been subscribed and $6,000 had also been contributed as a fund for which to negotiate for the right-of-way between Cold Spring and Huntington. In August there was another mass meeting in Norwich of residents living between Floral Park and Huntington. So enthusiastic were the citizenry and so pressing were the claims of the rival villages that the entire sixteen miles of right-of-way were offered free to the North Shore R.R. on condition of immediate construction. The road was to run from Floral Park east to Westbury and then northeast, skirting Wheatley and Norwich to Cold Spring and thence to Huntington. On July 30, 1874, the board of directors at its meeting authorized the issue of bonds to the amount necessary to secure the prompt construction of the extensions. The bonds were taken by the agent of a foreign (probably German) house and on terms regarded as favorable to the company. In the last months of the year 1874 I. D. Barton addressed a gathering of farmers from Farmingdale and Bethpage about extending the Bethpage Branch northeastward. There was some talk as well of a branch to Amityville and no less than three routes were surveyed in June and July; purchase of the South Side R.R. in September effectively ended this scheme.
It is odd that with the public enthusiasm for an eastward extension reaching its peak, and encouraged in every way by the company itself, nothing at all came of it. In 1875, when we should normally have expected some action after two years of active campaigning, the newspapers of the day are strangely silent. We are left to surmise that the Poppenhusens had their hands full with the responsibilities and financial obligations of their already large network of lines, and dared not strain their resources by constructing costly extensions.
It is worthwhile at this point to pause and examine the Poppenhusen system at its peak. As of 1875 the North Side system consisted of about fifty-five route miles and the South Side about sixty-eight miles, a total of 122 miles. The main line which ran from Hunter's Point through to Patchogue was largely double-tracked as far as Woodside, and the two lines from there to Flushing gave the effect of a double track. From Flushing eastward the whole line was single-track but with many turnouts.
At Long Island City the line approached the river between the present Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Avenues, then curved sharply south to the depot at Fifty-first Avenue and Second Street, directly opposite and at right angles to the Long Island R.R. station. Here were located numerous side tracks, freight spurs and a turntable. The Hunter's Point station building had been erected in October and November 1869, and embraced an iron structure 190 × 48 feet long, with a car shed 77 × 54 feet. Covered passageways led to the ferries and to the Long Island R.R. depot nearby. When the Central R.R. became part of the North Side system, Central trains were also accommodated here.
Aside from the College Point car shops, which we have described earlier, the next important facility to the east was in Central Junction on the east bank of Flushing Creek. The depot building was located at the corner of Sanford Avenue and Delong Street. Behind it was a large car shed, and engine roundhouse with turntable and sidings. From the yard tracks at this point a spur led northwest, crossed Flushing Creek on its own trestle and connected with the Woodside Branch track and the Flushing Bay dock spur on the open meadows.
Moving eastward on the Central R.R., now the mainline, the next siding was located between 164th Street and Fresh Meadow Lane. At Hinsdale (Floral Park) the Central R.R. crossed the Long Island R.R. by means of an embankment and iron bridge, twenty feet above the surrounding ground level, and supported on either side on stone abutments. A turnout was located just east of Hinsdale station. At Garden City station itself a turnout had been installed to accommodate the Sunday excursion trains which brought prospective buyers from the city during the 1874 and 1875 seasons. At the Hempstead depot there was another turntable and engine house.
On the long lonely stretch eastward from Garden City, the next turnout was located at Island Trees station (Jerusalem Avenue). Four miles to the east one came to Bethpage Junction, where a spur led northeast to the brick yards just north of the present Bethpage Park. From Farmingdale the road struck southeast through a very sparsely inhabited country until joining the South Side R.R. at Babylon. On the south shore the Poppenhusens inherited the well-established facilities at both Babylon and Patchogue, the former with a siding and car shed, and the latter with terminal sidings, engine house and car sheds.
The whole Poppenhusen system traversed a fairly level country and there were few structures that required elaborate maintenance. In Long Island City there were two small wooden trestles, the first over Jack's Creek which was damaged by fire in June 1875 and later filled in, and the second over Dutch Kills. Over Flushing Creek, two were maintained by the Flushing & North Side to carry their main line and Whitestone Branch, and one by the Central R.R. for its Flushing Bay Dock spur. To the east there was only the Connetquot River trestle at Great River, plus several culverts of varying size.
The Rocky Hill cut in Queens Village represented a constant maintenance problem because of the danger of falling rocks. In March, 1872, a large rock weighing about three tons was loosened by a spring thaw and fell on the tracks. The company set a watch at the cut to warn trains of danger and their foresight was rewarded a few days later when another large stone fell before daylight, with much earth and rubble, and delayed the first train half an hour. In March of 1875 more large stones rolled down onto the tracks, but the vigilant guard gave the alarm before any damage was done. Much of the safe operating record of the Central R.R. was attributable to the guard houses, scattered at two and one-half mile intervals all along the right-of-way. These were two-story frame houses with two rooms on each floor, serving as living quarters for the track walkers.
To operate the large Poppenhusen network required a greatly increased rolling stock. Even before the Central R.R. opened, the management began the purchase of new and larger engines. In April 1872 the Farmingdale #8, and the Babylon #9 were purchased and placed in service as of July; in May, the Garden City #10 was delivered from the Rhode Island Locomotive Works and placed in service in June 1872. In August, 1873, the Hempstead was received, and the Hyde Park received from Dunkirk in November 1873. In December, the Fire Island completed the Dunkirk order; all these were comparatively large and heavy engines and designed for hauling fast expresses. On June 22, 1874, according to the newspapers, another "splendid new locomotive," not named, but from the Schenectady works, was placed in service. A newspaper note of July 1874 stated that five new locomotives had been ordered for delivery in the fall by the North Side line, but there is little likelihood that any such order was filled.
The company soon found that an even larger investment had to be made in passenger coaches. The elegance of the North Side coaches had always been the hallmark and pride of the company since 1868; the management now surpassed themselves with the purchase of "palace cars," sumptuously upholstered affairs, heavy with carving, hanging draperies, dark burnished woodwork and gilt decoration. In December 1873 three "new and elegant cars" were added to the roster, costing about $5,000 per car, a new high for that period. Before the year was out, on December 1, one of these handsome palace coaches, #36, caught fire at Hempstead station because of improper firing of the stove and was entirely destroyed.
In January 1874 the management resolved to further expand their fleet with the purchase of Pullman Palace cars on the Babylon express run. On January 20 new and elegant "palace smoking cars" were put in service on the local North Side trains. In expectation of the spring excursion traffic the company also purchased eight used passenger coaches from the United States Rolling Stock Co.; these cars had been rented to the South Side R.R. during the 1873 season, and were shunted over from the South Side to the Central track by means of a temporary switch at West Babylon.
With the beginning of the big summer excursion traffic on July 4 of 1874, the palace cars went into daily service. The papers of that day commented in awe on the silver-plated water coolers, with handsome silver cups attached to the cooler by silver chains. On July 31 another palace car was put in service, and three more were ordered from the American Car Co. for use on the Central road.
On August 8, 1874, the first drawing room palace car ever seen on Long Island was placed on the Fire Island Express. They were manufactured by the American Parlor Car Co. and cost $15,000. The carpets, parlor furniture, mirrors and curtains in this car were the last word in luxury in that day; the car made two trips a day and carried a maximum of fifty. Although there was a surcharge of 25¢, the car was always full. The first week of August witnessed the addition also of four new ordinary passenger coaches to the North Side fleet.
Although we have no evidence to shed light on the types of passenger coaches and their number series, the annual reports give us an inkling of the yearly roster increase:
| First Class Coaches | Freight Cars | Baggage Mail Express | Engines | |
| 1871 | 10 | 11 | 6 | 6 |
| 1872 | 19 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| 1873 | ||||
| 1874 | 33 | 67 | 2 | 13 |
| 1874 | 32 | 2 | 15 | |
| 1876 | 32 | 76 | 2 | 16 |
Service and scheduling on the Flushing, North Shore & Central network was generally good and rarely evoked criticism, except on those occasions when some traveler's favorite train was lopped off on the change of timetable. The Whitestone Branch, always favored by the company because most of the high officials lived either in College Point or Whitestone, was served by eighteen to twenty trains a day consistently during the four-year period 1873–76. Occasional trains were short routed at College Point. The service was half-hourly during the morning and evening rush hour, and hourly to an hour and a half during the rest of the day. Fares were generally 25¢ to College Point and 30¢ to Whitestone with occasional fluctuations. The eleven-mile run usually consumed thirty-five minutes if all stops were made, or twenty-eight for expresses skipping all Newtown stops. The Whitestone Branch originated the heaviest riding on the system largely because of College Point, which had several large and many small factories (hard rubber, breweries) and a huge excursion business. The number of saloons and beer gardens in College Point far exceeded that of any other village on the road. Although the community was a large one by the standards of that day—4,500 people—thousands more came to enjoy the shooting galleries, beer gardens, dances, etc., and the place was a mecca for singing organizations, shooting companies, and fraternal groups of all kinds. An official calculated that in 1875 $80,000 a month was spent at College Point on lager beer, retailing at 5¢ per glass. The village had its own water and gas works, three Institutes besides a public school system, and supported two newspapers.
The Great Neck Branch, with its five small village stops, originated little traffic in comparison. Bayside was a booming community in the early seventies, when the break-up of the great estates was already in progress, but with only 1,078 persons in 1875. Little Neck with 780 persons and Great Neck were small crossroad villages, with scattered houses dotting the roads beyond the villages. For the four-year period 1873–76, the branch had six or seven trains a day, never more or less. Service was given only from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M., and at intervals of from two to three hours; the fourteen-mile run from Hunter's Point was scheduled for fifty minutes' running time. The fare remained uniform because of the absence of any competition. The rates from New York to the following communities were:
| Broadway | 25¢ | Little Neck | 35¢ |
| Bayside | 30¢ | Great Neck | 40¢ |
| Douglaston | 35¢ |
Scheduling on the Central R.R. was always generous, largely because this was the prestige run of the system. The best trains operated over the best roadbed, and gave a service well in excess of the requirements of traffic. The Hempstead Branch, serving a large and well-established village, got eight trains a day in 1873, and this was increased to ten or eleven for the years 1874–76. Unfortunately for the Central, the Long Island R.R.—and, at times, the Hempstead & Rockaway railroad—also shared the patronage of Hempstead. The Central Extension eastward from Garden City had three trains a day when service opened to Bethpage and then Farmingdale. When through service to Babylon opened, trains fluctuated between seven and ten, depending on the season, running at roughly two-hour intervals. This was remarkably good service considering that the entire route ran through an unsettled territory with no villages at all to furnish patronage except the terminus at Babylon. The run from Hunter's Point through to Babylon was scheduled for one hour thirty minutes to one hour forty minutes for way trains and one hour ten minutes for the Fire Island Express, which stopped only at Flushing and Garden City. The fare structure was as follows:
| Hillside | 25¢ | East Meadow Brook | 55¢ |
| Kissena | 25¢ | New Bridge Road | 60¢ |
| Frankiston | 30¢ | Island Trees | 60¢ |
| Creedmore | 30¢ | Central Park | 65¢ |
| Hinsdale | 35¢ | Bethpage Junction | 70¢ |
| Hyde Park | 40¢ | Bethpage | 75¢ |
| Garden City | 45¢ | Farmingdale | 75¢ |
| Hempstead | 50¢ | Belmont Junction | $1.00 |
| Babylon | $1.00 |
After the take-over of the South Side R.R.s eastern end in 1874, the rates were reduced from 15 to 20¢ under the former South Side rates.
| Bayshore | $1.10 | Sayville | $1.35 |
| Islip | 1.20 | Bayport | 1.40 |
| Club House | 1.25 | Blue Point | 1.45 |
| Oakdale | 1.30 | Patchogue | 1.50 |
Besides the conventional one-way tickets, the Central R.R. sold "family tickets," being packages with a strip of thirty tickets, each good for one passage. The North Side division in December 1873 substituted commutation cards for commutation books. The holder showed the card only when requested, and with it he could travel over the road ten times a day if he chose. The strictest check on tickets on the road was at Hunter's Point, where a passenger had to show his ticket at the door of the waiting room in the depot before being allowed to enter the cars. This occasioned some tall swearing, as we learn from the papers, when a man with his coat snugly buttoned up, and his arms full of bundles, was mildly requested to show his bit of pasteboard, probably tucked away in an inner pocket for safe keeping.
Routing on the Poppenhusen system was interesting. Trains from Hunter's Point ran through either to Whitestone or Babylon (later Patchogue). Often one train did duty for both Great Neck and Whitestone; the train was broken up at Whitestone Junction on the meadows, half the cars being hauled to Whitestone by a second engine dispatched from the College Point shops, while the original engine went on to Great Neck. At other times Great Neck shuttle trains emptied their passengers out at Whitestone Junction, and left them there for the College Point & Whitestone train to pick up. After the opening of the Woodside Branch in April 1874 another routing was instituted. College Point and Whitestone trains ran through over the new branch to Woodside and Hunter's Point instead of joining the old main line at Whitestone Junction. This left the old main line free for the Central trains, and Great Neck passengers then transferred at Central Junction for their shuttle trains.
At "Long Island R.R. Crossing" on the Hempstead Plains all Central trains were required to stop, and a man was stationed at that point to make sure there was no possibility of collision with a Long Island R.R. train. A tower was erected at the crossing, which displayed colored signals in the daytime and lighted ones at night. Here passengers for Hempstead changed to the Hempstead shuttle, waiting on the spur to transport them 1.4 miles south to Hempstead village. Four trains daily ran through to Hempstead without change.
Passenger traffic on the Flushing, North Shore & Central R.R. was fairly heavy on the North Side division, but light on the Central division. From the annual reports we get these overall statistics:
| 1872 | 1,256,278 | 1874 | 1,144,201 |
| 1873 | 1875 | 1,313,614 |
Only rarely do we get breakdowns of such general figures for the different parts of the system. On a Sunday in June in 1873 one conductor who made five round trips on the North Side division turned in the following report: 11-car trains were running all day, yet there were many standees. On five westbound trips there were 105, 59, 152, 531 and 640 passengers, respectively; on the five eastbound trips there were 445, 317, 601, 142, and 73 passengers, respectively. The total number of passengers passing over the road that day was 3,065. During 1874 we read that the Poppenhusen system had captured most of the Hempstead and Babylon traffic, and that on August 16 the Central carried more passengers to Babylon and Fire Island than on any Sunday since those roads were built. A brief remark of 1874 mentions that the Fourth of July traffic that year netted the railroad over $2,000 in passenger revenue. On Sundays during 1875 the road was using seven and eight car trains all day to accommodate the Sunday excursionists.
Charter outings added their share to the company's revenues. When Garden City was first opened to the public by A. T. Stewart in 1874 for the rental of homes and farms, special trains ran every Sunday in September and October to accommodate prosspective buyers. The well-known real estate promoter, Benjamin Hitchcock, also chartered trains on occasional Sundays to transport 300 or 400 people to visit his Flushing Park development and buy lots. In September of 1875 the wealthy Mickle family of Bayside chartered a train to enable wedding guests from the city to witness the marriage of their daughter. The North Side tracks ran through their estate and their gardeners fashioned a temporary station on the grounds for the guests.
Next to College Point, the heaviest excursion traffic was to the Creedmoor Rifle Range. Conrad Poppenhusen had generously donated the land for the range to the National Rifle Association, and Creedmoor soon became the site for international competitions, as well as the practice range for the local National Guard units. Creedmoor was graded by the railroad crews and formally opened in June 1873. Every fall thereafter for many years trainloads of private shooting societies and entire National Guard units traveled to Creedmoor for meets and practice sessions. It was not uncommon to schedule train-loads of 1,000 men and more on a Sunday.
Next to passenger traffic in production of revenue came the freight traffic of the road. The Flushing & North Side R.R. originally had only its passenger dock at Hunter's Point for freight movement, but the authorities at the Point would not permit the handling of manure, the product most in demand by Long Island farmers. In the summer of 1873 the Central R.R. built a spur from Central Junction across the creek and over the meadows to Flushing Bay and then out into the water. It seems highly probable that the railroad simply took over an abandoned steamboat dock, constructed in 1855, to lure excursionists to Yonkers Island, a scheme which had fallen through. The dock must have been opened in the spring of 1873, for the Flushing Journal commented that its presence had made the shipping on Flushing Bay very active, and that all summer long it had been in constant use by scores of boats and some schooners unloading lumber, coal and manure and merchandise. Enough business was done at the dock in the 1874 season to warrant making that point the headquarters of the superintendent of the freight department of the road. A passing reference of 1875 mentioned that in March no less than eight barges and one schooner were all unloading manure at the dock.
The flourishing freight business of the road induced the company to build a new freight depot and storehouse with a 100foot platform at Vernon Avenue. The new structure was completed for use in July 1874. In February, 1874, as a result of a reduction in freight rates, the manure hauling business doubled. Large numbers of new flat cars had to be turned out at the College Point shops, and some of the longest freight trains ever seen left Hunter's Point. We are told one freight train totaled twenty-four cars, which was then followed by an equally long manure train; to move the volume of goods it became necessary to do much night hauling on the single track road to avoid interference from daylight passenger movements.
In June 1874 new refrigerator cars were put on the Central R.R. to convey fish from Babylon to New York in better condition. We read that the number of barrels of produce carried rose from 125 to 140 per day, due to the company's aggressive policy of courting business. The most unusual improvement of all was the inauguration in 1874 of the "Market train," which arrived at Hunter's Point at 2 A.M. The novel feature was that the train was placed in charge of commission merchants who not only loaded the farmer's produce, but attended to the sale of it in the city, charging only 5% for their services. By this method the farmer saved himself the long hard drive to the city over poor roads and the produce arrived faster and in fresher condition at the market. Besides this, the train's capacity for loads was far beyond that of one wagon. The plan caught on slowly but by late fall the freight depot was full of grocerymen from New York and Brooklyn buying supplies.
In March of 1875 the company arranged to expedite the movement of freight from Hunter's Point over the East River to New York by engaging a barge and renting a dock on the New York side. Hitherto all the freight had been carried in wagons over the ferry.
One of the unexpected effects of the boom in freight traffic was the decision on the part of the railroad to revive the old New York & Flushing R.R. right-of-way from Winfield to Hunter's Point, which had been abandoned in 1870. Title to this line had apparently been secured through purchase of the South Side R.R. in Hunter's Point. In the first two weeks of December gangs of laborers were set to work rebuilding the pilework and regrading the old road, and on December 22 gangs of men were set to work laying ties and iron upon it. On February 1, 1876, the work was mysteriously suspended. Though no one knew it at the time, Poppenhusen was dickering with the Long Island R.R. and this connection would then be unneeded. Again on May 1, 1876, Poppenhusen reconsidered and work began anew, but again work was halted in a few weeks' time, this time for good. After 1876 the old right-of-way permanently disappeared from the map.
The Flushing & North Side R.R. originally operated its own express business, but in February 1874 the company sold the franchise to the United- States Express Co., which took over on February 8. Two years later when the contract ran out, the business was transferred to Westcott's Express as of May 1, 1876; they also assumed at the same time the conduct of the news agency.
The Central R.R. introduced the use of a railroad mail car on its routes on December 3, 1874. The car left Whitestone at 7 A.M. daily, collecting, separating and delivering all mailable matter between that village and Patchogue. It also received and supplied mail at Long Island City and the Southern R.R. at Babylon, returning to Whitestone at 5 P.M. Through use of the mail car, all of the North Side villages on the line were furnished with morning and evening mails, letters being delivered directly from one village to another. Under the old system, all letters had gone to New York and were sent out from there by train the following day. The partial sorting of mail, formerly done at the Flushing Post Office, was now all done by the Mail Route Agent on his car. Letters which formerly were delivered a day or more after mailing now reached their destination on the same day they were mailed, and in a matter of hours.
The telegraph system on the island, introduced by the South Side R.R. in the Sixties, was enlarged once more by the construction of the Central R.R. In September 1872, well before the road was finished, the poles for the telegraph were going up all along the right-of-way. By July 1873 the telegraph at Central Junction was in operation. In December the road established a telegraph station in its switch house at Winfield Junction. A Western Union employee was put in charge and it was open to the general public. This was moved in January to Winfield depot; Western Union also operated a public telegraph station at Corona depot. By the end of 1873 the poles for the telegraph line stretched unbroken all along the right-of-way of the Central R.R. from Central Junction to Babylon. In the fall of 1874 the Flushing & North Side was reported as receiving from, and sending messages to, all parts of the country, the business being done for the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. Flushing, with its three railroad stations, enjoyed the presence of three separate telegraph stations.
Despite the considerable size of the North Side railroad network, there were remarkably few accidents. Most of the known accidents were trifling, attributable more often than not to equipment failure:
April 4, 1873—Tender derails at College Point.
April 11, 1873—Engine "Winfield" derails coming off Whitestone turntable.
March 7, 1873—Misplaced switch at Hinsdale derails engine and one car.
July 14, 1873—A freight car and two flat cars loaded with brick picked up excessive speed while being switched onto a siding at Hempstead, struck two others and crashed through a bumper block.
August 7, 1873—Slight collision at Babylon.
September 24, 1873—Engine at Hempstead overruns the turntable and plows into the dirt.
December 17, 1873—Switch lock breaks at Garden City, while train is taking the siding, so that the Babylon and its tender take one track and its coaches another. Trucks sprained, but no damage.
June 18, 1874—Cylinder head on an engine at Flushing bursts, followed by the breaking of a piston rod.
July 22, 1874—Manure on the Island Trees siding makes the passing siding so slick that one engine is unable to stop and slides into another. Only pilots of engines torn off, with no more serious damage.
December 1, 1874—Engine Bayside breaks a piston rod. Mayor Havemeyer of New York is forced to walk to Flushing and dies of apoplexy.
April 17, 1875—Engine Winfield derails at Whitestone.
April 19, 1875—Steam pipe bursts on the Winfield.
February 24, 1876—Forward truck on rear coach derails on Winfield Switch, throwing coach over both tracks.
November 15, 1876—Engine Woodside breaks a shaft and derails at Flushing depot.
February 11, 1877—Engine Bayside bursts a flue.
The North Side system made some definite safety efforts that may well have contributed to its good operating record. In December 1874 the roadmaster, H. C. Moore, patented a new "frog" for railroad switches in three sections, so that repairs on the steel head would be more quickly and cheaply made. In February 1876 the railroad adopted automatic electric gates at the Skillman Avenue crossing in Long Island City. This device, so commonplace today, had just been invented by a Jersey man, and the Flushing & North Side was one of the first to be attracted by its safety features. Another safety factor of the first importance was the completion of the installation of vacuum brakes on all the North Side, Central, and Southern cars by October 1875. Another more unusual precaution was the issuance of Babcock fire extinguishers to every depot building and guard house on the line of the Central road after fire had destroyed one of the palace cars at Hempstead in December 1873.
On the single track roads of those days, faulty dispatching was one of the most frequent sources of accident. The Southern R.R., under Poppenhusen management, experienced more than one bad wreck; the Central division got by with several narrow escapes. On a pleasant day in June 1873, Mr. A. T. Stewart, accompanied by Herman Poppenhusen and several other directors, arranged a joyride for themselves in a special train out of Hunter's Point, the movements of which were not telegraphed to the station agents or to the conductors of the regular trains. On the outward trip, when at the Garden City depot, the engineer decided that there was not time enough to reach Hinsdale siding before the regular express train would arrive. The railroad officials on board, nevertheless, ordered the engineer to rush on at the rate of 60 MPH to reach the turnout. The engine started, but in the vicinity of Stewart Manor, the whistle of the eastbound express was heard. The trains were about half a mile apart when warning signals were blasted by both engineers, and the engines were reversed. Both trains were traveling so fast that a stoppage could be effected only when the engines were within a stone's throw of each other. It was fortunate that the long straight road and elevation of the track made visibility clear! Stewart and Poppenhusen both may have been able financiers, but complete amateurs at running a railroad and had no moral right to overawe the operating officials with their position and so endanger lives.
A very similar narrow escape occurred not long after. On July 17, 1875, a Creedmoor special, crowded with National Guard reservists, was steaming westward and switched off onto the siding just beyond Kissena station, as usual, to await the eastbound train. When nothing happened after ten minutes, the conductor concluded to run to the next station, putting on steam to make up for lost time. When only a few yards from Hillside station, a man was seen running down with some danger signals, and the troops were thrown into a state of the wildest excitement for a few moments, fearing that a collision was inevitable. The engine was stopped and the trackman picked up, who reported that the eastbound had been just about to start from Central Junction siding, when the smoke of the Creedmoor train had been sighted. Had a collision occurred on the meadows, many soldiers as well as regular passengers in coaches and palace cars would have been killed.
From what we can tell at the distance of almost a century, maintenance was good and the roadbed first-rate everywhere except on the North Shore division. Perhaps this was so because of the very light traffic and the fact that the road was only leased. The Flushing Times in March 1875 appointed itself the champion of the people in "exposing" the "rotten, dangerous condition" of the Great Neck Branch. A reporter walking over the roadbed between Main Street and Broadway stations found that a large number of the ties were rotten, with the result that the spikes were either loose or out altogether. Many ties could be kicked apart and the spikes drawn out by hand. Here and there washouts had left a tie loose and dangling. At the joints many bolts were loose and wooden "Dutchmen" were found breaching gaps at the rail ends. The loose ties affected the gauge in spots and the reporter marveled that an accident had not already taken place. The paper speculated on how rotten the remaining miles of road might be.
That there must have been some basis in fact for these strictures was silently acknowledged a week after the damaging evidence had appeared in print, when section hands were put to work and carloads of fresh ties appeared in Flushing. Even Poppenhusen and the seven directors thought it prudent to tour the line and see for themselves on an inspection trip made on April 22.
In bringing to a close this brief appraisal of the Flushing, North Shore & Central, let us take a look at the men who ran the road. Conrad Poppenhusen, about whom we have spoken earlier, was often in Germany almost the year around, and the posts of president, vice-president and secretary were rotated among his two sons, Herman and Alfred; Morris Franklin, an old stockholder and president of the New York Life Insurance Co.; and Loomis L. White, a wealthy resident of College Point. All through the life of the company, Elizur B. Hinsdale retained his post as secretary and chief counsel. The person closest to the work-a-day operation of the railroad was its superintendent. It was he who scheduled the trains, checked the equipment, hired and fired the employees, and made constant trips of inspection. The superintendent for 1873 was one L. F. Marshall, who tendered his resignation in July and went to work for the Long Island R.R. as train dispatcher. After a six months' interregnum, a highly capable and experienced man, Isaac D. Barton, took over the post as of December 1, 1874. He had worked for Charlick's Long Island R.R. in the Sixties, then had become superintendent of the United States Rolling Stock Co., and most recently, superintendent on the Atlantic & Great Western Railway of New York. Under Barton's energetic supervision the North Shore and the Central roads were very efficiently operated and skillfully managed. He knew how to handle men and speak their language and could be kind yet firm at the same time.
It was he who saw to it that the men got their pay from the nearest station along the road rather than journey all the way to College Point shops for it as had been the custom. He also did not hesitate to post an order directing all employees who were behind in their rent to their landladies to pay up or be fired! The ability to combine discipline with tact was a sorely needed quality in those halcyon days of railroading; numbers of the men were attracting unfavorable attention to themselves and to the company for getting arrested for drinking and brawling, and on at least one occasion the passengers were scandalized to find their engineer and brakeman sitting on the track drunk, the run being made perforce by the fireman. When the engineer was coaxed aboard, he pulled the throttle full open, and the locomotive dashed at full speed down the track, with the passengers white with terror in their seats. After Barton became superintendent, these abuses ended at onec.
The road suffered a real loss in February 1876 when Barton resigned. At the inquest on the South Side R.R. accident of July 1875, the Poppenhusens felt that Barton had given testimony in court damaging to the company and strained relations resulted. Barton was too good a man to continue working under a cloud, and he tendered his resignation as of March 1, 1876, a resignation which the directors in their foolish pride accepted. The post went to an obscure man from the Pennsylvania Railroad, John Fisk.
It is fitting in closing to honor the memory of four humble conductors of the North Shore and Central roads, Messrs. H. A. Hurlbut, Calvin Curtis, Cheshire, and G. W. Whidden, mentioned often in the Island press of the day for their popularity among the men commuters and their gallantry to the fair sex.