Rock Island Railroad

“ It stretches from Memphis, Tennessee, through the Indian Territory, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, to the border line of Texas, and furnishes a nearly direct line from those states to the Mississippi River; while a projected extension to New Mexico will connect with the Rock Island main lines to the southward, and make it a valuable link in the through route from El Paso to Memphis and Birmingham. The Rock Island paid $80 a share for the common stock and $60 for the preferred,660 and under the terms of the sale agreed to take at the same price all stock offered. ”

“ In some respects the history of each road considered is peculiar unto itself. The Reading had coal to sell, the Atchison did not. The Southern ran through a sparsely settled country, the Baltimore & Ohio through a thickly settled one. The Erie has never recovered from the campaigns of Gould, Drew, and Fisk from 1864–72, the Northern Pacific was not opened until 1883. In other respects, however, the roads have had much in common. Excepting only the Rock Island, each of them has found itself at one time or another unable to pay its debts, and has had to seek measures of relief. ”

“ We must not be blinded by the magnitude of the reported figures. Although $9,476,397 were carried to surplus in the year ending June 30, 1907, and $5,568,092 were paid out in dividends, these two items together comprise only about 13 per cent of gross income, and a bad year might readily see a decrease sufficient to sweep this margin away. Unlike the Union Pacific and the Northern Pacific, moreover, the Rock Island has not made consistently heavy improvement expenditures from income. Less than $40,000 was deducted by either the Frisco or the Rock Island & Pacific Railway in 1905 or in 1907 ”

“ The great increase in capitalization resting on the Rock Island system was accomplished mainly by an inflation of stock, not of mortgage bonds, and involved a comparatively slight increase in fixed charges; the Rock Island Company closely resembled other holding companies in its method of operation, and seemed likely to offer some facilities for the consolidation of competing lines ”

“ Gross earnings are $112,464,000 in 1907 as against $25,365,000 in 1901; net income $40,828,000 instead of $8,901,000; capitalization about $525,000,000 instead of $118,081,000. In fact, the very size of the system and the diverse nature of its interests make the economical management of the whole almost beyond the capacity of any one man. The Rock Island handles traffic from the West and South to Chicago, St. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In July the first steam shovel went to work and the second followed in August.
The operations at Rocky Hill were so spectacular that people came from miles around just to watch. One hundred men were constantly at work and locomotives with trains of cars moved up and down on each side of the summit. Two miles of trestle work were built, one mile on each side, to create a grade of precisely fifty feet to the mile. The cost of the machinery on the Rocky Hill section alone was $50,000 and the expense of furnishing the water needed for men and locomotives ran to $30 a day. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At 6:30 the next morning, Wednesday, January 8, 1873, while it was still dark, and without any festive ceremony whatever, the engine Farmingdale pulled out with one car and two passengers, marking the first regular passenger trip on the Central Railroad of Long Island. As it grew light and word spread through the sleeping village, more persons drifted through the snow down to the Central depot, and took their first ride on the new Stewart road. ”

“ On Monday, June 24, 1872, a construction train made the first through trip from Flushing to Garden City, testing the rails and bridges. All the communities along the line and indeed over the island eagerly looked forward to the opening of the new road with its superb roadbed, brand new equipment and shining promise. On Saturday, July 13, 1872, the crossing of the L.I.R.R. was made at Garden City without unpleasant incident, and the construction train was able to make the maiden trip the next day over the Central as far as Farmingdale. ”

“ The Southern RR stations at Locust Avenue, Berlin, Springfield and Ocean Point were closed. The Southern Railroad's line from Jamaica to Hunter's Point became the main line for passenger service since it was straighter and fully double tracked, while the old Long Island RR route via Winfield was relegated to freight service. At the Fresh Pond station a separate track was laid so as to render the route to Bushwick entirely independent of the main line. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mixed trains, usually avoided by all who are not compelled to use them, are really the best for seeing all the pleasant little by-places of the Garden Province; for while freight is being handled at each station, it is possible to alight and ramble a little in nearby luxurious paths that fringe the railroad along its whole extent. This applies not only to the route from Summerside to Tignish, but also to the whole railway system of the Island. As is perhaps generally known, the Prince Edward Island Railway is part of the extensive system known as the Canadian Government Railways. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In December 1870 surveyors mapped out a continuation of the line eastward from Hempstead across the Hempstead Plains to Breslau. In February 1871 another change of route was made on the western end of the railroad, the track being now scheduled to pass through Jamaica and terminate in Garden City. In East New York several farmers donated a right of way to the railroad, and by March the contract was let for grading and constructing the road to one Patrick Shields of Jamaica who immediately put a large force to work at three points, Flatbush, New Lots and Woodhaven. ”

“ The land at this point rises from forty to fifty feet above sea level to a mean elevation of 140 to 160 feet, much of it gravel of glacial origin. With the primitive earth-moving equipment of 1870 this ridge loomed as a formidable barrier to the railroad builders of that day. In June the contractors brought to the attack the most formidable artillery that had yet been seen on Long Island up to that date: two steam shovels, the first of their kind on Long Island, sixty dump cars, two locomotives and a portable track. It was planned to work at the Rocky Hill cut both day and night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Because the South Side terminal was at the north end of the village of Far Rockaway, passengers still had the long distance of a mile to walk to the bathing beach and had to compete for space with the boarders of the many hotels in the village. West of the present Beach Twentieth Street there were no houses or hotels, and the beach and sand dunes stretched for miles; it occurred to the railroad directors that simply by constructing a sweeping curve along the north and west of the village, they could have a terminus right at the water's edge with a beach of their own. ”

“ Both parties to the agreement set to work immediately to let contracts for building. John Kellum, Stewart's engineer, sent an order to the Prussian steel factories in Westphalia for 3,000 tons of steel rails, and gave to Mr. John C. Wright of Freeport the contract to grade the railroad right-of-way through the plains from Hyde Park to Farmingdale. The first ground was turned over in the Meadowbrook area east of Hempstead. A second group began work in the Hempstead Town cemetery grounds east of Franklin Avenue and along the present right-of-way in Garden City. ”

“ Jamaica to
The opening of the new road was acclaimed in all the Long Island newspapers and many persons turned out to see the new first-class locomotives and elegant passenger cars. A month before (September) the directors had succeeded in inducing Robert White, superintendent of the LIRR, to take over the same post on the South Side R.R. He was one of the most experienced railroad men available and brought to the road the energetic and competent management it needed.
On November 14, 1867 the South Side R.R. staged a formal grand opening of the completed road between Jamaica and Babylon. ”

“ Volume I of the Long Island Rail Road history presented the story of the South Side Railroad, one of the Long Island's early competitors. Volume II presented here tells the interesting story of the other great competitor that the Long Island faced in the post-Civil War period: the Flushing, North Shore & Central Railroad. As the title implies, this railroad was essentially a union of three originally separate roads; its history, in effect, is the story of the railroads that radiated from two centers: Flushing and Garden City. ”

“ Three new engines, the Farmingdale, the Babylon and the Garden City, arrived during 1872 and sixteen new and elegant passenger coaches were delivered for service. Similarly, work on the stations made progress. In June the Hinsdale and Creedmoor stations went up; in October the engine house at Hempstead was finished and work on the brick depot began. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So pleased were the residents of the town at having the trains before winter closed in that on Sunday the thirteenth, a large group of townsmen joined fifty of the railroad's employees in erecting and completing an engine house all in one day. Work necessarily came to a halt during the coldest winter months, but in March the railroad resumed work on the road, and pushed it as fast as the ground would allow. Finally, on or about April 10, 1869 the line was completed to Patchogue. ”