Lake Shore Railroad

“ West Shore Railroad.—The tourist will see at this point, on the left bank of the river, the tunnel whereby the "West Shore" finds egress from the mountains. The traveler over this railway, on emerging from the quiet valley west of the Palisades, comes upon a sudden vision of beauty unrivaled in any land. The broad river seems like a great inland lake; and the height of the tunnel [page 77] above the silver bay gives to the panoramic landscape a wondrous charm. ”

“ It is also plain that the defendant railroad company, and such of its trains as were engaged in interstate commerce are within the scope and subject to the regulations contained in the 'act to regulate commerce,' approved February 4, 1887, creating the interstate commerce commission.
The theory on which passenger trains to traverse several states or the entire continent are prepared is necessarily and widely different from that followed in making up ordinary trains to do a wayside business. There must be provision for sleeping at night and for furnishing meals. ”

“ In pursuance of this power, congress, on June 15, 1866, enacted that 'every railroad company in the United States, whose road is operated by steam, its successors and assigns, is hereby authorized to carry upon and over its road, boats, bridges and ferries, all passengers, troops, government supplies, mails, freight and property on their way from any state to another state, and to receive compensation therefor, and to connect with roads of other states so as to form continuous lines for the transportation of the same to the place of destination.' Rev. ”

“ Thereafter the Illinois Central Railroad Company put on a daily fast-mail train, to gun from Chicago to New Orleans, carrying passengers as well as the United States mail, not going to or stopping at its station in Cairo, but local trains adequate to afford accommodations for passengers to or from Cairo were run daily on that part of the railroad between the bridge junction and Cairo. ”

“ The Lake Shore Route—selected by the Government to run the famous Fast Mail Trains—is the only double track line between Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, and Boston.—During the existence of the White City, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Co. placed in service special trains for the purpose of facilitating railway transportation between the eastern cities and the "Queen of the West." ”

“ Like the Pennsylvania, that railroad thought a little time ago that with its four tracks it might move all civilization. Its acquisition of the bankrupt West Shore Railroad in the eighties gave it two extra tracks across New York State that for a long time were carried on the company’s books as deadwood. Now they are filled with freight operation and bringing in a healthy return to their owners. The growing land is always catching up to its new railroad facilities, no matter how rapidly they may be constructed. ”

“ Road machinery carried on the train was explained by men frequently sent along for this purpose by the manufacturers who had donated its use or by engineers and others in [141] charge. Short sections of road were graded and stoned—“object lesson roads were built.” Similar trains were run over the Lake Shore Road, and later over the Southern Railway. The latter at a cost of about $80,000; the road equipped the train, fed the men and furnished Pullman cars for sleeping accommodations. The last such train was over the Northern Pacific. ”

“ At the beginning only one train ran per day in each direction, leaving Great Neck at 7:30 A.M. and Hunter's Point at 4 P.M. The maiden trip was made so quietly that the conductor had to dismount from the cars in the vicinity of 207th Street, Bayside, and let down the bars in the fence separating the Thomas C. Bell and Robert M. Bell farms, an action which moved the local paper to comment embarrassedly: "To get out and let down the bars must not be considered a characteristic of railroading on Long Island. As soon as the trains run regularly, the bars will be kept down." ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the Flushing R.R. project came up, therefore, about 1850, the North Shore villages saw in it the possibility of realizing their dream of railroad connection with the outside world. It is difficult for us today to realize the deep isolation of these rural communities before the coming of the railroad. Life in these hamlets was static and contact with the outside world limited to stage coach accommodation once or twice a week. ”

“ The initial meeting of the Board of Directors was held on July 16, and at a subsequent meeting held August 29, 1863, a committee was appointed with power to obtain a new survey of the route with maps of the same, and estimates of the cost of the proposed road. The legal organization of the company was perfected on September 23, 1863. The road was to be known as the "North Shore R. R. Company" and its backers included many of the most prominent names in North Hempstead Town, such as Messenger, Mitchell, Willets, Bell, Mott and Udall. ”

“ While the heavy work of excavation was progressing at Rocky Hill, materials for track laying, etc., were beginning to arrive. In the third week of April, railroad ties by the schooner load began arriving at Hunter's Point. In June, the steamboat Artisan began unloading both ties and rails, the latter wrought iron with steel facing. By the end of June thousands of ties and thousands of steel rails lay stacked on the piers with more cargo constantly arriving. ”

“ Four lines of railway leading westward from Niagara, place Buffalo and Detroit en rapport with each other, through their connecting steel rails, and compete for the patronage of the traveler. In addition to this, there are not less than two lines by water, thus affording the tourist—if he develops a desire to tempt the waves of Old Erie—ample scope for his choice. The Lake Shore route takes one through a continuous succession of ever-changing landscapes on the southern shore of Lake Erie, and skirts the two great States of Ohio and Pennsylvania before reaching Michigan. ”

“ The West Shore is one of the great tragedies in American railroading. Built in the early eighties from Weehawken (opposite New York City) to Buffalo, it had apparently no greater object than to parallel closely the New York Central and to attempt to take away from the older road some of the fine business it had held for many years. After bitter rate-war, the New York Central, with all the resources and the ability of the Vanderbilts behind it, won decisively, and bought its new rival for a song. ”

“ When, in August, 1870, the company located its proposed general route, and when its map of such location was approved by the Secretary of the Interior, showing its eastern terminus to be in Wisconsin, it became obligatory on the company to comply with the condition imposed, in that event, to construct a branch line to Lake Superior within the limits of Minnesota, and hence the agreement with the Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad Company. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The extreme elevation of the present road at the summit of the range (7000 feet) is to be diminished by a lengthy tunnel. Other work of construction soon to be brought to completion is the extension of the Northwestern Pacific, a coast road north from San Francisco Bay to Eureka on Humboldt Bay, and the extension of the Ocean Shore Railway south along the coast to Santa Cruz. "The records of the State Railroad Commission show in 1909 a total mileage in the state of 6744.54 miles. ”

“ Across the river on the Jersey Shore are seen extensive docks of great railways, with elevators and stations that seem like "knotted ends" of vast railway lines, lest they might forsooth, untwist and become irrecoverably tangled in approaching the Metropolis. Prominent among these are the Pennsylvania Railroad for the South and West; the Erie Railway, the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, and to the North above Hoboken the West Shore, serving also as starting point for the New York, Ontario and Western. ”

“ From Cape Charles, guarding the northern entrance to the Bay, extends northward the well-known peninsula of the "Eastern Shore," a land of market gardens, strawberries and peaches, which feeds the Northern cities, and having its railroad, a part of the Pennsylvania system, running for miles over the level surface in a flat country, which enabled the builders to lay a mathematically straight pair of rails for nearly ninety miles, said to be the longest railway tangent in existence. ”

“ At this time there was no such thing as a steam locomotive in use in the United States. The first ever used here for practical purposes was built in England and brought to New York city in 1829, and in August of that year made a trial trip on the rails of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. The experiment was a failure; and for several years horses were the only motive power in use on the railroads. In 1830, however, the South Carolina Railroad having finished six miles of its road, had a locomotive built in New York city, and in January, 1831, placed it on the tracks at Charleston. ”

“ There is not a State north of the Ohio9 River and east of the Rocky Mountains which is not affected by their cheap transportation, and the day is not distant when hundreds of millions of bushels of grain raised in the Canadian west will go to the seaboard by way of the lake and canal route. At the present time there are about two hundred and forty thousand miles of railroad in the United States, constructed and equipped at a cost of more than thirteen billion dollars; yet, on the basis of ton miles, the traffic on the Lakes will in 1909 be one sixth as great as on all the roads in the country. ”

“ Even a small road, like the Algomah Central, has its own freight and passenger steamboats running south from the Soo as far as Cleveland, Ohio. It is a pretty poor line with Great Lakes terminals that cannot boast some sort of steamship service of its own.
In the development of the coastwise and the inland waterways of the United States, the railroad may be doing the nation a far greater service than it imagines. For the general trend of railroad expansion in the country to-day seems to be toward a development of the auxiliary water-routes rather than toward their curtailment. ”

“ In the absence of companies, the States are ready to adopt the most extensive schemes of public works; for the American of the West is not a whit behind the American of the East in enterprise. At present, I know of but a single railroad actually in process of construction beyond the [Pg 250] Ohio, and that does not seem to be pushed forward with much activity; it is the Mad River railroad, which is to extend from Dayton, on the Miami canal, to Sandusky, on the bay of that name in Lake Erie; the length will be 153 miles. ”

“ It was not until 1836, when work was begun on the Erie Railroad, that a plan was adopted for a single line reaching several hundred miles from an obvious point, such as New York, to an obvious destination, such as Lake Erie. Even then a few farsighted men could foresee the day when the railroad train would cross the plains and the Rockies and link the Atlantic and the Pacific. Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thorpe wrote to Shearer and Radway, whom he had retained, that he would arrive on Saturday noon, and suggested that the two begin to look about for men. Friday, himself, Wallace Carpenter, Elizabeth Carpenter, Morton, Helen Thorpe, and Hilda Farrand boarded the north-bound train.
Chapter LX
The train of the South Shore Railroad shot its way across the broad reaches of the northern peninsula. On either side of the right-of-way lay mystery in the shape of thickets so dense and overgrown that the eye could penetrate them but a few feet at most. Beyond them stood the forests. ”