The Bulletin NEW YORK RAILWAYS STREET CARS QUIT 80
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ERA BULLETIN — AUGUST, 2016 The Bulletin Electric Railroaders’ Association, Incorporated Vol. 59, No. 8 August, 2016 The Bulletin NEW YORK RAILWAYS STREET CARS QUIT 80 Published by the Electric YEARS AGO Railroaders’ Association, Incorporated, PO Box by Bernard Linder 3323, New York, New York 10163-3323. (Continued from June, 2016 issue) CABLE AND ELECTRIC CARS RE- and the box number would be recorded on For general inquiries, tape. contact us at bulletin@ PLACE HORSE CARS On May 25, 1893, the cable cars started erausa.org. ERA’s Broadway horse cars started operating on th website is or about June 22, 1885. To provide food and running on Broadway between W. 59 Street www.erausa.org. medical care for its fleet of 3,500 horses, the and Bowling Green. At first 65 cable cars were available, but 55 horse cars were still Editorial Staff: company built a four-story addition to its sta- Editor-in-Chief: bles located on the block bounded by Sixth operating due to the shortage of expert grip- Bernard Linder Avenue, W. 50th Street, Seventh Avenue, and men. Until they were able to handle the cars Tri-State News and W. 51st Street. Each horse made three round in heavy traffic, the cable south of Houston Commuter Rail Editor: trips between the Battery and Central Park Street was operated at 6 miles per hour. New Ronald Yee drums were installed which increased the North American and World every two days (15 miles per day). News Editor: Because electric traction was not perfected speed north of Houston Street from 6 to 8 Alexander Ivanoff in 1886, several companies experimented miles per hour. A year later 145 cable cars Contributing Editor: with battery cars, whose speed was 8 to 10 were running every 38 seconds on the busy Jeffrey Erlitz portion of the line. Cable cars operated from miles per hour. Battery cars using different Production Manager: materials operated on Broadway, Fourth Ave- 5 AM to 3 AM while horse cars ran on a 20- David Ross nue, and Second Avenue. The tests revealed minute headway from 3 to 5 AM. Cable cars that battery cars were more economical than were illuminated by condensed coal gas horse cars and their receipts were much made from crude petroleum by the Consoli- ©2016 Elect ric dated Gas Company at W. 42nd Street and Railroaders ’ greater. Unfortunately, the batteries were Association, very heavy and they had to be removed fre- Eleventh Avenue. Gas was condensed in the Incorporate d quently for charging. After testing the battery power house on Sixth Avenue, transmitted to cars for 60 days, it was obvious that they Seventh Avenue, then charged in cylinders could not handle the heavy traffic on busy under the cars. Each cylinder contained lines. enough gas to illuminate a car for twelve hours. In the first year, the Broadway cable In This Issue: Instead the company decided to convert to cable traction on Broadway. During construc- reported a gain of 25 percent in total traffic From tion, the horse cars were rerouted to Church and a decrease of 20 percent in operating Recognition to Street. Power for the cable was supplied by a costs. Dominance— 2,000-horsepower engine at W. 51st Street The Columbus Avenue cable line was un- The New York and a 4,000-horsepower engine at Houston der construction from December 4, 1894 to February 14, 1895. After work was complet- Connecting Street. Signal boxes, 500 to 700 feet apart, were installed in the street near the tracks. If ed, 100 cars were operating on a one-minute Railroad two covers were lifted and a button marked headway. Power was supplied from the W. th (Continued) “stop,” “start,” “fire,” or “blockading’ was 50 Street power house formerly used for …Page 2 pressed, a signal would be recorded on a Broadway cars. Lexington Avenue horse dial in the engine room. A gong would ring (Continued on page 4) NEXT TRIP: WEEKEND TRIP TO ROCHESTER/CLEVELAND/BUFFALO1 — OCTOBER 15-17 NEW YORKERA DIVISION BULLETIN BULLETIN — AUGUST, OCTOBER, 2016 2000 FROM RECOGNITION TO DOMINANCE: THE NEW YORK CONNECTING RAILROAD (BRIDGING THE BAY AND CONNECTING THE PIECES) by George Chiasson (Continued from July, 2016 issue) “POCKETING” THE NEW YORK tional barriers involved as well as an almost-equal CONNECTING RAILROAD; GETTING BEYOND amount of civil endeavor. Nevertheless, the project’s THE PENN STATION PROJECT ultimate purpose was generally hidden from plain sight Though its elements were already clear and the asso- and its anticipated interaction with the public at large ciated requirements, estimated costs, and implications was expected to be minimal. It was this prognosis that known, firm planning for the Pennsylvania’s marine- granted the Pennsy’s management comfort in its antici- based, freight-hauling main line across New York Bay pation of mild encounters with officials of the City of and through the quickly-expanding city of New York did New York, though the reality that actually transpired not immediately come to fruition. The first bits of New turned out to be almost the complete opposite. It has Jersey land for it were acquired in expectation soon been postulated that the long-established institutional after the initial portion of the New York Bay Railroad barriers to creation of a railway terminal in Manhattan was completed through Waverly Yard in 1890, consist- (and with it the vastly upgraded freight main line across ing of wild marshlands in the lightly-populated flood the Bay) were in some ways guided by the random plains of Jersey City, but otherwise the New York Con- hand of circumstance after being thwarted for several necting Railroad continued to be little more than an idea decades. Mayor Seth Low (1850-1916), a native of and was strictly held as a “breast pocket” corporate enti- “distant” Brooklyn, was the personification of this pitia- ty. Only after it was clear to President Thomson by the ble sentiment, being as he was a single-term, “reform” latter half of 1897 that there would be no “Lindenthal” politician of the “Fusion” Party and, as his actions later bridge across the Hudson River (and then largely at the proved, a true “vox populi.” In fact Mayor Low was a urging of Vice Presidents Cassatt and Rea) was any unique product of his extraordinary times, an output further action taken at all. Nevertheless, the railroad created by the unrelenting development of the (unelected) “populist press” that was overwhelming the was also forced to wait out the geographic and political th machinations that came with the Municipal Consolida- city’s public discourse by the turn of the 20 century. tion of 1898, as well as corporately digesting the reper- Even more than 100 years later, some civic historians cussions of legislation passed in Albany during this time maintain that Low’s ambitious mayoralty (an administra- that was intended to encourage the separation of exist- tion perhaps unparalleled in its various forms of execu- ing railroad operations from densely-populated urban tion, relative to its brevity, until that of Rudolph W. Giuli- areas as much as possible. Engineering analysis of the ani in 1994-2002) wouldn’t have happened at all were it freight main line across New York Bay was ongoing not for the murderous “Ice Trust” Scandal that was suf- while the Pennsylvania covertly moved forward with its fered upon city residents at the hands of Tammany Hall own plans to establish Pennsylvania Station in Manhat- (and its inherently corrupt minions) during the unusually tan, the resultant arrangement empowered all the more hot summer of 1901. Whatever the case, it seems clear after its chief internal advocate, Alexander Cassatt, was in retrospect that the concrete development of Pennsyl- ascended to the company presidency in 1899. It was on vania Station would likely have taken far longer to his watch that the first actual contract associated with achieve and been gained at a far greater cost than it did the project, that for installing a bulkhead and dredging were he not present, willing as he was to address the the Jersey City marshlands to provide for the future Pennsylvania Railroad on its own terms and in the con- construction of Greenville Yard, was awarded on March text of the project strictly on its own merits (as opposed 24, 1900. By that time the Pennsylvania was also quite to his own self-interests). Low and Cassatt were figura- advanced in its quest to officially gain corporate control tively joined at the hip in a strange sort of way as a re- of the Long Island Rail Road, which would represent the sult; each had his own set of daily demons to confront most crucial element of all in formulation of the New and struggle against — the Mayor with oft-nefarious city York Connecting scheme. officials over whom he had very little control set against Whereas the evolution of Penn Station outwardly re- a city that was fairly exploding outward in all directions; mained the Pennsylvania’s prime focus through these Cassatt with the interminable congestion and demands years, within the company almost as much energy was plaguing his railroad, set against an ever-present drum- dovetailed into the minutiae associated with its freight- beat of erstwhile public (and shareholder) entitlement hauling counterpart. This colossal venture was certainly and the exigencies of his company’s vast, highly-skilled not as obvious in the media because it attracted much work force. Each man’s position in the otherwise altruis- less governmental oversight and public scrutiny, even tic undertaking represented by the New York Terminal though there were even more geographic and jurisdic- (Continued on page 3) 2 ERA BULLETIN — AUGUST, 2016 From Recognition to Dominance Station projects and accommodations were reached at length, though there is no surviving evidence to support (Continued from page 2) an assertion that the railroad participated in one of offi- project thus manifested itself in different ways.