However, the port of Sag Harbor was busier, meaning that the railroad would have more variables to deal with when it came to scheduling. Greenport was the most advantageous jumping-off point for passengers coming from New York City on their way to Boston. 

“We like to say, that Greenport was the reason for the Long Island Railroad,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island.

Greenport has a deeper, wider harbor that allowed steamships in and out to Connecticut more easily. Most importantly, to get to Sag Harbor, you had to go over Shinnecock Canal, which at that time was essentially a tidal swamp where water would pass between the Peconic Bay and Southampton Bay. 


“It was marshy, you would have had to bridge it over. That cost a lot of money. Also, you didn’t have the metallurgy and stuff in the early 1800s. That’s why we’re coming down Long Island anyway, because you couldn’t get across the rivers in Connecticut,” said Mr. Fisher. “At that point, we didn’t have the resources, knowledge, or the metallurgy to build bridges. We didn’t have the Portland cement to put proper piers to get across those rivers.” 

Before engineering advancements in metal and cement, it wasn’t possible to build bridges strong enough to support the weight of the trains. In order to connect points south with New England and create a corridor for both passengers and commerce, the Long Island Rail Road chose to run along the center of the island and up to Greenport. On July 27, 1844, the Greenport line began operation.

“And for five or six years, the Long Island Railroad, after it was formed, those people made a lot of money because it was the fastest way to get from New York to Boston. So you get on a boat, go across on a ferry boat to Brooklyn, you’d get on the train, and in three hours, you would be out there on the dock,” Mr. Fisher said.

Greenport had a four-bay engine house, a hostler engine, freight houses and a turntable. The train ran right out onto the dock so that boats could unload directly into the cars.

“They got fresh oysters from out here every day. You’re going to be sending out perishables, you needed to be able to ice them down. The oysters would be put into boxes or barrels at the time, and they put ice on top of their oysters to keep them chilled. The railroad made it not only economically feasible, but physically feasible to move these perishables, because you could put it on the train in less than three hours it was in the city,” said Mr. Fisher. “The truck would run up to the train depot there in Greenport, and they would ice in on top of the oysters and the fish and then transport the stuff in.”

The freight house serves as the eastern outpost for the Railroad Museum and the turntable is still there. The dock still stands, with the old station serving as the East End Maritime Museum. Ownership of the line has changed hands several times, first from the MTA to Suffolk County and then to the village of Greenport.

Sag Harbor eventually got its own railroad connection, but not until 1870 — more than two decades after Greenport’s line opened. The Sag Harbor branch served as the South Fork’s eastern terminus for 25 years until expansion pushed further east to Montauk in 1895.

The village’s station was rebuilt in 1909 and saw various uses, including transporting torpedoes to the wharf for testing during World War I. The branch was abandoned in 1939.

“The importance of Greenport cannot be downplayed because it was the reason for the law on the railroad,” said Mr. Fisher. “It was an important site for maintenance and preparing the trains to go back to the city the next day. It’s where the people could come and get on a train and get on their way to Boston.”

See more in the Keeping track of history series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping track of history: Why Greenport won LIRR race to the East End appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

That was in 1844, when the Long Island Rail Road extended its line to Riverhead.

The new spur turned the East End from an isolated agricultural outpost into the bread-and-veggie-basket of New York. In addition to its geographical centrality, Riverhead had been Suffolk County’s seat of government since 1727, making it the natural choice for a rail center.

“We were an agricultural economy, we were a seafaring economy,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island. “Riverhead became the center and was physically, geographically, and certainly population-wise, the center of our county, and became the hub for our government. Everybody moved everything by boat before the railroad got here.”

Populations on the East End at that time were concentrated along the shorelines. The farmers who did begin to cultivate the Forks had good soil for growing all kinds of crops, including the potatoes and cauliflower the region was known for. And before the experimental farms, farmers didn’t believe that they could go into the Pine Barrens. 

Because of the railroad, the Forks could now supply the rest of Long Island, which at that time included Brooklyn, and Manhattan with fresh produce. Farmers could take their products and put them on a train into cold cars, and have them reach population centers often within a day or two after harvest. 

Farm produce coming into Riverhead went through the auction houses, where it was bought by brokers and then put on the railroad cars to be transported out of the area. These brokers sold to supermarkets and others — usually within two days of the vegetables being dug up.

“That stimulated everything in farming out here, because farmers now weren’t just growing for themselves and Suffolk County,” Mr. Fisher said. “They had a way, with the railroad, to be able to ship more and more produce, putting more and more acreage into production.”

The system proved remarkably efficient for its time.

“We had this thing licked. We had it down, farm to table,” he said. “The tables were in New York City. 
The tables were the people living in the tenements along the East River, the people living in Brooklyn.”

The LIRR used special cars lined with ice, known as reefers. These cars were filled from above via a hopper at the ice plant. There were vents at either end to circulate air, and melted ice and condensation would run out onto the track. 

Riverhead yard also had a special engine called a hostler to move cars through a complicated network of sidings. Each siding had an assigned purpose, and a crew could kick three boxcars off so they went into Brooklyn. 

“The actual work of moving all of this produce was time sensitive, laborious and it required resources from the railroad to make it work,” Mr. Fisher said. “One of those resources, we got our own locomotive.”

At first, the LIRR extension did not result in a population boom on the East End. Because the land was so productive, the properties proved more valuable for farming. Keeping those fields open for cultivation produced more wealth than dividing them for houses.

“The railroad coming here, creating a better economy for the farmers, limited the amount of people that were going to come out here at the time and build houses and live here, because the property was so valuable for farming,” Mr. Fisher said.

It wasn’t until after World War II that the railroad, combined with the highways, helped supercharge Long Island’s population growth as developments like Levittown blossomed. 
Before the war, bulk produce dominated traffic heading west from the East End.

It wasn’t only produce leaving the East End headed west that made use of Riverhead Station. Freight was also shipped east. Anything big, bulky or heavy was easier to ship via rail.

LILCO, the predecessor to LIPA, had two sidings in Riverhead because their poles and transformers came out on the train. Farm equipment was often shipped on flatcars. There were also smaller items that came via post cars and baggage cars on the railroad. Mail order items from catalogs would be left in the freight house for someone to pick up in their wagon and take home.

“We think about things that come to us today on UPS, FedEx, Postal Service — those things came out in special cars, baggage cars, railroad post office cars, and they went to the train station or to the little freight house,” said Mr. Fisher.

Because Riverhead is the county seat, the railroad also made it easier for politicians to attend meetings. Instead of taking a week to trek out to Riverhead for monthly business, it was a matter of days by train. 

Before Suffolk County had a Legislature, it was controlled by supervisors of the 10 towns and they would meet in Riverhead once a month. With the railroad, they could get on the train at 6 in the morning and be there by 9 a.m. They could meet all day, stay overnight and be home the next day.

“Not only was this great for the people that were doing the work, but it saved government money,” Mr. Fisher explained.

Instead of putting politicians up for four or five nights in Riverhead, they only had to stay one night.

“We were saving taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.

Today, the LIRR still has a stop at Riverhead, but the old railway center serves as the home of the Railroad Museum of Long Island.

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping track of history: How Riverhead’s station fed New York appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

At Calverton station, which was little more than a shelter among the trees and farms, the Golden’s Pickle Factory had its own track, called a siding, where trains could drop off cucumbers and pickling ingredients, and pick up the finished product. 

On the mainline, the Shelter Island Express was full to the brim with tourists, its double engine hurtling toward Greenport. Thunder and lightning had split the sky all that August day and the day before, and the passengers were eager to reach their destination.

Some of the wealthier passengers rode in the parlor car just behind the engine. Among them were Mrs. Shuford, first name lost to history, and her two young children — Charles, 3, and Dorothy, 1 — along with their nanny, who were all visiting from North Carolina. Another passenger was Harold Fish, an investment broker from Manhattan. 

As the first engine, a camelback locomotive with the boiler in the middle of the cab, passed over the switch for the pickle factory, its speed and vibration shook the switch mechanism free, a condition railroaders call “picking the switch.”

When the second engine, a traditional locomotive, followed, it threw the switch completely and was directed into the siding. This pulled the first engine backward down the track and into the building, where the two engines landed in a heap. The force pulled the parlor car up on end and through the roof of the building.

“The second locomotive caught that switch. The first one went over it. The second one caught it. And with the speed and the weight of the locomotives, as it started to go toward the pickle factory, it pulled the first locomotive backwards with it. And it went right into the building,” said Don Fisher, the long-serving president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead.

The fireman on the first engine, John Montgomery, and William Squires, the engineer, both of Greenport, died in the collision. 

As the train smashed into the pickle factory, it broke the second floor, where the salt was stored. Salt rained down on the crushed parlor car, pouring through the now-open roof. Mr. Fish, who was already injured, was quickly buried — literally rubbing salt into his wounds.

“The car went in, and of course, the car was kind of getting ripped open, and Mr. Fish, who was a big Wall Street guy on his way to his home in East Marion, he was injured very badly,” Mr. Fisher said. “Workers who were there at the time were trying to keep the salt away from him. And he died because he was smothered and buried in the salt.”

Further back in the car, Mrs. Shuford was trapped in the mangled remains of the parlor car. Rescuers used torches to cut her out of the car — a process that took six hours. 

“She was in there pretty much all night,” Mr. Fisher said. “This thing happened in the afternoon. And as they cut the car apart, it took them time with acetylene torches and stuff to get her out, to the point that she was actually fed a sandwich for dinner.”

Mrs. Shuford managed to walk onto a waiting ambulance and was transported to Southampton Hospital, but she died from internal burns caused by the steam. She was never told that her two children were killed instantly in the accident.

Four passengers of the 387 aboard and two crew members died. Mrs. Shuford’s nanny, Laura Conley, lost her leg. 

According to a New York Times article published at the time of the wreck, “no trains were sent by the railroad to carry the stranded passengers to their destinations, and as the hours passed those who could hire automobiles finished their journey by that method. But hundreds of persons were compelled to walk the five miles to Riverhead and from there to get home as best they could.”

The investigation by the District Attorney’s office determined that the cotter pin securing the switch was missing. This caused the nut and washer securing the hand lever to the rod that operated the switch to come loose. The pin had been missing for some time due to the condition of the switch.

“It was obvious that there was debris and dirt in the holes that should be clean,” Mr. Fisher said.

The Pickleworks never recovered from the damage and was demolished.

Today, only a crumbling shelter south of the tracks remains at the site following the tragedy what was a very unlucky Friday the 13th.

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Riverhead Station

Manorville Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping Track of History: Deadly crash at Calverton station appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Austin Corbin, who became president of the Long Island Rail Road in 1881, was an ambitious but difficult man. He is credited with consolidating the many small railroads that crisscrossed Long Island into a single, profitable entity. He also expanded the southern rail line all the way to Montauk by strong arming the Montaukett Indigenous out of nearly 10,000 acres of land. 

For a time, Mr. Corbin’s nephew, Fredrick Dunton, was in business with him at the LIRR as a physical engineer. There was even a station in Queens named for him. At some point, the two had a falling out, and Mr. Dunton left to begin his own venture: The Boynton Electric Bicycle Railroad. 

This experimental railroad was based on a diesel-powered bicycle train that Eben Boynton had run for two years from Brooklyn to Coney Island. These double-decker cars were able to accommodate 200 passengers per trip. The Long Island version was much smaller, with a single level, trolley-shaped car that only carried 24 people at a time. Construction of the first two miles was completed in 1894.

George Walsh, Trustee and archivist for Railroad Museum of Long Island, has been researching the Boynton Electric Bicycle train since he was 17 years old.

“The Boynton Electric Bicycle Railroad was a railroad that was supposed to run from the Bellport area to Rocky Point. And they constructed a car that was used on an experimental track in East Patchogue. That car was two-wheeled car, so that’s where you get the bicycle idea. Two wheels, and it ran on a single track. It could go 60 miles an hour, it had an overhead structure with wheels that kept it balanced, and it used a steam-powered electric generator,” said Mr. Walsh.

A man named George Hagerman, of Rocky Point, became a prominent investor. He owned the land that became Wardenclyffe, Pinelawn cemetery, and large tracts of land around Patchogue, among others. Mr. Hagerman was impressed with the original Boynton Train in Brooklyn, so when he found out about the electric version, he offered some of his land. He sold plots of land for $25 each to the railroad laborers, who were mostly Italian immigrants. 

“The game plan was to bridge the Great South Bay and put a hotel on Fire Island at Long Cove. And they were going to have ferries to go to Connecticut. The idea being to bring people from New England out to Fire Island,” said Mr. Walls.

Mr. Corbin, peeved that his nephew had left his business to go out on his own, refused to allow the Bicycle Railroad a right of way over his track. But rather than leaving it there, he wanted to make sure the monorail would not be successful, so he extended what was known as the Port Jefferson branch to Wading River and renamed it the Wading River Branch. He also did this with mostly immigrant labor imported from New York City.

“There was no reason to build a railroad out to Wading River. There was nobody living there. Mr. Corbin, in spite, said, ‘We’re going from Port Jefferson; We’re going to go to Wading River,’” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island. “This was a good idea, really. Mr. Corbin wasn’t a stupid man. He was a vindictive man, possibly. He was going to make sure that his nephew and cohorts weren’t going to get up there. But he was also looking at continuing from Wading River into Riverhead. So then for the main line, which was built in 1844 to Greenport, there would be an escape route.”

Just as the construction of Manorville station and the spur to Eastport allowed for an escape route from the main line to the southern line, extending the northern track to Wading River and then eventually on to Riverhead would provide an additional route for trains to avoid trouble on the main line.

Not only was Mr. Corbin looking at cutting off the monorail’s north-south vacation route, but he was also thinking of the problems a more nimble electric monorail posed to his empire.

“Corbin realized that this thing was a threat to steam trains. The invention itself. The electric monorail. Ultimately, they could outperform the steam trains. Think of the Long Island Expressway, and think if in the center median, you have monorails,” said Mr. Fisher. “They would want to take the train, so this thing could go 60 miles an hour then, and that’s only because the track they had wasn’t long enough to go faster.”

Another quirk of fate related to the Wading River Station is Nikola Tesla and the building of Wardenclyffe. All of the material for the construction of Tesla’s tower came to the property via the Wading River branch. There was even a siding constructed on-site to drop off loads of timber. The railroad museum has letters from the LIRR asking Tesla to settle his $3,000 shipping bill, the equivalent of more than $100,000 today.

The Wading River Branch lasted until 1938, when the station and engine house were dismantled. The timber from the engine house was reused to build what is now the Village Beverage store. At that time, it reverted back to the Port Jefferson Branch.

“If it was here today, certainly because of the population centers that have grown up along the North Shore through that area, you would have people that would be using it to go to work, just as they leave Port Jefferson now … It would be used for that travel, [and] certainly would be used as they were promoting it back in the 1800s and the early 1900s,” said Mr. Fisher. “It would be a vacation line. Just as people now take the train to Greenport to go to Shelter Island, East Marion, Orient [and] Southold on the weekends, they would be using it to come out to their summer homes all along the Sound. If we were there today, I would almost bet my right arm, the Long Island Railroad in the engineers would have completed the line out to Riverhead.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping Track of History: Wading River Station appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

This is the first in a series on the history of train services on the East End, and the numerous changes the industry brought to Riverhead and the North Fork.

“It took them 10 years to go from the foot of the East River in Brooklyn to Greenport,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead.

The Manorville Station stop was originally called St. George’s Manor and opened in 1844. Local history holds that the first station agent, Seth Raynor, was a patriot from the revolutionary war. The story goes that he painted over the “St. George’s” because it reminded him of the king, leaving just “Manor.”

The stop was little more than a refueling station, since there was no town to speak of at that time. Woodcutters would cut timber and stock it next to the tracks, as these trains ran on wood and not coal. There was also a water tower to replenish the steam engine’s supply.

“It was important stop for them to pick up water and wood on their way to make steam to propel trains out to Greenport. Though it was a fueling depot … it also became an important station,” said Mr. Fisher. “Manorville was really just a clearing in the woods where the train would stop, take on water. The local people would sell them firewood.”

In 1869, Manorville station became the western end of the Sag Harbor branch, a line that was extended through Eastport to the south shore. This was to outmaneuver the South Side Railroad, which ran from Brooklyn to Patchogue and had planned to extend out the South Fork. 

“The Long Island Rail Road said, ‘Hey, we got to make a right hand turn here. We’ve got to get in front of the South Side Railroad so that they can’t proceed from Patchogue out to Sag Harbor.’ And that’s what they did,” said Mr. Fisher. The track ran through the South Fork towns and ended in Sag Harbor.

Manorville also featured a special feature of railroad engineering called a wye. It consists of a triangle of tracks with a switch at each corner, where an engineer can navigate around the triangle to reverse direction. 

“You can imagine a train coming along, going up the right-side angle to the top point,”said Mr. Fisher. “He stops his train, he backs on down to the left-hand point, which is going Greenport. Now the train is facing New York City. And you can go across the base of the triangle with your train and go all the way back to Ronkonkoma … [to] get back into the city. If you’ve got the acreages, the land, that’s very inexpensive to make those three tracks and build a wye.”

This feature allowed the railroad to operate what was known as the “Greenport Scoot,” a train that ran from Greenport to Manorville and then all the way to Sag Harbor.

“Manorville, at this point, was very important as a communications loop for people to go from the shipping and the whale industry out of Greenport to the shipping and whale industry down in Sag Harbor. You [could] go back and forth and you didn’t have to take a boat,” said Mr. Fisher. “That opened up all kinds of opportunities for families to move back and forth.”

The mail was carried by horse or stagecoach until 1908, when the Manorville Post Office opened near the train stop. Around this time, the station name officially changed to Manorville. 

The station building was torn down and replaced with a shelter in 1941, and by 1949 the branch was abandoned. In 1968 the stop was officially discontinued.

“It was very lightly used by the 1940s. Railroading is a business, and any place that they can save money and pare off maintenance costs, they’re gonna do it.” Mr. Fisher said. “I think today, in hindsight, they wish they had it.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping Track of History: Manorville Station appeared first on Riverhead News Review.