Spring at my Freshman year in High School, 1945, age 13. Two friends, Mark Steele and Leonard Rodwin joined me in a day of exploring the New York City subway and elevated system. I took an uptown Broadway 7th Avenue local from Broadway and 86th Street to 96th Street (one stop at 91st, as station dis-used for many years, when the 96th Street station platforms were extended south and new entrances built at 94th Street). The oldest "High-V" IRT steel subway cars, including the original "Gibbs cars" were used in this serivce. At 96th, Leonard and Mark joined me. We road the 7th Avenue Express (all stops above 96th) to E. 177th, West Farms Square, where we waited for the following train, a Lexington Avenue train to 241 St. White Plains Rd. (Av.). We always rode at the front of the train, looking out the front window in the train door next to the motorman's cab. These were tthe usual "Low-V" cars, similar to those preserved as the A-Div. Nostalgia Train. We rode to the end of the line, but at E. 180th we noticed the two-car gate-car train on the old NYW&B tracks, the new service to Dyar Avenue, and decided we would some day soon return to ride that line. At 241st we boarded a southbound 3rd Avenue elevated train, but were told it was a pull-in, that it would only take us only to Fordham Road, where it would reverse to storage on the center track. It was an "MUDC", multiple-unit-door-control. wood car converted from a gate car train. (These provided about 90% of the 3rd Av.Elevated's service at the time.) At Fordham Road we boarded a South Ferry local, similar equipment, we were too late for express service, and it was close to noon. We noted the elevated shop complex off to the right at 3rd and 99th Street. At Canal Street we were told that for some reason there was no service on the City Hall branch. so we took the next South Ferry train to Franklin Square, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge overhead, and walked from there over to Park Row. Instead of the Brooklyn Bridge elevated station, we found the five-track loop for Brooklyn streetcars, with an old 4100-series deck-roof car parked on the (on the westernmost loop as a waiting room. We boarded a PCC, got transfers, had a fast ride over the Bridge (on the tracks the elevated train service had used to 1944) and then on street trackage in Brooklyn to Bridge and Jay Streets, and, with paper transfers, went upstairs to board a gate-car train on the Lexington Avenue elevated. This split off from the Myrtle Avenue elevated after a few stops,jogged to the southeast a bit, and then ran parallel to Myrtle on Lexington before joining the Broadway elevated, with its steel standard subway cars ("B-Types), at Gates Avenue. The train was signed for Grant Avenue, the route sign "Lexington Fulton", which did not mean it ran on Fulton Street,which it didn't, but rather used a portion of the real Fulton Street line on Pitcin Avenue to Liberty and Grant Avenue. We were amazed with our first experience with the spaghetti-bowl juction between East New York and Atlantic Avenue, at least as complex as Zoo in Philly. At Grant Avenue we boarded a train of C-types, rebuilt gate cars with connections between the cars, side subway-car doors, continuous threasholds to narrow the gap to subway-width-clearance platforms (as the Fulton elevated had been built, along with the original cable line across the Brooklyn Bridge), and new steel ends. At Lefferts Avenue we walked to the other end of the train, and rode back as far as Atlantic Avenue, then used the mezzanine to go to the outbound platform, and boarded a train of multies, five bodies and six trucks per car, the 1935-1936 lightwieght steel brown articulateds, for a ride to the end of the subway line at Canarsie. We noted the active pedestrian and vehicular grade crossing at East 105th Street station. At Rockaway Avenue, the end of the line, we used the free transfer to the streetcar to the shore, and rode it to the end of its line and back, mostly street trackage on Rockaway Avenue with some PRW over to old shuttle right of way and loop at the end, a double-end rattan-flip-over-seat Peter Witt of the 8000-series (8111 is at Branford), but this cost us our third nickle of the day. I think evidence of the former right-of way of the surface elevated line, before becoming a separate streetcar shuttle, and then combined with the street line we rode, was seen. It was getting dark, so at Atlantic Avenue, we transferred from our "Multi" 14th Street-Canarsie train back to the Fulton Street line, rode another C-type to Rockaway Avenue, a 1940 Unification cutback terminal of the line that was elevated to downtown Brooklyn and over the Brooklyn Bridge. At Fulton St. & Rockaway Avenue we used the paper transfers to the A train downstairs, and .rode back to Manhattan and home,
Note that the multis were used in Canarsie service during non-rush hours, usually providing all the service. But during rush hours they ran to Lefferts Avenue with standard steels taking over the Canarsie service during the rush hours. Three services were run during the rush from 8th and 14th: Canarsie Express, skipping all 1st Avenue to Myrtle Avenue, Lefferts Express, ditto, and Mytle Avenue local, using a center pocket track (still there) just east of Myrtle Avenue to reverse. The last Canarse local just before the rush hours (4:55pm) was usually the Bluebird, three five-unit cars of the PCC St. Louis built 1940 most advanced subway train of the time, with its blue plush seats, PCC technology. h was the first of what was to be 50 such trains, but the Transit Authority cancelled the remaining order upon unification. Note this was the only case of express and local service on the same tracks in NY
Dave, it sounds like it was a great day all around. But what really amazes me is that three 13 year olds could ride all over the system without anyone bothering them or having their parents worried about their safety.
Truly a different time. But then, I've heard stories similar to this from Mom and others who remember New York City around the late Thirties and into the Forties.
Wayne
I started riding the subways and elevateds by myself at age 8. Dad had his main medical office on W. 29th Street (not far from where the Hudson River RR had its NY teminral, but I didn't know that at the time). and Mom, one of the two first women registered pharmasists in the USA, was the nurse (and book-keeper, etc.), and after school, I would sometimes have to use tje subway to go downtown to meet them for dinner and eiither return with them or return by myself. I regularly used the M10 bus to and from 86th and CPW to and from 94th and CPW to and from Collumbia Grammar School, then later its Preparatory School. Age 10 began traveling by myself between NY and Charlottesville and/or Richmond, VA and between them.
Yep, another time, another city, another country for that matter.
What a lucky kid you were!
Thank you Dave!
I have learned something new from each of these memories. Please keep them coming.
Yes, you were lucky!
I think you are wrong about the coal stoves on BMT el cars. They all had electric resistor heaters from the day they were electrified. The STATIONS had the coal stoves. I remember that clearly. Or some did, not all. Ditto many Manhattan elevated stations.
And don't forgate the "Old and Weary's Timber Fleet" painted to look like a streamliner leaving frm Weehauken! NYO&W tickets were honored on the Central's ferry of course, but much of the time one could ride those ferries for free, without anyone checking for tickets.
I don't remember at what age my mother started putting me on my own on the LIRR Hempstead branch, but it was before I was 11 (when we moved off of Long Island.) It was the late 1950s. I would take the train to/from school if the school bus didn't fit the schedule, or to go to the movies. I remember the fare was 15 cents, Garden City to Nassau Blvd. One time I went to Country Life Press station, because it was closer to my school. I asked a RR maintenance worker what the fare was, and he said he thought it was 18 cents. As my mother would only send me out with 15 cents, I walked to the next station at Garden City for lack of 3 pennies. I latter found out that the fare was 15 cents even for the extra distance.
Hudson River Day Line! Wow. My Mother had worked for Avon, Inc. and her mother, my Grandmother still did in the late 40s into the 50s. Avon treated its employees to yearly summer company day trip by Day Line..and because of the number of employees both at the Rockefeller Center RCA Building offices and at the Suffern factory, it took more than one boat each time until toward the end. I remember several steamers taking us up to Rye Playland along the shores of Long Island Sound. The last time I remember one of these trips was on Alexander Hamilton up to Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson and coming back down the River and under the George Washington Bridge after dark. I think the only other steamer I remember being on on these trips may have been George Washington, not sure.
The other boat still under steam at that time (other than the West Shore ferries by then) was the City of Keansburg from Manhattan to Keansburg, NJ. Did that once with family to visit cousins.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
Boys, don't worry about drifting a little off topic, anyone who doesn't want to "listen" doesn't have to.
See, I was born after all those glory days and I just LOVE hearing about them, whether it's Mom's tales of New York or Dad's memories of the North Jersey 'burbs in the Thirties and Forties. Dad saw Balbo's flying boats roaring up the Hudson from Alpine Lookout on the Palisades, by the way. Mom remembers seeing the "Hindenburg" on it's last fly-over over Manhattan. It's all your first-hand memories that keep them alive, so keep 'em coming!
Oh CTGuy, remember this? "It's no trouble, it's no fuss, take a PUBLIC SERVICE BUS!"
Yes, my Mom and Dad and I once, I was about age four, summeer 1936, did go to Albany and back on the Hudson River Day Line, and enjoyed the trip. Of course, my greatest pleasure was seeing the trains on both sides of the Hudson, and there were many.
In the summer of 1937, we went to visit my sisters who were couselors at Camp Wiko-Suta in the Bristol-Hebron area of New Hamphire. The next year I started as a "mdget" at the boys camp, wih departure from Grand Central Terminal via camp chartered Pullmans. But in 1937 we took the overnight boat to Boston, then taxi to North Station, and train to Concord or Plymouth, where we were met.
And of course I remember the ferriers. The East River 90th Street Ferry to Astoria (replaced by the Triboro Bridge) The 39th Street Brooklyn ferry to Staten Island The 125th Street ferry to Edgewater and the bus (formerly Public Service streetcar) up the steep road to Palasades Amusement Park And all the Jersey Shore railroad ferries, rode all but the PRR ferry. New York Central, Weehawken - 42nd St. Lackawanna Hoboken - Barcley Street and Courtland Street Erie Pavonia part of Jersey City - Christopher St. Central of New Jersey, also used by B&O and Reading passengers, Jersey City - near Canal Street, nearby, not the exact street location. There was no money saved using the PRR ferry, less expensive to ride the joint H&M-PRR sevice to Newark. I did ride the Tottenville (Staten Island) - Perth Amboy ferry, on a solo railfan excursion South Ferry Staten Island ferry, SIRT to Tottenville, and PRR back from Perth Amboy, age 15. The Perth Amboy ferry was a far more primitive affair, more like a powered barge than the floating castles that other NYC area ferries are and were.
The E. 90th St. Ferry to Astoria was accessed by the very last Green Lines (owned by GM at the time) streetcar route, the 86th St Crosstown, and I wailed in the summer of 1936 when we had to ride a bus instead. The regular trips to Astoria were to my cousin Bell's home in Sunnyside, where her son Janti was my age and in looks and other ways my virtual twin and best friend. They both went down with Cunard's Athena in September 1939, and I really have never completely recovered from the loss. His older brother Danny, did survive and teaches or taught international law in Cambridge. He and I studied Hebrew together as he prepared for his Bar Mitzvah, with my enjoying the Broadway streetcar before and after lessons. His father, Dr. Edward Wilkes, was very close to my father, who had advised against time) their annual Scottish vacation that year. Ed survived and continued working with my Dad as pediatrician for sick children. When Danny was in Princeton and I in MIT, we would visit each other (excuse being Hillel business, we were both active), by train of course, including "PJ&B" or "Dinky." Ed's cousin, the late architect Joseph Wilkes, was editor of The Architectural Encyclopedia, for which I wrote "The Acoustics of Assembly Spaces," much much later (1995-6.)
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter