The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part Two: The Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
Collapse of the Poppenhusen System
EVEN at the very moment that the Poppenhusen railroad empire was at the peak of its prosperity, powerful forces were at work undermining the system. The arch rival of the Poppenhusens in the struggle for control of Long Island's rail traffic was Oliver Charlick, president of the Long Island R.R. It will be recalled that Charlick first clashed with the Poppenhusens in 1868 when the latter began to parallel Charlick's New York & Flushing R.R. In the face of this threat Charlick considered it prudent at the time to sell out to his rivals. What he did not and could not foresee was that the Poppenhusens would soon become such formidable rivals of his own Long Island R.R. Charlick was probably reluctantly willing to sacrifice the Flushing and College Point business to his rivals, but when they joined with Alexander T. Stewart to build a large system threatening him at every point, it was time to stage a counter blow.
As early as June 1869 a rumor flew that Charlick would build a branch from his own Long Island R.R. to tap the profitable traffic of Flushing. Such a branch would attack the Poppenhusens in their own stronghold. The year 1870 passed without action and the Poppenhusens breathed easier, but in April 1871 they were horrified to learn that Charlick had quietly filed articles of association for the Newtown and Flushing Railroad. Charlick's notorious obstinacy made any ideas of dissuasion futile.
As projected by Charlick, the new road was to branch off from the Long Island R.R. at Maurice Avenue and run through Newtown, Corona, and across the meadows, entering Flushing precisely where the Poppenhusens were planning to locate Central Junction station on the Central Railroad of Long Island. Since a roundhouse and yard were to be erected there as well as a depot, the track of the Charlick road cutting diagonally across the site would ruin everything. During April 1871 Charlick was able to get the permission of the village trustees for his hand-picked route.
The Poppenhusens, furious at this invasion, brought out their own heavy artillery. In the same month of March 1871 they filed articles of association for the Flushing Village Railroad, a short line that was to utilize the Central roadbed to Lawrence Street and then parallel Franklin Avenue for about a mile to near Northern Boulevard. The hidden joker in the plan was that the road was to be built atop an eight-foot embankment, which the Poppenhusens piously protested was necessary to avoid cluttering the streets of Flushing with grade crossings. Charlick perceived immediately that the Flushing Village R.R. was designed purely to serve as a Chinese wall to obstruct his road into Flushing. Reluctantly, the two rivals were forced into a parley by the village trustees, and in June 1871 a truce was patched up. The Newtown & Flushing would still be built into Flushing, but Charlick had to shift his route one block south to avoid the proposed Central Junction depot grounds. The Poppenhusens for their part agreed to drop the Flushing Village R.R. scheme.
From November of 1871 to October 1873 the building of the rival road went on, a surprisingly long time for such a short road. Finally, on November 10, 1873 the new line opened for business. In a bid to divert traffic to his road, Charlick exerted himself to make his road outshine the Poppenhusen's. He opened a convenient depot popularly referred to as the Jaggar Avenue Station on Main Street between Forty-first Avenue and Forty-first Road on the present Loew Theatre site. He also provided all new coaches, painted pure white and assigned some of the fastest engines to the route. The new road, popularly dubbed the White Line, because of its white cars, soon cut into the business of the Flushing & North Side R.R.
In the beginning the White Line charged the same rates as the Flushing & North Side to Hunter's Point and the way stations, but within a month competition began. During 1874 the rate to Woodside and Winfield fell from 15¢ to 13¢ and then 10¢; Newtown and Corona fell from 20¢ to 15¢ and the fare to Flushing from 25¢ to 20¢. By the end of 1875 even these low tariffs were further cut by special excursion rates, books of 100 tickets, and round trip fares, making the run to Flushing and return only 15¢. Corona 15¢, and Woodside, Winfield and Newtown 10¢.
These rates were certainly ruinously low for both railroads. Oliver Charlick lost money on every passenger he carried, but stubbornly hung on, sardonically savoring the distress of his rival. The Poppenhusens tried to recoup their losses by charging the former rates on College Point and Whitestone traffic, but the residents shrewdly refused to buy tickets for their actual destination, preferring to pay only to Flushing, and then purchasing the cut-rate round trip tickets from there to New York. The Flushing public profited handsomely from the intense rivalry of the railroads. Three different railroad stations afforded a convenience never enjoyed before or since. Each road offered twenty or more trains a day each way and at the lowest possible cost. Even the ride itself provided entertainment and excitement, for, because of the nearness of the two parallel rights-of-way, the engineers of the rival trains raced each other all the way into Long Island City, flaunting the superiority of their equipment.
In February 1874 a rumor went about that Charlick was making overtures to the Poppenhusens to stop his trains on condition that he received 5¢ for every Flushing passenger carried by the Flushing & North Side R.R. It was estimated that about 1,000 persons commuted from Flushing to New York daily, which would net Charlick $50 a day or $250 a week, more than the present receipts of the White Line. Needless to say, this blackmail feeler was indignantly rejected by the Poppenhusens.
Beginning in 1873 the operation of the Central R.R. tended to offset slightly the damaging competition of the White Line by its cheap freight rates. The opening of the Woodside Branch in April 1874 also gave the Flushing & North Side R.R. an edge over the White Line, for it provided another track to Long Island City, and hence faster service to the ferries. Nevertheless the damaging competition continued. Both roads came out with package tickets of 100, and merchants in Flushing began to sell these themselves at a slight mark-up to persons who did not or could not use 100 tickets. Feeling itself imposed upon, The Flushing & North Side withdrew these package tickets in May 1875. The result of all this jockeying of fares was that people shifted their patronage from road to road, while the operators increasingly felt the financial pinch.
The bitter rivalry with the White Line at Flushing was not the only area of competition. With the opening of the Central Railroad of Long Island in January 1873 and its operation by the Poppenhusens, further fierce struggles developed at Hempstead and Babylon. The Central R.R., because of its newness and glamour, won the preference of the Hempstead and Babylon people and secured the lion's share of the New York travel. The farmers along the line appreciated the low freight rates, and a heavy traffic developed in shipping manure with trains of as many as twenty-four cars. From 125 to 140 barrels of produce were shipped daily. To attract and hold the Hempstead traffic, the passenger tariff on May 1, 1874, was reduced to $75 a year or thirty package tickets for $10.50, and nineteen trains ran in and out. The Poppenhusens scored a coup in 1874 by the purchase of the South Side system; by this stroke they eliminated most of the Central Railroad's competition and exerted crushing pressure on Oliver Charlick's Long Island R.R. The Poppenhusens had the advantage of newer rolling stock, new road bed and offered more trains than the traffic justified.
It is hard to say just how long the ruinous stalemate between the railroad giants would have continued; the situation changed suddenly with the death of Oliver Charlick on April 30, 1875. The Long Island's Board of Directors in the March meeting of 1875 realized that Charlick was dying and that his railroad war with the Poppenhusens was driving the road to the brink of disaster; to no one's surprise, therefore, Charlick failed of reelection to the presidency for the first time since 1863, and there was installed in his place as president, Henry Havemeyer, whose family was one of the principal financial backers of the road.
Feeling that the death of Oliver Charlick removed the one great obstacle to a working agreement with the Long Island R.R., President Herman Poppenhusen of the North Side line called on Havemeyer and urged him to increase rates for both passenger and freight to a tariff to be mutually decided upon by the two companies. Havemeyer rejected the proffered olive branch, and Poppenhusen countered with a threat to fight on, not only at Flushing, but at every other point where their roads touched.
On May 15, 1875, Poppenhusen implemented his threat by cutting the passenger rate to 10¢ between Flushing and Long Island City, with excursion tickets at 15¢. All the passengers who had previously patronized the White Line now rushed back to the North Side road. The following day Havemeyer cut his rates to meet the North Side's tariff. To further injure Poppenhusen and recover lost traffic, the Long Island's Board of Directors authorized the surveying and construction of some new branches, designed to tap the Poppenhusen system. One was designed to run the length of the Rockaway peninsula, and another to drop from Brentwood south to Islip and Babylon, both to siphon off the summer excursion traffic.
By June 1875 was reported that the Flushing line of the Long Island R.R. had thus far cost the road $5,000 in excess of the receipts, while the Flushing & North Side ran $200,000 behind during the operation of the White Line. It was clear to everyone by this time that both the North Side and Long Island systems would sooner or later either break or be forced into an agreement. In the spring of 1874 there was a rumor that Charlick would sell out the Long Island R.R. to the Poppenhusen interests if they could raise the money, but nothing came of this. In January 1875 a reporter called on Herman Poppenhusen and was assured that the North Side R.R. had not the slightest interest in the Long Island R.R. On January 12, 1875, an article appeared in the New York press announcing such a sale, but it was again denied. The Brooklyn Eagle pointed out that the Poppenhusens were in no condition to buy any new roads after buying up the South Side R.R. This had been a financial strain dictated solely by the fear of Charlick purchasing the road and making another White Line of it. In May when the persistent rumor again arose, President Havemeyer of the Long Island R.R. again denied it, yet in a press interview in June he himself casually remarked that a consolidation might be forthcoming eventually.
The steady pressure of financial stringency was having its effect on the managements of both systems and the Poppenhusens took the initiative in sending out cautious feelers. These initial contacts went so well that news of an understanding eventually leaked out to the press in January 1876. As late as January 20 the two roads were still issuing denials and the press speculated on the dangers of a monopoly. On January 23, 1876, President Havemeyer and Herman Poppenhusen were observed closeted together in Poppenhusen's College Point mansion. It developed that Havemeyer had secured the consent of a majority of the stockholders of the Long Island R.R. to the change, and that there was to be a consolidation of the roads and not a sale. The transfer was made public on January 25.
On February 1, 1876, details of the deal became known. Thirty-five thousand shares of Long Island R.R. stock were sold to the Poppenhusen family for $37.50 per share, or $1,175,000. The capital stock of the Long Island R.R. was then 66,000 shares. The purchase gave the Poppenhusens a controlling interest in the management while the Havemeyers profited handsomely, for they had bought the stock at about $22, even though its par value was $50.
The union of all the competing Long Island railroads into one operating whole was a landmark in Long Island transit history and a major achievement, the significance of which was not fully realized by the public of that day. The immediate concern at that time was a fear of the effects of monopoly and a dread of runaway fare increases. Today, we can, in retrospect, see more clearly what the unification really meant—the emergence of the modern Long Island R.R., and the familiar routings and operations in practice today. The new united Long Island railroad did not wipe out the corporate existence of the component roads. The Poppenhusen blueprint called for the leasing of the newer roads to the older and financially stronger Long Island R.R., and this plan was submitted to the stockholders at the May meeting of that year. The North Side and Central system was to be leased at an annual rental of $229,250 for the first year, increasing in six years to a maximum of $351,050. For the Southern the rental was set at $173,250 for the first year and to increase in six years to $233,450. All the leases were to run 99 years.
Poppenhusen, in his address to the directors, pointed out that the new arrangement was designed to benefit all three roads alike both in the savings of about $150,000 in running expenses and in the increase of business facilities for both passengers and freight. The Long Island R.R., in accepting the leases of the other two roads, did not accept the liabilities of these roads, the mortgages on them remaining as before, but it would have the right of removing shops and depots so as to have central buildings for railroad purposes, and also the right to use the rolling stock of each company on any of the tracks.
The union of the three roads was achieved not entirely without opposition. In February a stockholder's suit was commenced against President Havemeyer to restrain him from selling Long Island R.R. stock to the Poppenhusens on the ground that it would transfer the leadership of the road to the inexperienced hands of the Poppenhusens. The court found that "it is by no means clear that the transfer of control … to persons interested in other roads would be injurious to the stockholders." In June a second suit was filed to prevent the leasing of the other roads to the Long Island R.R. on the ground that it would lead to the bankruptcy of the parent company, but this suit also failed.
The union of all the roads met with apprehension in some quarters and approval in others. Some wits suggested that the Germanization of the entire system by the Poppenhusens was just a matter of time, with Germanized names of the communities in Gothic script, and German-speaking conductors conducting all train business. Other newspaper editors approved the change and placed the highest confidence in the Poppenhusens. In mid-April the new master and his officials made a triumphal tour of the road in a special train, consisting of one engine and a dazzlingly splendid palace car, reputed to have cost $11,000. The tour was completed from Greenport to Hunter's Point, a distance of 94 miles, in one hour and forty-nine minutes, an average of 52 MPH.
The Poppenhusens lost no time in making changes on the railroads. The first and most critical reform was the raising of the ruinously low tariffs prevailing in the Flushing area. The newspapers gloomily anticipated this move, and grudgingly admitted that the fares were too low; they warned, however, that Poppenhusen should not succumb to the temptation of raising rates to a point that would injure the community and ultimately the railroad itself, and pointed out that the state set a maximum of 2¢ per mile on passenger fares.
A few commuters, sensing the change to come, rushed to the ticket offices and bought $20 worth of package tickets on the White Line. Most, however, were caught by surprise. Very quietly, on the morning of February 1, the new rates went into effect. To everyone's relief the new tariff proved to be the old rate current in 1873 before the disastrous competition of the White Line. The rates from Hunter'sPoint were:
| One Way | Round Trip | |
| Whitestone | 30¢ | 50¢ |
| College Point | 25¢ | 40¢ |
| Flushing | 20¢ | 36¢ |
| Newtown | 15¢ | 25¢ |
The overnight change on the White Line proved the most dramatic of all; a package of 100 tickets (the bargain rate of 7½¢ a ride) rose from $7.50 to $16!
The immediate effect of the increased rates was a sharp drop in the traffic from Flushing to New York, but this gave joy to the shopkeepers who had previously seen the loss of all their trade to Manhattan, thanks to the 15¢ round trip fare. Many of the railroad personnel feared momentary dismissal, but no drastic cut occurred. Superintendent Barton, the North Side's able superintendent, resigned as of March 1 because of strained relations with the management, and the Long Island R.R.s general superintendent Snyder succeeded him. To avoid confusion in tickets, conductors on the Long Island R.R. were notified to accept North Side and Central tickets when presented in payment for fare by passengers. In May the general business offices of the Flushing & North Side, the Central R.R. and the Southern R.R. were all transferred into one office in the second story of the Long Island R.R. depot at Hunter's Point.
The physical changes that the Poppenhusens introduced at this time were far-reaching and most significant, for they represented the beginnings of the modern track layout and operational arrangement of the present Long Island R.R. These changes made in the spring of 1876 and the spring of 1877 have persisted to our own day, and never again were so many changes made at one time as during this brief Poppenhusen regime.
The first major change was a predictable one, the suppression on April 16, 1876, of the hated White Line that had been a thorn in the flesh of the Poppenhusens for two and a half years. The tracks were not torn up, but all trains were withdrawn; there was a public outcry for the moment, but since the fares were now the same at all stations in Flushing, and two depots fully adequate to handle the traffic, the excitement soon died down. The sole reason for keeping the White Line intact at all was that there had been some difficulty in handling crowded military excursions to Creedmoor in the 1875 season, and it was decided that the White Line track would be handy to handle overflow crowds.
To permit easy movement of trains from one railroad to another, so that there would be genuine physical unification, several other interesting connections and abandonments were made:
- At Central Junction in Flushing the White Line track was connected by a curve with the Central track for the movement of freight and Creedmoor excursion trains.
- The Long Island R.R. and Southern R.R. were connected at Springfield Junction in June 1876, and passenger service abandoned on the Southern track between Jamaica and Springfield.
- The Long Island R.R. Rockaway Branch over the meadows from Springfield Junction to Cedarhurst (Ocean Point) was abandoned on June 1, 1876, all trains using the Southern R.R.s Rockaway line henceforth.
- A switch was installed at Hempstead Crossing to connect the Hempstead Branch of the Long Island R.R. with the Central's Hempstead Branch.
- The original Long Island R.R. Branch to Hempstead south of the Central R.R. track was abandoned, all trains using the Central terminus.
- The repair and construction shops of the North Side R.R. at College Point were closed, and personnel and machinery moved to Hunter's Point.
- The South Side freight docks on Newtown Creek and at Hunter's Point were abandoned; also the North Side R.R. freight dock on Flushing meadows was abandoned.
- The Central Junction roundhouse and yard at Flushing was abandoned in April 1877.
The complete integration of all the railroads permitted an intermixture of rolling stock to a degree never before possible. In a single train one could now observe coaches painted in different colors and bearing the legends of the Southern, Long Island, White Line, and North Side roads, all coupled together. In the eighteen-month period that the Poppenhusens managed the united Long Island railroads, many worthwhile improvements were undertaken. To expedite traffic the roadbed of the North Side R.R. was widened and a double track laid from Woodside to the White Line turnoff just east of Winfield. This gave a three-track main line to Winfield and three tracks to Flushing over three separate branches. Another double track was installed on the Long Island R.R. between Willow Tree station (184th Street, Hollis) and Springfield Junction.
On December 18, 1876 as a general inducement to traffic, the Poppenhusens issued a bulletin announcing the reduction of fares from nearly every station, and special bargains in package and excursion tickets; they hoped in this way to prove that their train monopoly was a blessing to the island after all. The Poppenhusens displayed an unusual awareness of the value of advertising and good public relations. In March they announced the publication of the road's first Guide Book, a little volume that appeared shortly, full of information about the various villages, their vital statistics, tourist accommodations, etc., together with wood cuts of scenic spots.
In June the management began the summer operation of the first newspaper train on Long Island between Long Island City and Greenport. The Union News Company, which owned the newspaper franchise on the road, filled a coach and baggage car with papers, and dropped off bundles all along the route. More than 5,000 copies of the metropolitan papers were distributed by the Sunday train, to the great pleasure of the summer residents, all of which reflected favorable comment on the road.
Another popular device that evoked very favorable comment for the railroad was the institution of long-distance Sunday excursions. In July 1877 popular-price excursions were operated three times a week to Greenport and Shelter Island for only $2 round trip. Beach excursions were also heavily patronized. It was estimated that over 20,000 persons were carried on the Fourth of July and close to that number on several successive Sundays. Huge loads of excursionists from points as far distant as Port Jefferson and Oyster Bay visited Rockaway, and at the end of the season it was computed that the railroads had carried 200,000 persons to the beach, making a daily average of 2,500.
In spite of this record-breaking traffic on the united roads, and the intelligent efforts of the Poppenhusens to popularize the road, the financial situation continued to grow more and more strained every month. The first strain on the family resources had been the assumption of operation of the Central Railroad of Long Island. The next had been the purchase of the Southern Railroad in 1874. In April 1875 the family negotiated a loan of four million dollars with the New York State Loan & Trust Co., and a new mortgage was taken out on the Southern R.R. for $500,000 to rehabilitate the property. There were certain small signs that all was not well with the road but no one noticed them at the time. In January 1875 all the free passes on the North Side and Central roads were called in and everyone was obliged to pay cash fares. In March of the same year a general wage reduction went into effect on the system. On May 1, 1876 two stations on the Central R.R., Meadowbrook and Island Trees, were quietly closed down for lack of patronage, the first such contraction on the system.
Least noticed of all were the almost constant trips to Europe of Conrad Poppenhusen, senior member of the family and father of Herman and Alfred Poppenhusen. In the year 1875 Conrad spent only the month of April in this country; in 1876 he remained here only a month and a half, and in 1877 again a month. Most persons assumed that his health required these frequent ocean voyages to the old country and his stays at spas; the fact was that he was using his prestige in German financial circles to raise as much money as possible to keep the railroad system from bankruptcy. The Long Island R.R. was earning its own expenses, but the rental charges for the other two systems was an impossible burden. The Southern R.R. had heavy fixed charges to meet on its underlying bonds and because of two bad accidents in 1875, Poppenhusen dared not neglect further the maintenance on the road. To get day-to-day funds, it became necessary to pledge large amounts of stock and bonds to Drexel, Morgan & Co. of Philadelphia. The sad fact was that neither the Southern, the North Side or Central roads earned their rental, despite the record passenger traffic carried.
Besides these difficulties Poppenhusen was forced to pay several heavy judgments. Oliver Charlick, former president of the Long Island, had stubbornly refused since 1869 to pay the contractor for the construction of the Sag Harbor Branch. The contractor went to court, and after a long fight, won a judgment for $50,000 which had to be paid immediately. Meanwhile, the Havemeyer family put a lien on the road for $70,000, representing a debt due Havemeyer which had as yet not been paid. The pressure proved overwhelming. In September 1877 Conrad Poppenhusen decided to call a halt to the continuous and fantastic financial drains made upon his private purse because of the failure of the various railroads to earn running expenses. He began by filing judgments against the Southern R.R. for $374,307 and against the North Side for $410,000 representing money loaned to both these roads plus interest. Since Conrad owned nearly all the stock of both roads, he was, in effect, obtaining a judgment against himself, but it was the only way to force the reorganization and to put a stop to further financial demands.
When the courts investigated the financial structure of the two roads, a bewildering tangle of complicated financial transactions was uncovered, in which the four main railroads and their subsidiaries were closely interrelated. It developed that the strain of raising money to keep the roads solvent had been so great that not only the underlying mortgages of the different roads, but even the personal property of the Poppenhusen family, had gradually been signed over to different creditors, the chief of whom was the great banking house of Drexel, Morgan & Co. of Philadelphia. Up until 1873 Conrad Poppenhusen was worth perhaps five to six million dollars. He had founded the rubber works at College Point, the fountainhead of his wealth, and had developed almost single-handed the surrounding village, endowing it with schools, streets, the Institute and countless public improvements. He built homes for the mechanics and laborers and magnificent homes for himself and his three sons. In 1868 he resolved to connect College Point with the outside world by building a railroad, and thus he gradually became involved in the railroading business. Besides his vast holdings in College Point real estate, he invested heavily in land along the line of the Central R.R., the largest purchase being the Creedmoor rifle range.
The first disappointment had been the Central R.R. which, despite the best efforts, failed to earn its running expenses resulting in a loss of two to three million dollars. The next blow had been the inroads of the White Line; up to that time the North Side system had paid very well, but now it fell behind $150,000 to $200,000 a year. Mr. Poppenhusen never allowed the reputation of his roads to suffer. He met every obligation out of his own money. When he purchased the Southern R.R., he incurred further huge losses in his zeal to bring that road up to the standards of the rest of the system. To his great disappointment and surprise, the Southern also failed to earn its running expenses. When Mr. Poppenhusen purchased the Long Island, he increased the service on all the roads and failed to lop off duplicate trackage. The number of trains was at no time justified by the traffic and this involved further losses.
The prospect of ruin drove Mr. Poppenhusen to Germany every year to raise money, while his son Adolf was left in charge of financial matters with power of attorney. Adolf raised large sums by the assignment of mortgages, and this was used to meet the paper already afloat. Both Conrad and Adolf began to assign mortgages even on their own real estate holdings in College Point, and friends and neighbors were prevailed upon to accept the Poppenhusen holdings. So it came about that Hermann Boker, the hardware wholesale dealer; Hermann Funke, Boker's wealthy general manager; the firm of Victor & Achelis, dry goods importers; William Pauly, superintendent of the hard rubber comb department; Frederick Koenig, brother-in-law of Conrad, and others of the College Point aristocracy became creditors of the Poppenhusens. Even Conrad's sister, Caroline C., and Alfred T. and Hermann C., his two sons, pledged their real estate holdings to help their father.
In the end it was all in vain. It was perhaps the Central R.R. that really dragged down the whole system by superimposing the final crushing burden. The Central touched only three villages of importance, Flushing, Hempstead and Babylon, and all three were already served by rival roads. Even Garden City, the village for which the road had been designed and built, contributed nothing. The place had no inhabitants at all until the spring of 1874, when Stewart felt himself ready to open the hotel and rent some of the houses, and thereafter there were almost no year-round inhabitants. The road had been built to the finest standards, using the best Prussian steel, and the rolling stock was possibly the best in the country, yet the territory served was a revenue vacuum.
When Conrad Poppenhusen filed his judgment against the Southern and the North Side in September 1877, his creditors realized that the family fortune was gone at last. Drexel, Morgan & Co. and several smaller banks immediately filed as preferential creditors, and when Conrad realized that these might very well shut out the equally valid claims of his relatives and friends, he went into voluntary bankruptcy, and threw the whole matter into the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy courts. When the court opened hearings in November, it developed that there were only twenty-six creditors in all, and that only six of these had large claims:
| Drexel, Morgan & Co. | $1,214,900 |
| Commerz und Disconto Bank, Hamburg | 865,000 |
| Adolf Poppenhusen | 466,283 |
| Knoblauch & Lichtenstein of 29 William Street, New York, brokers | 318,000 |
| Hermann Watjen of Bremen | 230,000 |
| Frederick Koenig of Bonn | 140,000 |
Conrad's sole assets were two and a half million in notes made to the Long Island R.R. and almost four million in stock and bonds; of these nearly one million had already been pledged to Drexel, Morgan & Co. What the remaining securities would bring on the market was anybody's guess.
It was remarkable that both the press and his own creditors showed no rancor whatever against Conrad Poppenhusen. His prestige was so great and his personal nobility and utter honesty so universally respected, his public and private acts of beneficence and his public spirit so often demonstrated that his present fall excited nothing but compassion. His business acumen and patient industry had brought him to the top and it was sad to see the accumulation of thirty years of effort swept away, leaving him penniless in his old age.
In October 1877 the court, at the request of the creditors, placed the whole railroad system in receivership; since Drexel, Morgan & Co. were the major creditors of the road, the court acceded to their nominee for the post of receiver, Colonel Thomas R. Sharpe. He was appointed on October 23 and took possession October 26. Sharpe had had railroad experience in pre-Civil War days in the South and had held responsible positions in the Railroad Department of the Confederate Government. After the war he rose to the highest levels in the Baltimore & Ohio R.R., a Drexel, Morgan property, and the banking house, in sending him to Long Island, felt that their investment would not only be protected but even enhanced through his skill and experience.
Their confidence was not misplaced. Sharpe took the ailing railroad into his strong hands and infused some of his own energy and competence into the management of the road. He traveled continually over the road, shrewdly noting weaknesses and areas susceptible of improvement. Like a wise man, he made no sudden radical changes on the road during the 1878 season, contenting himself with improving the service and attracting the maximum patronage at a minimum of operating expense. To assist him, he brought from the Baltimore & Ohio another veteran railroader, Samuel Spencer, who was appointed to the post of superintendent. Both men took up quarters in the hotel at Garden City, a village that has since become the traditional residence for successive presidents of the road.
Within a month of his appointment, Sharpe faced a near strike of the employees on the road. The men were two months in arrears on their wages and were getting understandably restive. Sharpe summoned their leaders and promised to get the court to release funds for their wages, which was done. Operating economies were made immediately, the advent of the winter season cushioning the effects of this move. Twenty of the locomotives were laid up for repairs, twenty fewer trains were run, and 150 employees including conductors, ticket agents, firemen, brakemen and switchmen were laid off.
Savings were made in track mileage as well. The Central Road between Garden City and Babylon was abandoned completely, since it ran through empty territory, but not torn up. The Long Island R.R. line to Hunter's Point was reduced to freight operation only for the winter. The receiver also terminated all service on the Grinnell Branch or Woodside Branch of the Flushing & North Side R.R. Since all the leases of the separate roads to the Long Island R.R. had been cancelled by the court, Sharpe was required to operate each of the railroads separately and keep separate accounts, and the former joint timetable pooling all the schedules was no longer issued.
In an unusual bid for public support, Sharpe asked the advice of employees and patrons of the road as to the scheduling of trains, so as best to accommodate the public and expressed his desire to meet their wishes and requirements and assure their comfort and convenience. In February he issued a circular to the farmers of the island offering them special facilities and cheap rates; if desired, trains would even stop between stations and pick up and drop off freight. On April 1, 1878, cheap new freight tariffs were issued, plus reduced rates for single excursion and commutation tickets. During March the first known "fisherman's special" was operated and a fish freight established to the east end. Because of the low rates, only 27¢ per 100 pounds to New York and per 100 pounds for delivery, large quantities of flatfish and flounders were shipped to market from Sag Harbor.
During the spring season service was speeded up appreciably by the introduction of fast expresses on the Hempstead and Port Jefferson Branches, twenty minutes or more being cut from the running time. Many stations originating light traffic were reduced to way stations where trains stopped only on signal. The Rockaway travel to the beach was pushed as never before; trains ran every Wednesday and Saturday from Whitestone via Winfield; on Tuesdays from Glen Cove via Rockaway Junction; on Thursdays from Port Jefferson via Rockaway Junction, and on Fridays from Patchogue via Valley Stream. The round trip rate for all these was only 75¢.
Because of the increased traffic, Sharpe was forced to rebuild the Hunter's Point terminus of the Long Island R.R. On May 27, 1878, the old Flushing & North Side depot was vacated and all the trains used the Long Island depot. The old buildings were then used for a freight depot and were slated in time to be razed. Between May 1–26, 1878, Receiver Sharpe completed another important track connection, this time at Floral Park, between the Long Island track and the Central R.R. track. The old Central track crossed the Long Island on an iron bridge and then ran east on an embankment through Floral Park. The connection was accomplished by a long gradual curve almost half a mile long built at grade level. With this improvement which was placed in service on May 27, 1878, the portion of the Central R.R. between Garden City and Floral Park was used as the main line to Hempstead. In mid-June a second track connection at Floral Park was completed enabling Long Island R.R. trains from Hunter's Point and Brooklyn to turn north onto the Central track to reach Creedmoor.
During the month of April 1878 Mr. Sharpe tore up the old Long Island R.R. track in Main Street, Hempstead, which had lain disused for two years. In removing the platform a young bonanza was found in the shape of stray pennies and other small coins which had fallen through the planks over the past thirty years.
The spring of 1878 marked the retirement of the Poppenhusens from the active management of the railroad, and in a sense, the end of our story. Drexel, Morgan & Co., who owned all the stock as collateral, voted it to install all their own men, and of the former officers, only Poppenhusen's old counsel, Elizur B. Hinsdale, remained on the board, this time as counsel to the receiver.
The new year 1879 signalled the end of the once proud Central R.R., opened with such eclat only six short years before. In February 1879 Mrs. Cornelia Stewart sued Receiver Sharpe for failure to pay rental on the portion of the Stewart road within the limits of the Stewart estate, (New Hyde Park to Bethpage), as required by the successive leases of 1873, 1874, and 1876. The receiver in rebuttal admitted the lease of 1873 and 1874 but pointed out that the Long Island R.R. was only an undertenant, the Central being leased directly to the Flushing & North Side, and passing to the Long Island R.R. in 1876 merely as an appendage of the North Side system. If pressed for payment of a large rental, Mr. Sharpe informed Mrs. Stewart that he would abandon operation of her road and leave her with a worthless and inoperable section of track without engines or cars, and unneeded by the Long Island R.R. Mrs. Stewart perceived the truth of this argument, and since the destiny of her husband's Garden City was involved, she accepted a compromise. In return for forfeiting her claim for $90,000 for rental of the Stewart road, Sharpe agreed to run at least seven trains each way daily through Garden City.
Convinced that the Central R.R. could not, and never would, earn its expenses, Col. Sharpe, as part of his economy drive, announced the abandonment of another large slice of the road, this time from Central Junction in Flushing to Creedmoor as of May 1, 1879. Then, on July 9, 1879, the million-dollar first mortgage on the Central was foreclosed, with interest since March 1877. The company's entire property was put up for sale, excepting the sixteen miles of the Stewart-owned portion, the lease of which was to go with the sale. As might be expected, the sole bidders at the sale were two agents of Drexel, Morgan & Co., who bid in the property for $50,000, part of which was payable in the bonds and coupons of the road, and the majority of which they already owned. In mid-October Receiver Sharpe notified the residents along the route that the rails would be torn up and all the depots and trackwalkers' houses removed. This action destroyed about five miles of the old Central right-of-way; the little one-mile stub north of the Long Island R.R. main line track that terminated at Creedmoor was left intact because of heavy annual military traffic to the Rifle Range. All that was now operated of the former extensive Central road was the stretch from Floral Park to Garden City and the branch into Hempstead; sixteen miles of road eastward to Babylon lay unused and weedgrown, but physically intact.
We must now turn our attention to the North Side road, set adrift to get along as best it could after the dissolution of the system by the courts. The North Shore section, extending from Flushing to Great Neck, built as a separate road in 1866, and operated all these years by the Flushing & North Side under lease, was foreclosed by the bondholders in September 1880, and Thomas Messenger, president of the Queens County Bank in Flushing, was appointed receiver for the road, taking possession as of December 1. Three months later the Flushing & North Side R.R. was itself foreclosed and sold at auction December 11, 1880. Again, predictably, the road was bought in by Drexel, Morgan & Co.
Meanwhile, other important changes were taking place on the Long Island R.R. itself. Drexel, Morgan & Co. was approached by a syndicate of bankers headed by Austin Corbin, owner of the hotels and railroad at Manhattan Beach, with an offer to buy out the Long Island R.R. and all its branches. During the year 1880 negotiations were perfected, and on January 1, 1881, Austin Corbin entered into possession of the Long Island R.R. system, supplanting Thomas R. Sharpe, the receiver.
Corbin immediately reorganized the old North Sideline and re-incorporated it as the Long Island City & Flushing R.R. Co. on March 21, 1881. The new road was then promptly leased in August to the Long Island R.R. for a period of fifty years; this was a necessary move, for the North Side R.R. owned no rolling stock of its own and logically was a natural part of the Long Island R.R. system.
When Austin Corbin took possession of the North Side road, he found himself in the peculiar position of operating trains not only from Long Island City to Flushing, but also over the North Shore R.R. to Great Neck as well, a section of railroad he neither owned nor leased and with whose receiver he had no operating agreement. He therefore sent a communication to the North Shore R.R.s receiver, Thomas Messenger, informing him that after August 14, 1881, he would no longer operate trains over his road. Mr. Messenger was in a bad position; he owned no rolling stock whatever, and the physical condition of his road was chronically far below standard. He appealed to Mr. Corbin to continue the old arrangement, now sanctified by years of custom, and reminded him of the hardships that would result for the residents of Bayside, Little Neck and Great Neck. Reluctantly, Mr. Corbin advanced the date to August 20 on condition that Mr. Messenger would undertake immediate and extensive repairs to the roadbed.
The bondholders of the North Shore road, faced with the prospect of an assessment for repairs, refused to do anything, and instead charged that no proper accounting had been made to them during Sharpe's receivership and that Corbin was stopping the trains solely to depreciate the property, with a view of becoming its owner at a nominal fee. Corbin refused to make any new concessions and on August 20, 1881, the trains stopped running. This created a small complication at Flushing. The Main Street depot now became a stub terminal and it soon became necessary to run shuttle trains between here and Whitestone Junction on the meadows to serve the people of Flushing.
The residents of Bayside, furious at being forced to rely on stagecoaches to reach Flushing, got an order from the courts directing Messenger to issue certificates to raise funds to repair the road and reopen it immediately as far as Bayside, using Long Island R.R. equipment. Operation beyond this point would involve use of the Little Neck trestle and draw which was considered in dangerous condition, but even Corbin conceded that the track to Bayside was in good repair. Corbin refused to loan the rolling stock unless protected against loss by accident.
An accommodation was finally reached by the two receivers under pressure from the courts. A group of public-spirited citizens executed to the Long Island R.R. a bond of $10,000 for the security of the Long Island R.R. rolling stock, and on Saturday, September 24, 1881, train service was resumed to Bayside after a suspension of five weeks. The effects had been already noticeable; tourists cut short their stay and business men their residences at country seats. Surveyors were dispatched over the road on October 4 to ascertain what repairs were necessary to open the remainder of the line. Again a bond was privately executed to the Long Island R.R. to guarantee the safety of the trains on the remainder of the line to Great Neck, but Messenger made no move to operate. The residents went into court and secured a peremptory order, requiring Messenger to show cause why he should not be removed from his office or be punished for not complying with the order of the court. His health impaired by all this unaccustomed turmoil and pressure from all sides, Messenger sickened and died on October 18, 1881.
The court, which had meantime ordered the bankrupt road to be sold, held a sale on October 22, 1881, and the road was knocked down to the bondholders for $50,000. To everyone's surprise and contrary to rumor, Austin Corbin made no move to purchase the North Shore road. The trustees for the bondholders undertook the repair and management of the road and in January, 1882, reported to the court. The road to Bayside had been operated from September 17 to October 9, 1881, at a loss of over $1,300, and for the entire three months previously to December 27, at a loss of $3,500. The trustees asked that the persons who had directed the road to be run should indemnify them against future loss and pay the indebtedness. A further disaster occurred on March 16, 1882, when the Little Neck drawbridge collapsed into the water, ending all traffic on the road. It was discovered that the A-shaped frame which supported the bridge, had given way while the bridge tender was in the act of opening the draw for a boat, and the bridge had completely collapsed. When the court and the new receiver, Thomas H. Messenger Jr., heard of this blow, the court instructed Messenger to discontinue the running of trains on and after March 31, 1882.
Faced with the prospect of constant future expenses to keep the road running, and always at a loss, the trustees met and resolved to salvage whatever they could on their investment by selling it to the Long Island R.R. After considerable dickering on the price, Austin Corbin was at last induced to buy out the derelict road in April, 1882. Thus, after fifteen years of semi-independent existence, the corporate identity of the North Shore R.R. was extinguished. Two years later, Corbin quietly conveyed the old North Shore to the Long Island City & Flushing on October 2, 1884, and the Long Island City & Flushing itself was merged into the Long Island R.R. on April 2, 1889. In this way the whole rail empire of the Poppenhusens became submerged in the Long Island R.R.
The passage of seventy-five years has done little to alter the situation until the mid-Thirties. Most of the old Flushing & North Side R.R. is still operated today in full from Long Island City to Great Neck, with a later extension to Port Washington, but the competition of the subway with its five-cent fare forced the disappearance during the depression of the Whitestone Branch on February 15, 1932. The Central R.R. between Flushing and Creedmoor was never revived. A valiant attempt was made to re-activate the line in 1914–1916, but this was defeated by the increasing cost of materials in World War I and a franchise dispute with New York City. Part of the segment between Creedmoor and Floral Park still remains today years after the abandonment of the Rifle Range in 1910. Of late years the spur serves largely to bring coal to the State asylum and to service one or two coal yards. In 1949 the track was torn up between Hillside Avenue and Winchester Boulevard for a garden apartment development, and in 1955–56, houses were built on the right-of-way for two or three blocks east of Winchester Boulevard. The remainder seems destined to last for the immediate future.
The Central road inside Garden City was finally sold outright by the Stewart heirs to the Long Island R.R. in 1893, terminating the former annual leasing arrangement. During the 80's and 90's and up to about 1898, all the fast trains to points beyond Babylon ran via the Central R.R. Then, possibly as an economy measure, this routing ceased and the Central Extension was allowed to run down. Nevertheless, it was kept in skeletal repair for decades, altho lightly used. Regular local freight service (carload lots of manure, potatoes, etc.) continued until at least the mid 1920's. In 1908 the railroad used five miles of the plains section as an experimental line to test out various types of catenary construction, and built mock tunnels, etc., to measure clearances in connection with the building of the Pennsylvania tunnels. Thereafter, the lonesome stretch again fell into disuse.
In 1915 the Long Island Rail Road instituted trolley service over the short stretch between Garden City station and Clinton Road, where a new brick station had been erected, in connection with the residential development of that area. With the outbreak of World War I in 1917 and the establishment of Mitchel Field and the Rainbow Division encampment east of Clinton Road, the trolley service was extended to the field and then very shortly afterwards to "Salisbury Plains" at Merrick Avenue. Surprisingly, this trolley operation lingered on until 1933; providing a shuttle service for the residents of eastern Garden City, and for visitors to the Meadowbrook Hunt Club and the Salisbury Golf Course. Occasionally, special multiple-unit electric trains ran to Meadowbrook during the International Polo Matches.
Shuttle passenger service between Garden City and Salisbury continued with M. U. electric trains during the 19305; during World War II the service operated to Mitchel Field and lasted until May 15, 1953. The year 1961 saw the final abandonment of passenger service on the Central Extension, when the L.I.R.R. withdrew the Roosevelt Raceway Specials because of the refusal of the Raceway officials to contribute to the cost of the service.
In 1925 the disused Central Extension between Farmingdale and Babylon was extensively overhauled for the use of through trains to Babylon and points east, this change being necessitated by the electrification of the Montauk Division. At the same time, however, this rehabilitated stretch was linked up to the Main Line at Farmingdale (Bethpage Junction) and the plains section cut back to Stewart Avenue, Plainedge. Once this track connection was broken, the remainder of the Central Extension on the plains was doomed.
During World War II the Salvage Division of the War Production Board considered tearing up the long disused and weed-grown plains track, and asked the LIRR to give up the unused rails. To the surprise of the railroad it was discovered that the rails were already gone, and the railroad was accused of abandoning without permission. An investigation disclosed that the rails had, in reality, been stolen by a scrap dealer living near the right-of-way, who claimed that someone had sold him the rails. In his own defense he testified that he had assumed the seller was an authorized representative of the railroad. Since no additional rails were available in wartime to re-lay the road, and there being no need for service, the Long Island applied to the Office of Defense Transportation and the regulatory bodies for post de facto permission, to abandon, which was granted.
In 1946, in order to bring building materials to the huge new Levittown development, the rails were re-laid eastward to a point just east of the Wantagh Parkway, where a temporary freight terminal was set up. The track crossed the parkway at grade and trains were flagged across. As soon as Levittown was completed, the track was cut back to the rear of the Meadowbrook Hospital, where coal was occasionally hauled in. Finally, the opening of the Meadowbrook Parkway and the laying out of Salisbury Park by the county in the late 1950's further cut the track back to the present Roosevelt Raceway terminus. A line of high tension wires still marks the old right-of-way all the way to Bethpage. Thus, after almost a century roughly half the old Central Railroad trackage has disappeared, but the other half still forms an indispensable part of the present Long Island Rail Road, a living memorial to the energy and vision of those two great Long Islanders, Alexander T. Stewart and Conrad Poppenhusen.