New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad

“ The New Haven had physical clearance problems and equipment shortages which prevented its participation in this type of freight transportation, and during the first two months that the trailer-on-flatcar rates were in effect on competing railroads, the New Haven lost the equivalent of more than 350 cars of traffic from Boston to St. ”

“ Practically everywhere the railroad was an individual enterprise; the builders had no further conception of it than as a line connecting two given points usually a short distance apart. The roads of those days began anywhere and ended almost anywhere. A few miles of iron rail connected Albany and Schenectady. There was a road from Hartford to New Haven, but there was none from New Haven to New York. A line connected Philadelphia with Columbia; Baltimore had a road to Washington ”

“ Railroad engineers show no hesitancy in saying that eight-track trunks will be needed out of New York in every direction within a dozen years. The Harlem River branch of the New Haven, once it is provided with a suitable terminal, will become a great artery of suburban traffic. It will give trunk capacity to make possible the development of a great new area lying just inland from the Sound, and yet within from 40 to 50 miles of New York City. ”

“ Every large city has become, in a sense, a bottle-neck for the important railroads that pierce it. In some cases like Chicago or St. Louis or Kansas City or Indianapolis, the situation has been solved by the creation of belt-line freight railroads partly or entirely encircling the town. At Buffalo, the New York Central lines have built a connecting line to enable through traffic to escape the congestion of city yards and terminals, while at New Haven, the road of the same name has recently spent several million dollars in enlarging its narrow throat in the middle of the town. ”

“ DP The Interstate Commerce Commission has ordered intrastate commuters' fares of the New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company increased in New York to the level of interstate commuters' fares. The Commission found that the transportation conditions surrounding intrastate trains were substantially similar to those surrounding interstate trains. Interstate fares were determined to be reasonable. But present intrastate fares were found not to be producing a reasonable return on investment. ”

“ As I have already said in this book, railroad competition may be the industrial necessity, nay even the very breath of commercial life, to such fine manufacturing towns as Rochester or Akron or Dayton or Grand Rapids, but how about such fine manufacturing towns as Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, and Providence? Are they not also entitled to the breath of commercial life? Yet to give these four big typical New England towns railroad competition would mean the complete dismemberment of the compact New Haven system—an almost utter impossibility. ”

“ I wished to reside within a few hours of New York. I had never seen more delightful locations than there are upon the borders of Long Island Sound, between New Rochelle, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut; and my attention was therefore turned in that direction. Bridgeport seemed to be about the proper distance from the great metropolis. It is pleasantly situated at the terminus of two railroads, which traverse the fertile valleys of the Naugatuck and Housatonic rivers. The New York and New Haven Railroad runs through the city, and there is also daily steamboat communication with New York. ”

“ The New Haven monopoly in New England might be managed rather in the interest of New York than of the port of Boston. The Illinois Central, once devoted whole-heartedly to the upbuilding of New Orleans, must now, as a part of the Union Pacific system, comprehend San Francisco and even Savannah within the scope of its plans. New systems implied new traffic arrangements. Railroad policy must of necessity involve a choice, not between two evils, perhaps, but between a resultant good and a necessarily attendant evil. ”

“ The New Haven for the nonce may be failing to make a profit on its elaborately electrified main line between New York and New Haven, to the power-station of which it must haul coal a long way and over congested rail routes. But with that unseen power stretched further and further upon its lines I have no doubt that adequate transportation service, freight and passenger, can again be given to the communities which it serves. ”

“ At the base of the hill runs the New York and New Haven Railroad, with its iron horse and long trains of cars, carrying their wealth of freights and armies of passengers to all points in the East, while to the left lies the town of South Norwalk—the spires of its churches rising up into the blue sky, like monuments pointing heaven-ward—and whose beautiful and capacious school-houses are filled with the bright eyes and rosy faces of the youths who receive from competent teachers the lessons that will prove so valuable in the time to come. ”

“ It has grown to be one of the world’s great manufacturing centres. It abounds in factories. The wholesale houses, the stores, and other places of business handle huge stocks of goods, and the railroad facilities are limited. Every port should have a “belt line” railroad, that is, a railroad circling it about, crossing all the lines that come to it from any direction. With such a railroad, freight could be brought into the city by any line, turned over to the Belt Line, and switched to almost any of the industrial sections or quays. But New York has no such railroad. ”

“ The New York and New Haven Railroad Company never forgave me for thus securing a righteous law for the protection of its commuters. Even as lately as 1871, the venders of books on the trains were prohibited from selling to passengers this book which exposes their cupidity. A parallel railroad from New York to New Haven would be good paying stock, and would materially disturb, if not destroy, the present railroad and express monopolies. ”

“ Not only is the railroad service a vital part of the social organization, but its earning power as well affects a large and widely distributed number of investors. The number of security-holders of the New Haven and New England lines and associated properties is estimated at 60,000. The great majority of them live in New England. Of the stock in the New Haven road, 36 per cent is held in Massachusetts, and the stockholders in Massachusetts constitute 48 per cent of the total. Connecticut holds 19 per cent of the shares. New York 32 per cent, and Rhode Island 3 per cent. ”

“ There is not a railroader coming into the big passenger terminal—from either the New York Central or the New Haven system—who is not welcome to it, day or night. Engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen all come into its hospitable door after a long hard run to find the clean comfort of good meals, bath, comfortable beds, good fellowship awaiting them. There is the peculiar and the successful field of the railroad Y. M. C. A. ”

“ It makes a pleasant break in the day trip from the capital of New England to the capital of the United States, to spend an hour tramping up and down a broad ship’s deck, or dining in a roomy, sun-filled cabin, while New York itself is as completely ignored as any small way-station along the run. New Yorkers themselves have long since become too accustomed to seeing the long train ferried upon the water-way that separates the two greatest boroughs of the city, to give it more than passing thought. ”

“ The New Haven System is not a railroad, but an agglomeration of a railroad plus 121 separate corporations, control of which was acquired by the New Haven after that railroad attained its full growth of about 2000 miles of line. ”

“ The main line express trains of the New Haven between Boston and New York, either by the way of Springfield or by Providence, have not lost their excellence to-day, neither have the main line express trains of the Boston and Albany nor the Boston and Maine’s trains to Portland and points far beyond, although there are none too many of them and they are none too generous in their accommodations. It is in the branch line trains, just as in the branch line stations, that the New England passenger service has not progressed but has distinctly retrograded. ”

“ Here's eleven railroads reaching west to Buffalo, called the Central System. Here are others that go on to Chicago and others that run east to Boston. Here is the steamer line from New York to Albany, closed half the year. Here are two lines of railroad that run north from New York to the capital—the Harlem and the Hudson River. The Harlem road can be bought for less than six cents on the dollar. ”

“ The whole transportation to the rich placers of the Stanislaus, Mokelumne, Tuolumne, Merced, and Mariposa, as well as the famous mines of the Middle, North, and South Forks, Feather and Yuba rivers, must pass the new city. The great railroad, destined to connect the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi River, will undoubtedly terminate at New York, as it is in a direct line with the only pass in the mountains through which a railroad can reach the waters which empty into the Bay of San Francisco. ”

“ The other great and little railways, which bring and take goods and people to and from New York, all stop on the opposite shores of our harbor, in New Jersey, Staten Island, and Long Island. Since the cars of one railroad often have to go past the city upon the other roads, these "floats" are used to transport them around our island, so that goods from Boston or Sag Harbor, for instance, can be sent around New York to the tracks of the roads that will carry them to San Francisco without unloading or reloading. ”

“ In 1879 the road with its rolling stock, consisting of fifty-six locomotives, 180 passenger cars, and two freight cars, was leased to the Manhattan Elevated Railroad Company, which now has a complete monopoly of the elevated railroads of New York. ”

“ These elevated railroads are sufficiently high so as not to interfere with street traffic, stations are located every four or five blocks apart, there is little delay, and a passenger can ride from one end of the city to the other in a very short time. It is said that one million people ride daily on the elevated railroads of New York giving the company an income of $50,000 per day. The above photograph represents the railroad at Chatham Square, where it branches off into different directions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Answer.—The demand of the people living in the outskirts of New York City for more rapid transit than that furnished by the horse cars began to be answered in 1868, when an elevated railway extending a half-mile was constructed on Greenwich street as an experiment. Three years later the West Side Elevated Railroad Company obtained a charter, but before much could be accomplished it sold its rights to the New York Elevated Railroad Company, in 1872. The new organization proceeded rapidly to erect its roads, extending from the heart of the city to the suburbs. ”

“ And in that mental brilliancy it gave back to Boston its old railroad. As this is being written "Boston & Al [8] bany" is reappearing upon whole brigades of engines and regiments of freight and passenger cars. A friendly sentiment, reared in traditions, has not been slow to show its appreciation of the act of the railroad in New York. And the men in charge of the great consolidation of the other railroads east of the Hudson river have not been slow to follow in their action. They have announced that they plan to build their railroads into one great system called the "New England Lines." ”

“ It does not increase our revenues at so wonderful a pace, but it does increase in volume from 20 to 25 per cent a year; and think how that keeps us hustling, making facilities for it. There is not a railroad entering New York to-day that could not dismiss its passenger terminal problems to-morrow, if it were not for the Commuter. There is not a railroad coming into New York that could not handle all its through business in a train-house of from four to five tracks. ”

“ In 1815 the Fulton, the first steamboat on Long Island Sound, made its first trip from New York to New Haven. The second quarter of the 19th century was the period of development of railways and manufactures. The period since the Civil War has been marked by a diversification of industries. To that conflict New Haven contributed approximately $30,000,000, and 3000 men, 500 of whom were killed. From 1701 until 1873 New Haven was the joint capital (with Hartford) of Connecticut. New Haven was incorporated as a city in 1784 ”

“ An old man jumped off the train as it approached his house, and was severely injured. Thus, in 1842, chiefly through the exertions of Lemuel Pomeroy, the Western Railroad was completed, and trains ran from Albany to Boston. Several short local roads have since been constructed, which have done more to bind the county together, and have contributed greatly to its wealth and comfort. On the west the physical barriers were less difficult to surmount, and the advent of railroads has only diminished the inequality. New York is still the metropolis ”

“ By night, by day, when an imperial city throbs with the bustle of brisk endeavor, and still when it tries to snatch a few brief feeble hours of rest, in summer, in winter, when the two rivers and the great upper bay of New York harbor are alive with gay pleasure craft, and in the trying hours when a pilot’s path is fraught with the dangers of drifting ice and laid through gray blankets of mist, this great interchange of freight of every sort goes forth. ”