Railroad Sights of Long Island: Riverhead and Greenport

 Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead:

Although Riverhead can be taken into consideration the digital stop of Long Island, it became best the beginning of the at the start intended intermodal rail-and-sea hyperlink's traverse of the North Fork closer to the eventual pass-sound ferry connection.

Taking its earliest-settlement call of "Head of the River" or "River Head," the ultimately specified, unmarried-phrase "Riverhead," the ninth of Suffolk County's ten cities, turned into created out of the west end of Southold on March thirteen, 1792.

Thus separate and independent, it was injected with boom with the arrival of the railroad and the very station, built on July 29, 1844 and serving the South Ferry, Brooklyn, to Greenport line, changed into constructed on gift-day Railroad Avenue. Despite its through-reason, it channeled its own disembarking passenger to degree coaches, which introduced them to Quogue and different south island locations.

Eastbound trains served the metropolis on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, while westbound ones, again to Brooklyn, did so on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Mercantile, milling, and manufacturing, its conventional business undertakings, catered to a 1,600-sturdy population in 1875, the community boasting  grist mills, offices, 20 stores, three lodges, and 6 churches.

Replacing the original educate depot, which changed into transformed right into a home for railroad workers, a timber-framed one, designed via Charles Hallett and providing scalloped trim and difficult finials, was built west of Griffing Avenue between 1869 and 1870. This changed into subsequently changed with a third, this time incorporating brick in its construction, on June 2, 1910.

"In the early 1900s, the east was an area of rich potato farms in summer and deep snows in wintry weather," wrote Ron Ziel and George H. Foster in their book, "Steel Rails to the Sunrise: The Long Island Railroad" (Ameron House, 1965, p. 158).

"From the time of its attention that the original motive for its lifestyles had vanished with the building of the New Haven Railroad to Boston (fifty years in advance), the LIRR has performed a major role in growing the areas way out east," they persisted (p. 158). "... Business and civic businesses all over the island joined with prominent citizens, newspapers, and the railroad to sell tour and settlements on Long Island."

That improvement, however, turned into rarely fast and whilst rails had been later replaced through roads, the Long Island Railroad's re-invented, intermodal transportation reason had vanished, leaving the majority of its passengers to go back and forth to Manhattan for the duration of the mass morning exodus.

Indeed, by means of 1963, principal line provider east of Riverhead were decreased to a single every day passenger and three times-weekly freight run, using the tune initially laid for the rail-to-sea hyperlink inside the mid-19th century.

Today's high-stage concrete platform, which does not bear a single shoeprint on positive days and in positive seasons, was constructed among 1996 and 1997, however for rail fans, a number of its history has been preserved on the Railroad Museum of Long Island across from it.

"The records of Long Island can be traced in steel rails, which cross its varied landscape-from dark tunnels beneath New York City to the farms and sand dunes of the East End," in keeping with its internet site. "The Railroad Museum of Long Island strives to demonstrate this history thru interpretive displays from its archive of images and artifacts, and through the preservation and recovery of vintage railroad system at its two locations in Riverhead and Greenport, New York."

The former, inclusive of a 70-foot parcel of land now owned through the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but leased to the museum, once sported a pump residence, a water tower, and a turntable that changed into no longer dimensionally compatible with the bigger, greater effective locomotives acting during World War II. Cornerstone of the complex today is a constructing hailing from 1885 and used by the Corwin and Vail Lumber Yard, but now serving as the museum's traveller middle with a Lionel model railroad layout sporting Long Island Railroad coaches in diverse liveries, a cardboard and balsa timber replica of the Riverhead depot, which commemorates its a centesimal anniversary, and a present save.

Across from it's far the Lionel Visitors Center, featuring a multiple-track layout with a Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus display, a water tower that identifies the city as "Lionelville," and seventy two push-button activated add-ons from turning wind turbines to lighted control towers.

Outside are two different version railroads: the G-scale Freeman Railroad and the complex-circumnavigating and rideable, 1964-1965 World's Fair train.

Built with the aid of the Alan Herschel Company, the 16-gauge educate itself become an quintessential a part of the honest's Long Island Railroad Pavilion, and then it became used by Grumman Aerospace at its Calverton employer picnic, before being utilized by the village of Patchogue and finally being donated to the museum.

Since restored, its engine and 3 vehicles, sporting World's Fair livery and marketing, "Ride the Log Island. Travel smooth, your metal thruway to Fair Gateway," run on 670 toes of tune, commonly departing every 1/2 hour and making three circuits. Rides are covered with admission.

The crossing shanty subsequent to it, which turned into in the beginning placed in Innwood, Queens, and guarded guards from the weather, facilitated the guide reducing and raising of gates whilst trains handed to avoid pedestrian and vehicular movement. Riverhead reverted to an automated machine inside the early -Fifties.

The Railroad Museum of Long Island's steam and diesel locomotives and passenger and freight motors are various and historically full-size. Although some are displayed outside the present save, maximum are positioned throughout Griffing Avenue, parallel to presently active LIRR tracks and throughout from the present Riverhead Station.

The players inside the 1955 End of Steam Ceremony are on show here, although in varying levels of restoration.

Time, distance, and technology separated the steam locomotives from their passenger coaches greater than half of a century ago, however the museum reunited a number of them and they now stand only some yards from each other, albeit in static, however restoring states.

As one of the Pennsylvania Railroad's Class G-five "ten wheelers," engine #39, for example, become constructed in its Juniata shops in 1923, but its sturdy abilties, expressed through its traits, preferably provisioned it for each day, traumatic commuter line service: a 237,000-pound gross weight, a 2,178-hp cylinder capability, a 205-psi boiler strain, a 41,328-pound tractive attempt, and speeds among 70 and eighty five mph.

Primarily serving the Oyster Bay branch, it become the final steam engine to tour to Greenport, in June of 1955.

Releasing its railway vehicle to the palms of an RS-3 diesel locomotive, number 1556, for the duration of the End of Steam handoff in Hicksville, it relinquished an era. That engine, a 1,600-hp Class AGP-16msc, provisioned with a couple of unit speed manipulate and constructed by way of the American Locomotive Company, finally served the Long Island Railroad device for 22 years, whereafter it became purchased via the Gettysburg and Maryland Midland Railroad, and was ultimately acquired by the museum.

Interesting, however now not always associated with Long Island history, is the recently received Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal Railroad (BEDT) locomotive, offering a zero-6-zero wheel configuration. Constructed with the aid of H. K. Porter in 1923 for the Astoria Power and Light Company, it exceeded to several arms, consisting of the ones of the Fleischman's Yeast Company in Peekskill, New York; the Rail and Locomotive Company in Alabama; and ultimately, as of 1938, the Brooklyn East Terminal District Railway itself, which numbered it sixteen and supplied vehicle float (barge) provider from Brooklyn's waterfront to several Class 1 railways in Manhattan, the Bronx, and New Jersey.

As the remaining steam engine to operate both east of the Mississippi River and in New York City, it was no longer retired till October of 1963, or eight years after the Long Island Railroad discontinued its very own use of this generation.

Passenger vehicles are also well represented by using the museum.

Double-decker educate #2 hundred, for instance, carrying its Tuscan purple paint scheme, changed into the first such aluminum, dual-level vehicle. A joint mission between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), the a hundred and twenty-passenger experimental prototype, constructed in 1932, changed into an try and increase capacity without creating excessively long trains, and, because of its non-widespread popularity, appeared without control stands or traction motors. Designated Class T-62s in production shape, they accommodated 132.

A later, greater ubiquitous passenger car changed into the P72, of which there are  on show, carrying the Long Island Railroad's in advance Nordic blue and platinum mist paint scheme. Numbered 2923 and 2924, they have been a part of a 1954 order for 25 locomotive-pulled, a hundred and twenty-passenger commuter vehicles manufactured by way of Pullman Standard at its Osgood Bradley factory in Worcester, Massachusetts, initially performing with battery lights and steam heating, but in the end retrofitted with under-car diesel generator units that furnished energy for those utilities. Providing yeoman service for 44 years, they have been no longer retired until 1999.

The importance of the museum's pair is they both partook of the October 8, 1955 End of Steam rite in Hicksville: vehicle 2924 changed into pulled with the aid of engine 39 and accommodated a Boy Scout troop from Brooklyn, while automobile 2923 become in addition pulled through engine 35, but originated in the East End.

Uncoupled, the previous become reattached to diesel engine 1556, departing for Jamaica, even as the latter joined forces with 1555, leaving for Riverhead. Virtually arm-in-arm, the pair of now car-devoid locomotives rode into the steam generation's sunset, checking into their Morris Park retirement home.

Another massive pair of motors is the museum's  M1s displayed on the same song.

With eighty five-foot lengths, 10.6-foot widths, and 122-passenger capacities, these light-weight, more than one-unit commuter automobiles, constructed of stainless steel with rounded, fiberglass quit caps, featured 4 a hundred and sixty-hp General Electric 1255 A2 traction cars and automatic, region-factor sliding leaf doors. They had a four-foot, eight.5-inch song gauge and presented a maximum, 240-foot curve radius for coupled gadgets, and served as the edge to the electrified technology for the Long Island Railroad, as expressed by the public family members brochure entitled, "A New Generation in Rail Travel: Meet the Metropolitan," which promised that "a new technology in commuter transportation is launched on the Long Island Railroad."

"The sleek, chrome steel Metropolitan represents a brand new era in suburban rail service," it said. "It ushers in a completely new look on the Long Island Rail Road, the nation's biggest commuter rail machine."

Explaining the incentive in the back of the design, it stated, "The (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) decided that 'greater of the equal' to meeting equipment (needs and) expectations of the Long Island Rail Road (changed into no longer an alternative).

"An extremely good institution of professionals turned into approached with the aid of MTA to training session the exact vehicle specs, which resulted in the birth of the Metropolitan.

"This joint operation became guided via MTA and its personal technical personnel, working in near cooperation with the skilled operational personnel at the Long Island Rail Road. This attempt produced, in file time, the specifications for a dramatically changed, newly engineered rail passenger vehicle that could stand at the leading edge of the country's commuter traces... "

A company order for 620 M1 Metropolitans and 150 options, then the largest unmarried North American one for electric powered a couple of unit automobiles, become located with Budd, and deliveries came about between 1968 and 1973.

Necessitating a electricity boom from 650 to 750 volts DC, drawn by means of a contact shoe-0.33 rail connection, the type entered carrier in an eight-vehicle configuration on December 30, 1968 from Brooklyn to Penn Station, blurring the traces among the commuter railroad characteristic engine-and-educate supplement and the self reliant subway idea.

"The Metropolitan trains are organized in -automobile gadgets, absolutely prepared for impartial operations... ," the public relations brochure defined. "One vehicle in each unit carries batteries and a motor alternator. The other houses the air compressor. The Metropolitan is the first such more than one unit commuter train in operation."

The brochure additionally emphasized its development.

"America's fastest, maximum present day commuter rail automobile is full of innovation and modern capabilities, designed to offer excessive tiers of provider and luxury to the LIRR rider."

Progressively replaced inside the early-twenty first century via the succeeding M7 vehicles ordered from Bombardier of Canada, the first of which became delivered in 2002, it partook of its personal "Farewell to the M1s" rite, hosted with the aid of the Sunrise Trail Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, four years later, on November four.

No freight teach or railroad museum would be entire without a caboose. The bay window one on show at the Railroad Museum of Long Island, numbered C-68, served as the conductor's workplace, the protection lookout factor at the give up of the auto chain, and the group dwelling area when runs precluded go back to home stations for the night.

Railroad Museum of Long Island in Greenport:

Twenty-3 road miles to the east is Greenport, the Railroad Museum of Long Island's other vicinity and the give up of the line. But while the Long Island Railroad was conceived, it turned into simply the start of it-in terms of purpose and point of intermodal connection, where the torch become surpassed from train to steamer for the move-sound journey. Technology ultimately conquered the southern Connecticut rail route to Boston and destroyed the fledgling concern's raison d'être.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the museum's different facility is bad in rolling stock, it is wealthy in records.

Settled by way of New Haven colonists in 1648, it capitalized on its East End, water-accessible place, evolving into a shipping and deliver constructing middle, with small Long Island Roofing vessels transporting produce to Connecticut and large ones serving New York and New England. Whaling commenced in 1790.

Because its harbor changed into estimated as a terminus and transfer factor, it similarly attracted song.

"Greenport become the vicinity that brought on the Long Island Railroad to be built," in line with historian Frederick A. Kramer. "With a splendid harbor commencing onto Gardiner's Bay, packet ships for the mainland connection to Boston were to install alongside whalers and nearby fishing boats."

Although Greenport opened its rail-port doors on July 29, 1844, the first reputable trip-and primary section of the advertised "via path to Boston"-did no longer arise until the subsequent month, on August 10, with the teach departing Brooklyn at 08:00 and arriving at 12:00, at which factor passengers transferred to the railroad-owned steamship, "Cleopatra, (part of its $400,000 investment in boats and dock facilities) for the two-hour crossing to Stonington, Connecticut, after which finishing touch of the adventure, again by rail, to Boston on the Norwich and Worcester.

Although hearth consumed the authentic wood depot and platform that had opened on July 27, 1844, a quarter of a century later a 2nd, designed by means of Charles Hallett, rose on the north aspect of the double tracks in October of 1870, remodeling Greenport into a railroad center with a freight residence, a turntable, a shipping dock, and a storage backyard, which served as the departure factor for Pullman automobiles destined for cities as some distance west as Pittsburgh.