The Long Island Rail Road: A Comprehensive History, Part One: South Side R.R. of L.I./Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
The South Side Falls to the Long Island
NEW Year's Day of 1873 had passed but a short time when the traveling public was startled to learn from the newspapers that President Fox and his Board of Directors had sold out their interest in the South Side RR to the Boston banking firm of Jacob R. Shipherd & Co. of 24 Pine Street, New York. It was reported that the negotiations were consummated only when it was agreed at a meeting of the principal shareholders for each to sell a bare majority of his interest and retain the rest. Thus, not a single owner would be bought out, and the corporation would retain as large a group of the same individual stockholders as before.
The actual transfer of control took place on January 21, 1873, and, as a result, several of the important posts in the management of the company changed hands. Jacob Shipherd himself became president of the road, and a Mr. L. S. Canfield from the Warren & Franklin RR of Pennsylvania became superintendent.
It is an old saying that a new broom sweeps clean, and the new management was determined to let the employees and the public know that they proposed to infuse renewed energy and vim into the road. For example, on the morning of January 28 Mr. Canfield personally ran a train from Hempstead over the branch and main line to South Eighth Street in the record time of forty-eight minutes to the great pleasure of the commuters who usually made the run in an hour and twenty minutes.
To further impress the travelling public, and attract riders, Canfield made a fetish of running trains exactly on time all through the snows and heavy weather of January 1873. He gave Hempstead an express service and put on night trains to ingratiate himself with travellers. There was excellent reason to do this. The South Side RR originally had only the Long Island RR for a competitor and this competition was limited largely to Jamaica. With the opening of the Hempstead Branch, there was renewed rivalry for the traffic of Hempstead. Then in 1873 the competition became still keener, for, in August, Alexander T. Stewart, the merchant prince who founded Garden City, opened his Central Railroad of Long Island from Flushing through Floral Park and Hempstead eastward to Farmingdale and Babylon, and with a short branch to Hempstead. That meant that the South Side's monopoly of travel through the south shore villages was broken, and that all three roads competed fiercely for the business of Hempstead. The anxious concern of the South Side RR, therefore, to make travel as attractive as possible was not altogether an act of altruism; to a degree it was dictated by the need to survive. The company even made plans to extend the double track at once from Valley Stream to Babylon and contracted for the iron; four more engines were ordered (and later delivered) and overtures were made to Oliver Charlick for the purchase of the Sag Harbor Branch of the Long Island RR to lay the groundwork for a through road all along the south shore.
The spring and summer of 1873 passed pleasantly enough; the railroad held its own fairly well in the face of competition with its two rivals. Then in September a disaster occurred that was to change completely the subsequent history of the road. On September 18 the great banking house of Jay Cooke & Co. closed its doors in New York, Philadelphia and Washington. Cooke's fame had begun during the Civil War with his successful flotation of the bond issues by which the North financed its operations. After the war he turned his attention to railway securities, and in attempting to back the Northern Pacific RR, he met disaster. The huge sums needed for this undertaking could not be obtained without European assistance, and after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, foreign capital became harder and harder to get. Cooke tied up so much of his firm's resources in advances to the railroad that his partners finally took the drastic step of closing. Cooke's company was regarded as the last word in solvency, and when its closing was announced, the Exchange was immediately thrown into a wild panic. Two days later, the Exchange itself was closed and so remained for ten days. A run on the banks occurred, and industrial concerns, dependent on banks, failed by the score. Bankruptcies followed thick and fast and business came to a standstill.
Among the lesser banking houses involved in the general ruin was Jacob R. Shipherd & Co., the new owners of the South Side RR. Only a month later—November 1873—the trustees of the third mortgage bonds demanded that the road be placed in receivership. The directors, after vain consultation, agreed to surrender the road. Over the winter months a number of suits were instituted against the South Side RR by the holders of the first and second mortgage bonds when the interest coupons were not redeemed.
In the spring of 1874 a long wrangle broke out between the State and Federal courts as to jurisdiction. Each side appointed a different set of officials to look after the running of the road, and there were absurd incidents of appointees barricading themselves in the company's various offices and converting the premises into a fort against the opposing party, seizure of books, suits and countersuits to repossess them, smashed padlocks, etc.
On September 16, 1874 the property of the road was put up at public auction. As the bidding progressed, it became evident that the Flushing, North Side and Central RR was interested in acquiring the property. Finally, Elizur B. Hinsdale, agent for A. T. Stewart and the Poppenhusens who owned the Flushing railroad, bid in the South Side properties for $200,000. The road's liabilities totaled $2,554,225 and its creditors included not only the various bondholders but also the contractors Walker, Fairchild & Clark, who did the work at Bay Ridge, the U. S. Rolling Stock Co. for lease of engines and cars, and the Schenectady Locomotive Works, who built the last three locomotives purchased.
The fact that there were no less than four important mortgages on the road made the financial arrangements unusually complicated. In June 1867 a first mortgage of $750,000 had been made by the South Side RR in favor of D. R. Floyd-Jones and Treadwell Ketcham as trustees. In September 17 another mortgage, this time for $2,250,000, was placed on the road to secure funds for construction and equipment. In August 1871 the third mortgage of $500,000 was made out in the name of Nicholas Wyckoff and Elbert Floyd-Jones. The yield from this mortgage financed the laying of the double track. The fourth mortgage in the amount of $60,000 was assumed by the South Side RR from its subsidiary, the Far Rockaway Branch RR, and had been executed in favor of Daniel D. Lord and John H. Cheever both Far Rockaway capitalists. It is easy to see that complicated court settlements and much litigation were required to satisfy the conflicting claims of all four mortgages, plus the unsecured claims of creditors.
As soon as the new purchasers took possession of the South Side road, they made immediate efforts to maintain the high level of service under the Shipherds. Isaac Barton, ex-superintendent of the Long Island RR and superintendent of the united Flushing North Side & Central railroads, now assumed the same post on the South Side RR. The Poppenhusens on September 25, 1874 transferred their purchase to a new organization of their own creation and changed the old name of the company to "The Southern Railroad Company of Long Island." The new owners resolved on a few other changes as well, namely, raising the station platforms to eliminate the car steps and installing a physical connection between the Southern and Central roads at Babylon (Belmont Junction). It was rumored at this time that the Poppenhusens would soon scrap the expensive dummy operation in Williamsburgh.
A month after the South Side RR changed hands, trouble broke out again on the little Hempstead Branch. In September 1874 the Lackawanna RR made overtures to secure the property and franchises of the New York & Hempstead RR in the hope of consummating the master plan of making Bay Ridge the great central coal depot whence Long Island and Manhattan might be supplied. The investment proved excessively costly and the plan was allowed to die.
In October the Brooklyn Trust Co. foreclosed its mortgage on the New York & Hempstead RR. At least part of the reason for this was the loss of patronage on the branch because of the competition of the Long Island RR and the Central RR which entered Hempstead in January 1873. There was simply not enough business in town to support three roads. When the manager for the South Side RR heard of the bank's motion, he ordered his trains to stop furnishing service as of October 27, 1874. The New York & Hempstead was then advertised for auction on October 28.
On the night of the twenty-sixth, just before the service was scheduled to be cut off, someone with an interest in the road, fearing that the engine and cars would be confiscated and sold, sneaked into the Hempstead depot, tore up the tracks and switches, ran the engine and cars off the track, and completely looted the freight house and ticket office of their contents.
On the morning of October 31 a Brooklyn judge granted an order canceling all the bonds of the Hempstead & Rockaway RR. Robert White, who had gotten the contract to build the road for $100,000, had thus far received only $5000 and he now began an action to recover the balance. He traced $80,000 of stolen bonds to Vandewater Smith, the agent who had gotten him the contract and notified the court. Judgment was ordered for the transfer of $80,000 worth of bonds to White and $4000 damages in addition. Meanwhile at the auction sale of the road on October 29, 1874 the whole was knocked down to the Brooklyn Trust Co., trustees of the bonds, for the benefit of the stockholders. These gentlemen expected to make a satisfactory disposition of their property as soon as the referee determined the validity of the disputed bonds.
About November 1 the road was reopened to traffic, the trust company making arrangements with the Southern RR to furnish the equipment and crews. The old engine, equipped with a new boiler after the explosion of 1871, was still in service but the two coaches had been repainted and transferred to the Central RR.
Hardly four months later the Hempstead Branch again made news. The week of January 31, 1875 opened dark and stormy over Long Island; wind-driven rain pounded down intermittently and swelled what were normally small rivulets into swollen streams. On the line of the New York & Hempstead RR there were two such crossings, the Pine Brook at Norwood and Schodack Brook just east of Woodfield depot. The latter stream rose only a short distance north of the tracks; one fifteen inch pipe carried the water under the track; the embankment here was about nine feet high and the rainfall had backed against it a lake a few feet deep.
On Wednesday evening, February 3, 1875, after the last scheduled train had pulled into Hempstead, the crew, instead of laying over, decided to go back to Valley Stream slowly to check on the storm damage which had been getting worse all day. Accordingly, a party of seven, consisting of the engineer, conductor, trackmaster, assistant superintendent, fireman and trackman started their tour of inspection. The train, consisting of the W. L. Wood and one car left the flooded Hempstead depot at 8 P.M.
Near Woodfield station the trainmen approached Schodack Brook and observed the large lake against the railroad embankment. The trains, which were running backward for lack of a turntable at Hempstead, moved over the brook slowly. The light coach passed over the spot, but the engine suddenly collapsed through the roadbed and tumbled into the water below, dragging the coach with it. The boiler on the engine exploded with a roar, tearing a hole in the embankment and blowing the car to pieces. Four of the crew were killed almost at once, and three injured.
The subsequent investigation disclosed that the dirt under the track had been washed away sufficiently to fit a barrel into the space. Evidently the frozen earth held up the track sufficiently to permit the light coach to pass safely, but the heavier engine broke through. It is interesting to note in passing that the Woodfield disaster is the oldest railroad wreck on Long Island of which an actual photograph survives.
The accident shut down the Hempstead Branch altogether, there being no other rolling stock. In June the court opened hearings on the bond dispute between Smith and White, and when White was called to the stand, some interesting testimony was elicited. White testified that he had received only $5000 of the $100,000 promised to him to build the branch. He alleged that Vandewater Smith borrowed the bond book of the company at the time the road was completed in September 1870, took it to New York, and when the book was returned to him, $80,000 in bonds had been cut out. They were soon heard of in Wall Street and White found out upon investigation that the bonds had been pledged with a well-known banker. To protect himself, White then had taken the engine off the road, whereupon the directors arrested him for stealing the locomotive, but he was discharged. Subsequently, he commenced an action to recover the bonds, the result of which was in his favor. It was then that the Brooklyn Trust Co. had given a loan on the road, and shortly afterwards, it fell into the hands of the South Side RR to operate. White, rather than pay storage for his engine and cars, allowed them to use the equipment. The South Side purchased the engine soon afterwards, but lost it in the Woodfield disaster. The two passenger coaches, which White originally purchased for $10,000 were exempted from the assignee's sale, but were included in the sale of the trust company. When the Poppenhusens assumed control of the South Side in November 1874, they took the cars, repainted them and transferred them to their Central Railroad of Long Island.
White, in retaliation, placed men at work to fence in the Hempstead-Valley Stream right-of-way, for every foot of which he had deeds in his name. A compromise between the Poppenhusens, new owners of the South Side RR, and White was reached in June 1875. The former purchased the disputed road, and proposed to open it immediately. On June 28, 1875 trains of the Southern RR began service on the old New York & Hempstead.
Only five months later another major wreck drew newspaper attention to the Southern RR and its operations. On July 4, 1875 a train consisting of the engine Montauk, a tender, a baggage car, smoking car and passenger car left the Neptune House at Rockaway and at 1140 P.M. reached Far Rockaway and took the siding there. Meanwhile, a train of seven cars drawn by the engine Norwood left Bushwick at 12:30 P.M. and by the time it reached Valley Stream, was running ten minutes late. When the train came to the turnout between Valley Stream and Woodsburgh, the engineer and conductor decided not to wait in the hope of passing the up train at Far Rockaway station turnout.
The crew of the Montauk, meanwhile, waited the mandatory interval of ten minutes on the siding and the customary five minutes further for the variation in watches. Then it started out. It so happened that the switchman was absent that day, and the engine, after clearing the switch, had to send back the conductor to lock the switch. This cost about two minutes' delay, and then the engineer opened full throttle to make time up the ascending grade toward Lawrence.
Beyond Far Rockaway station the track began a long curve through Mott's Woods for about a half mile and then a straight stretch of a full mile. The Montauk had barely gone into the woods over 1000 feet when the Norwood was seen belching smoke dead ahead. Both engineers blew "down brakes" (one sharp blast) and jumped. The engines smashed into each other and when the dust settled, the tender of the Norwood was mounted on top of the Montauk, and the smoking coach and baggage car on the Bushwick train were telescoped twelve feet into each other. One or two other passenger cars were unbroken, but their platforms were crushed. Here occurred the worst loss of life. In all, nine persons were killed, the firemen of both trains and those standing outside on the platforms.
The inquest developed some interesting facts about conditions on the Southern RR. The Poppenhusens had removed the telegraph office at Woodsburgh in the course of lengthening the turnout there 100 feet. They had also done little or nothing on track maintenance on the Rockaway Branch. The rails had no "patent" connections (probably fish plates) but were joined by old-fashioned chair fastenings the spiking of which was often loose. A team of reporters walked the roadbed and reported that the rails were often worn and occasionally split, and that fully half the ties were rotten with only occasional good ones. The impression was given that everything of the best went to the Central RR of L.I. and that the Southern RR got what was left. The inquest verdict blamed the Lawrence wreck on the two conductors, both of whom were running on time not belonging to them. The railroad was censured for having only two brakemen on a seven-car train, for altering the time-table on a holiday, and for bad maintenance. Significantly, the railroad restored the Woodsburgh telegraph station within three weeks.
As proof of the rotten condition of the roadbed, another train on July 13, consisting of an engine and seven cars, was thrown on the sand by spreading rails at a point one mile west of Far Rockaway, and after bumping along on the ties, jogged to a stop. The locomotive plunged down a five foot embankment, the tender followed, and the baggage car, smashing past, sprawled across the rails at right angles to the line. No one was hurt and the coaches were undamaged, but it was another grim reminder that all was not well on the line. Much of the travel thereafter took to the rival Long Island RR, people shunning the Southern road as a death trap.
The Rockaway wreck had an unexpected side effect. The Southern RR, which had seriously contemplated pushing eastward from Patchogue toward Moriches, and had even begun moving material for that purpose,had to call off the whole project. Instead, the ties and iron were reshipped from Patchogue to Rockaway and three gangs of track layers were kept constantly busy repairing the dangerous roadbed.
An important feature of the rehabilitation project was the extension of the telegraph line from Far Rockaway station to the Neptune House terminus. The telegraph service was entirely reorganized and new and capable operators installed in the places of those found incompetent or inattentive. With the improvement of the telegraph, a new code of train signals was put into operation whereby the chief dispatcher at Bushwick might know the movements of any train anywhere on the road. More impressive still was the installation of vacuum brakes in place of the old hand brakes on all the Southern engines, coaches and freight cars.
As if to insure the impossibility of another costly wreck on the Rockaway Branch with its damaging publicity, elaborate and painstaking track repairs were again prosecuted the following spring (May 1876) just before the beginning of the beach season. A gang moved south from Valley Stream down the peninsula removing every unsound tie and covering the roadbed with a heavy loam about a foot deep with a layer of gravel at the top. By this means the shifting sand was held in place and kept from blowing out from under the ties. Steel rails were substituted for iron ones all along the Rockaway Branch and on the main line. The managers of the Southern were sparing no expense these days to bring back the former high reputation of the system.
During 1874 and 1875 another powerful movement was at work in Williamsburgh that would materially affect the operations and fortunes of the Southern RR. When the road first entered Williamsburgh in 1868, service from Bushwick Station to South Eighth Street ferry had been maintained by teams of horses drawing individual coaches to the ferry. Then, in 1869, the railroad, over powerful opposition, had mustered the bare minimum of support necessary to insure the introduction of dummies on Boerum Street and Broadway. To placate the opposition, the Southern road had three of the newest and best dummy engines available constructed for its use. To secure even further public support, the railroad at great expense promised to use the much less suitable groove rail for the standard T rail on its Williamsburgh track. Notwithstanding all these gestures of appeasement, the opponents of steam operation continued their agitation to drive the railroad from the streets.
One of the best arguments in their arsenal of weapons against the road was the toll of human life taken by the dummies. It was easy to pillory the railroad corporation as a souless monster ruthlessly monopolizing the public streets and crushing out the lives of golden-haired innocents under the wheels of its iron juggernauts. Such stories were charged with emotional potential and could be profitably exploited by politicians looking for an issue.
The facts were often quite different. The dummies, because of their low power and gearing ratio, could go no faster than eight miles per hour, and their bells and flagmen easily warned carriages and passers-by of their approach. Their very slowness, in fact, made them an irresistible attraction to boys of the neighborhood. Groups of lads often ran after the freights as soon as they pulled out of the ferry terminal, and grabbed the many handles and rungs on the cars for a free ride up Broadway and Boerum Street. The brakemen, busy at the front and rear of the train, were physically unable to watch each individual car and the boys could play on the platforms and in the interiors unmolested.
It was inevitable that eventually someone would be hurt. The first dummy City of Brooklyn began running on July 31, 1869 and three months later, on November 3, cut off the leg of a nine-year old boy who was playing in Boerum Street. The little fellow, George Smith, was attracted to the iron brace under the car, and in trying to catch it, missed his footing and fell across one rail, the car wheel passing over one leg. President Fox, though he felt no blame attached to the road, visited the needy parents and presented them with a purse of $50. Again on April 30, 1870 a child named Charles Fuchs, three years old, was playing near the track, and when the dummy stopped to let a wagon pass, grabbed the tension rod for a swing. The sudden starting of the dummy threw the child on the track and the wheels beheaded him.
The company was horrified when a third accident occurred within two months' time. On July 8, 1870 a twelve-year old boy named Louis Heim, who had sneaked a ride on a flat car, fell between cars when he decided to make a run from one to the other, and six wheels passed over his abdomen. The superintendent of the road, Mr. Douglass, admitted no culpability but freely offered to bear the expense of burial. At the inquest it was noted that it was the custom of numerous boys living at a distance from the ferries to steal a ride when on their way home, often loitering about the ferry a half hour or more for the train to leave the depot just to avoid walking home. When the cars started, the railroad police chased them at the ferry, but the boys soon caught the train along Broadway.
It is not known just what action the South Side RR took to avoid a repetition of these accidents, but it must have been very effective because we hear of no further casualties. Nevertheless, three such accidents provided grist for the mill of the anti-steam people. Indignation meetings were called and though poorly attended at first, continued to make themselves heard. The residents of South Eighth Street, which was only thirty feet wide and built as a residential street, continued their campaign to get rid of the dummies. No one seemed to mention the fact that the horse cars killed a far greater number of people every day in Brooklyn than did the South Side dummies.
To further placate public feeling, and to avoid the criticism made from time to time that their rails were breaking carriage axles and overturning wagons, the South Side RR, in August 1870, purchased heavy duty grooved rails for Boerum Street and Broadway. This was in accordance with a resolution of the Common Council of May 29, requiring grooved rails along Boerum Street. On September 16, 1870 these new rails were delivered; all were seventy-pound groove and would cover the whole distance to Bushwick depot. Installation of these new rails must have been started immediately, for by October 1 all the old T rail had been pulled up.
Oddly enough, in 1873 the South Side RR obtained permission from the Common Council to lay a modified strap rail along South Eighth Street and Broadway. The inner flange had to be built up with wood and to this would be spiked an iron strip half an inch thick, creating an iron inner flange and thus a virtual groove rail. Why this was done we are not told; perhaps the Broadway rails received heavier wear because of joint operation with the horse car companies.
Beginning with 1871 the campaign to get rid of the dummies gained momentum. In February of that year the residents requested the Common Council to repeal the permission granted to the railroad, alleging that the signatures on the petition circulated by the railroad for the right of using dummies were fraudulently obtained. The property owners complained further about the smoke and gases and potential danger to life and limb. A hearing was held on March 1 at which testimony generally favorable to the railroad company was voiced, and again on March 12.
The whole of the years 1872 and 1873 passed quietly without any agitation to expel the dummies. Then in 1874 trouble broke out once more. Apparently it was caused by the unwillingness of the South Side company to put down a whole new pavement after replacing all its rails to please the property owners. They sought relief from the State Legislature but the railroad bested them at Albany. They then sued the company in the name of one of the aggrieved property owners, who recovered a judgment of $1500. It was appealed and the Court of Appeals confirmed the judgment of the lower court. Another suit for $500 was instituted with a like result. Inasmuch as the company had a mile and a half of track, there was a cheerful prospect of being mulcted of a million dollars. When the company went into bankruptcy in October 1874 the property owners considered it an evasion to end the suits.
Early in 1875 the embattled property owners of South Eighth Street and Boerum Street found a champion to redress their alleged wrongs, one Jacob Worth, an Assemblyman representing Williamsburgh at Albany. Worth, recognizing an issue when he saw one, and realizing this could be an important step on his political ladder, presented a bill in the Assembly for the abolition of the Eastern District dummies. The Brooklyn Eagle raised its powerful voice against the passage of the bill, insisting that the property owners of one street had no right to deprive a whole city of rail transportation and that the general welfare was paramount.
When the bill came up for hearing, the South Side RR argued that it had spent about $50,000 for four dummy engines, had built a large and handsome depot at South Eighth Street and would be subject to a loss of at least $100,000 by the change. Worth pressed his charge that the original petition was a fraud and that the property along the route had halved in value. He claimed that the travelling public could easily be accommodated in horse cars to the ferry. A resident testified that fifteen or sixteen heavy rumbling trains disturbed peoples' sleep, cracked walls, shook down ceilings, and loosened foundations.
On May 1, 1875 the bill was re-argued and ordered to a third reading. On the eleventh the amendment to postpone the abolition of the dummy till November 1, 1875 was accepted. When favorable passage of the Worth bill seemed assured, the South Side RR made preparations to pull out of downtown Williamsburgh. The freight depot was shut down immediately, probably in May, and negotiations were begun with the Bushwick RR Co. and the Broadway RR Go. to run their horse cars directly into covered platforms at the Bushwick depot to enable South Side passengers to continue their journey conveniently as was done at Grand Central Depot in New York. The railroad contemplated the enlargement of the Bushwick terminal, never too well equipped, by building a large new covered passenger station, additional freight houses, and administrative offices.
Beginning in February 1876 the Southern RR began physical preparations to run all freight and most passenger trains into their Hunter's Point terminal. Large gangs of men were set to work to double-track the connection between Fresh Pond and Hunter's Point. New ties and steel rails were installed, the trestle work across Maspeth Creek and probably Jack's Creek filled in.
On February 28, 1876 the Southern RR formally announced to the press the transfer of terminus from South Eighth Street to Hunter's Point, not to Bushwick depot, significantly. Beginning this day the main passenger trains ran to Long Island City and Bushwick permanently reverted to branch status. By this change the Southern RR rid itself at one blow of a whole series of petty irritations. For seven years the company had been continually harassed by grumblers and whiners, as the press called them. Subtle blackmail had been exacted for years, and later by the annual necessity to "fix" petty politicians. Hardly a year had gone by that hints had not come down from Albany as well, suggesting "fees" to defeat the annual crop of anti-steam bills in the Legislature. Even the ferry company, notwithstanding the large amount of travel brought to them by the railroad company, was continually drawing on the road for all sorts of privileges and accommodations which were really of as great benefit to the ferry company as to the railroad.
On February 29, 1876 the South Side depot at South Eighth Street was formally vacated, the last train pulling out on Saturday the twenty-sixth, loaded with the portable property of the company. Preparations were made to sell the stations and tear up the tracks. The press of Brooklyn uniformly condemned the move, but gloomily hoped that the horse car service would still induce travelers to either detrain at Bushwick or try to reach it from the ferries. By May 1876 all the rails from Bushwick to South Eighth Street had been torn up and the streets repaved.
The trains were gone from Bushwick but a short while when a general outcry arose among the merchants and business men of the Eastern District. Pressure for the removal of the trains had come from home owners and a few business men had been inveigled into supporting them. Suddenly, the realization of what the total loss of train traffic from the interior of Long Island would mean seems to have struck the business people, and a slow reversal of attitude began to spread through mercantile circles. In December 1876 certain merchants had the effrontery to circulate a public petition through the Eastern District addressed to the Southern RR, requesting it to relay its tracks to South Eighth Street but the railroad met the gesture with the stony silence and contempt that it deserved.
With the spring of 1876 the old South Side RR lost its identity as a separate railroad and became merged into the common railroad system of Long Island. In January 1876 rumors were current that the Poppenhusens, proprietors of the Flushing & North Side, Central and Southern roads were negotiating with the stockholders and directors of the Long Island RR, the acquisition of which would give them a united Long Island railroad. By February 1 it became certain that some sort of agreement had been reached between President Havemeyer of the Long Island RR (Charlick had died in 1875) and the Poppenhusens, for a stockholder began a suit to prevent Havemeyer from selling shares to Poppenhusen. It became known that a sufficient number of shares had changed hands to give Poppenhusen control, and that the action would be submitted to the directors in March for ratification.
For two months all was quiet; then in May it was announced that the Long Island RR, financially the strongest of the four roads, had been selected by the Poppenhusen management to lease the Flushing & North Side, Central and Southern Railroads into one large operating group. The rental for the Southern was said to be $173,250 for the first year and to increase in six years to the maximum of $233,450; the term of lease was to be for ninety-nine years. Vast benefits were expected, for, instead of fighting each other, the different roads would henceforth cooperate. Great economies would be achieved as well by the abandonment of duplicate and triplicate services, closing of needless depots, and abandonment of duplicate trackage. Under such a new system Poppenhusen felt confident that a better arrangement for the carrying of freight and for the arrival and departure of passenger trains could be effected.
Insofar as the Southern RR was concerned, these changes came about almost immediately. Uniform passenger and freight rates were established at once. The last Southern RR timetable appeared in February 1876; the following issue of June 1876 listed the road as the "Southern RR of L.I. Division." A further loss of identity occurred when the Southern and Long Island railroads were physically connected, enabling Long Island RR rolling stock to run on the Southern road and vice versa. In the first week of June 1876 the two roads were connected at Springfield and the Long Island branch to Rockaway across the meadows discontinued immediately in favor of the Southern route. Conversely, the Southern line between Jamaica Station and Springfield was discontinued in favor of the Long Island's route from Rockaway Junction (now Hillside), and the second track taken up. 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. This was done to obviate the usual wait at the junction as was the previous custom.
The fact that nearly all the Southern RR trackage was preferred by the management was a compliment to the designers of the original road. Rightly speaking, the history of the South Side RR proper closes at this point, but we must advance four years ahead of our story to follow the road to its full extinction as a separate legal entity.
In October 1877 there were rumors of financial trouble, and within a month the Poppenhusens went into bankruptcy. The causes of the disaster were primarily overextension of railroad facilities and inexperienced management. Of the three railroads merged the Long Island RR alone paid its way, but the Central and Southern systems both failed to earn even their operating expenses. Poppenhusen tried to improve the Southern road by bettering the physical plant constantly, and obtained the funds through notes given to Drexel, Morgan & Co. (after 1895 J. P. Morgan & Co.) These bankers extended Poppenhusen credits of $1,200,000 in all, for which 35,000 shares of stock and $912,000 bonds were pledged as security.
The rental charges for the Southern and Central systems were more than the Long Island RR could pay, for the simple reason that the latter two roads failed to earn these sums. In addition there were judgments to be paid, representing claims originating before the merger. Herman Poppenhusen and his father Conrad were wealthy men but their credit had been stretched to its limit. When the interest on the various bonds fell due in the fall of 1877, the Poppenhusens defaulted and the complicated structure, so laboriously built up, collapsed. On November 3, 1877 the united railroad system went into receivership and the court appointed Colonel Sharp of the Railroad Department of Drexel, Morgan & Co. as receiver. Sharp terminated the leases of the Southern and Central systems, and these roads, deprived of the artificial financial support of the Long Island RR, promptly went into bankruptcy.
The operation of the unified railroad system under the receiver continued for 1878 and 1879; then in June 1879 the holders of the South Side's second mortgage bonds foreclosed and it was bid in by the bondholders; again in July 1879 the first mortgage bonds were foreclosed and knocked down to an agent of Drexel, Morgan & Co. By these sales all claims against the road were shut out and the receiver was free to do as he pleased.
How can we account for the collapse of the South Side RR after all the optimistic predictions of the first few years? The causes are not hard to seek:
- The excessive cost of the Bushwick outlet. The South Eighth Street terminal could not and did not originate enough traffic to offset the high cost of installing and maintaining the terminus. In the beginning the breaking up of each train into car units, each drawn by six or eight horses, must have been a very expensive operation, and the South Side must have been compelled to maintain a stable of horses almost as large as the average horse car line of that day. Later, the four steam dummies cost $10,000 each and exposed the company to a whole series of costly judgments for damages of all kinds. Finally, we can only guess how much of the company's money went for thinly disguised political payoffs. We must remember, too, that the company was forced into laying the Bushwick road twice over, once with T rail and once with grooved rail, and each time a mile and a half of pavement had to be replaced. Even in terms of 1870 labor costs this must have been an expensive business.
- The extension into Hunter's Point: To effect an outlet to the East River, a point of pride with the South Side RR, they built not only the enormously costly Williamsburgh terminus, but the duplicate Hunter's Point terminal.The company had to buy out the New York & Flushing RR's track at $40,000 a mile and then completely rebuild the road. Then, after all this expense, Oliver Charlick prevented the company from running any revenue trains over the new extension for many months by cutting off access to the property and refusing to release the Long Dock.
- The double tracking of the road. The installation of a second track on any road is virtually equivalent to building it twice over, for it necessitates doubling the width of the graded area and doubling the size of all the bridges and culverts. When one considers that the South Side RR was running at its peak only nine trains a day each way, it is obvious that the second track was a luxury not strictly justified by the traffic. To gratify a foolish vanity, the South Side RR was forced to assume a third mortgage of half a million dollars, the interest on which could only add to the burden of fixed charges on the road.
- Competition of other roads. From the opening of the road in October 1867 to June 1872 the South Side RR enjoyed the advantage of a monopoly of the traffic on the south side and to Rockaway. The first serious inroad into the South Side's prosperity was the opening of the Long Island Railroad's Rockaway Branch in June 1872. Oliver Charlick's route was slightly shorter and more direct, and from Cedarhurst to Far Rockaway exactly paralleled the South Side tracks. After the July 1875 wreck at Lawrence much of the traffic went via the safer Long Island road. With the opening of the Central RR of Long Island in January 1873, the Southern had to compete for the traffic of Hempstead and Babylon. Thus by 1873the South Side could be sure only of the patronage of the smaller south side villages west of Babylon.
As soon as the receiver took over the management of the South Side RR, he abandoned the Hempstead Branch as an economy measure, the only such part of the South Side system to be sacrificed. On Wednesday evening, April 30, 1879 the last train ran from Hempstead to Valley Stream. The South Side RR's valuable main line, a big money maker because of the summer trade, continued to bear the Southern RR label only until December 1879, when the owners, Drexel, Morgan & Co., reorganized it as the "Brooklyn & Montauk RR," which was then leased to the Long Island RR. Finally, in March 1880, the receiver issued an order erasing the road's identity completely. As of that month, the whole Southern RR was, in the future, to be referred to simply as the Montauk Division of the Long Island RR and so it remains to this day. In October 1889 the Brooklyn & Montauk RR was formally merged into the Long Island RR and the subsequent history of the old road becomes the history of the Long Island R.R.