Queensboro Bridge Railway cars

[daveklepper]

Information from Jack May:

S. W. Huff was appointed receiver of the Steinway system after the 1922 bankruptcy of the NY&QC, when the two operations were split.  The 3-cent line cars were purchased by Steinway/Huff after the abandonment of the Manhattan Bridge line in 1929.

In 1938 the Steinway's bondholders foreclosed on the railway and soon converted all the routes to bus operation, except for the local line over the Queensboro Bridge; all its properties and rights being purchased by Queens-Nassau Transit.  I suspect that the deal was officially signed at some point before the end of 1939. 

During the interim period after the foreclosure, and both before and after the conveyance of the Steinway property to the new owners, the relationship of the QBRailway and the Third Avenue was probably strictly contractual.

It is said that the corporate name of the QNT owned carrier became the Queensboro Bridge Railway, with the Steinway Omnibus Company being a its subsidiary, but that is neither here nor there when talking about operations.

[daveklepper]

Dear Moderator:   I got the original images dor the two "photographs" from the "bandoned Stations" wensite  from a rear 2001 copyrighted article.  The author states in the captions that the images  were "from an iunknown source."  I believe that, although the article is copyrighted, the images cannot be copyrighted if the actual source is unknown.

In addition, I put in about a day's work to correct defects, color and balance correction, to make them both worth saving for myself and to post here.  If there is a problem, I'll understand and observe your decision in the fujture. 

Both are views looking toward Mahnattan.  The upper is above the Roosevelt (Welfare) Island Station, with a westbound car leaving.  The lower from the Vernon Blvd. Station, with an eastbound car approaching.  Ex=NewBedford cars after repainting:

[daveklepper]

 

Two Russ Jackson photos.  601, now orange and cream, on the eastern of the two remaining active loop tracksm ready gto depart.     606 over the pit on the northern of the two sidings.  This underground terminal was also the carhouse after the Queens streetcars from north and east of Queens Plaza became bus lines, the last in 1939.  And after June 1947, with loss of access and existance of Third Avenue's 65th Street carhouse and shop, it became the shop as well.

 

 

[daveklepper]

Here is a corrected map:

[daveklepper]

Apologies again:  Addotional typos have been found and will be corrected on the map.  Also, some new information that may require revision of the track map, especially in the 2nd Avenue underground terminal.

Done!

[daveklepper]

Map typos corrected.  Apologies!

And corrected again.

[daveklepper]

Henry Raudenbush	Wed, Nov 17, 10:38 PM (12 hours ago)

Here are some pictures that explain the istory of the onnection between TARS on 59 St and the trolley lines on the Queensboro Bridge/. 

 

A – Pre-1918 view of a TARS car on its way to Queens, at the east end of the conduit-equipped connection track.  Note the THREE arched panels in the wall beside the car.  Also note that the track is set off from traffic lane by a curb.

 

 

B – in the 1920’s, the upper level of the Queensboro Bridge was modified.  The Manhattan el tracks which had been in the center of that level, were moved to the north half, and a new roadway was built in the south half.

The new roadway had and entrance ramp from 57^th and 58^th sts, as show inn this pic.

 

 

C – The ramp curved into the bridge approach, and this required one of those arched panels shown in A to be rebuilt at an angle,  The angled face is visible here.

 

 

D – A closer view of the angled panel, which was built partly on the site of the conduit-equipped connection track, which was no longer used in regular service, as TARS had quit this service about 1918:

.

 

E -  Since TARS wanted to retain a connection to their subsidiary, Steinway Ry, , a new connection was built.  This had to be on a different alignment to avoid the angled panel, and did not require conduit.  Here is a picture of the construction of the new connection.  Note only TWO arched panels remain in the straight alignment.

 

 

F – A picture of 611 in the process of delivery, showing the angled panel, and the bridge carrying the 57^th St ramp over the connection, looking west.  Also of interest – note the “extension cord” connected to the trolley pole – the other end of the cord would be hooked over the live wire on the bridge approach, so the car could be oved under its own power, instead of being pushed or towed.  I seem to remember that the sweeper/line car rig had been damaged in the course of delivery of these cars.  I remember seeing a similar cord being used in early days at Branford, to move cars on sidings without wire.

 

 

 

 

 

[daveklepper]

In November 1947 (possibly late October), a Third Avenue Transit streetcar operator told me that the Queensboro Bridge Railway was about to receive some 2^nd-hand streetcars to replace the old ex-Manhattan Bridge 3-Cent Line cars they were using.  Monday, after school, I went to investigate, with my Leica-D, and found one of the “new” cars on a flatbed truck.  There was enough light for a decent photo. I was told the crane and rigging to unload it would arrive in the middle of the night.  No way I could wait around, miss supper at home, worry my parents.  But I did come back the next day and days afterward, and photographed what I could. 

Some of the shop equipment from the 3^rd & 65^th Car-house-Shop, where the ex-3-Cent Line cars received overhauls (with one still in that shop on 29 June 1947, last day for conduit-only Manhattan streetcars) had been purchased by QBRy and installed on the former lay-up track south of the underground loops, making for a small shop. 

A rope or chain was used  for the combined tower-car-snow-sweeper to pull each  New Bedford to a location under the wire, from where the car could run under its own power into the underground 2nd Avenue Terminal.

 

 

 

 

[daveklepper]

On what is now the upper-level roadway.

[Warren J]

Where on this bridge did the Second Avenue El trains run?  They did connect to the shared IRT/BMT station at Queensborough Plaza.  Of course, all of this is a bit before my time.   

[daveklepper]

An ex-Manhattan Bridge Three-Cent Line car at the Queensboro Plaza boarding stop.  Note that the roll-sign is missing with its bulb exposed.  A late summer 1947 photo, and the New Bedford cars are to arrive soon.  Also the remains of clonduit from the time some  28 years earlier when Third Avenue 42nd Street cars crossed the bridge:

[Overmod]

aegrotatio

Are the elevators still there?

The big vehicular elevators were taken out when the 'upside-down' Welfare building was razed, I think about 1970.

I don't think the (very long) passenger elevator operation survived the trolley by more than a year.  There's a similar consideration for the elevators at each end of the bridge that accessed the pedestrian walkway.  If I remember right (it has been a very long time) the one in Queens is still accessible by maintenance staff, but the Manhattan side is disused -- there were some discussions of renovating it for maintenance equipment access around the time of the great pot-smoking party that spawned the tramway.

Remember that there is a lift bridge across from the Queens side at 36th St. (with a bus line that runs over it, the Q102) and a fairly capable garage built in the early Seventies next to it for people wanting to get to the island easily but not have to park once actually there.

Funny that I remember seeing long spiral ramps down from bridge level at one point, long ago.  There was a proposal to build much larger ones at one point, but it came to nothing.

[daveklepper]

A closer view:

[daveklepper]

New Bedford colors (in B&W)

[daveklepper]

[daveklepper]

Found some more photos. westbound car entering and leaving Vernon Blvd. (or Av.) Station

[daveklepper]

Not certain, but believe they are maintained for emergency purposes.

[aegrotatio]

Are the elevators still there?

 

[daveklepper]

The other bridge station besides Welfare (now Roosevelt) Island was/is Vernor or Vernon Boulivard.   Walked on it once on a Coney Island to Yonkers-Hastings town line streetcar-only trip to go from the Long Island City terminal for streetcars from Brooklyn up to the Queensboro Bridge trolley station elevator.  In Manhattan walked from the 2nd Avenue terminal to the 65th Street carhouse to board a put-in K streetcar to ride to Marble Hill 225th and Broadway to transfer to a C car, still convertables at the time, to 262nd At. Bronx-Yonkers line, then to board a 1 to the Hastings line.  The "T" had already been bused, making the Brooklyn Bridge-Park Row connection impossible.  The walk proved a bit longer than expected, in perhaps in retrospect I should have used the 3rd Avenue Elevated to bridge the gap from Brooklyn Bridge.

[daveklepper]

[quote user="54light15"]

I remember the tracks on either side of the bridge in the 1960s. I think they just went back and forth and were the last streetcars to run in New York until the Buffalo system opened.

[/quote above]

There were several NY & Queens County and Steinway Lines streetcar routes that used the bridge, with the last, a Steinway line, bused in 1939.  Qeensboro Bridge Railway was set up as a subsidiary one or the other of these now bus operations, because the Welfare Island Station could not accessed except by the streetcars, and dito the first stop in Queens, street name escaping me even though I walked on it.  The Manhattan Terminal was an undergound three-loop station between 59th and 60th Streets on the east side of Second Avenue.  A storage siding became the shop track after Third Avenue Transit closed the 65th Street and 3rd Avenue Shop and Carhouse in July 1947, where maintenance and overhaul had been performed after 1939.

The New Bedford color scheme was two-tone green, and a few of the Osgood Brandley's did wear that in service before being repainted cream and orange.

[MidlandMike]

54light15

RME- I was born on Long Island in 1955, but I sure don't remember any steam boats growing up except for the Hudson River Day Line boat, the Alexander Hamilton which was advertised on TV. I wonder where that one is now. Likely scrapped, I guess. 

Firelock, I got very sick of the song "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" back in the day. WABC played it to death. Thank you Cousin Brucie! 

 

The Fall River Line quit in 1937.

 

Edit: I see I posted this one minute too late.

[RME]

54light15

RME- I was born on Long Island in 1955, but I sure don't remember any steam boats growing up except for the Hudson River Day Line boat, the Alexander Hamilton which was advertised on TV.

The Fall River Line boats were gone, abruptly, in 1937 when there was a strike and the owning company simply ceased operations.  The Line's time had really come by then, though. 

It may be hard to believe, but all the passenger boats they had then (the Priscilla could sleep 1500 people, and the Commonwealth was even larger) were sold for no more than $88,000 and were ignominiously scrapped -- it is possible that some of their woodwork was adaptively reused, but I know of none that was.

I grew up with "As the towers of Manhattan fade in the morning mist..." and I loved Bear Mountain as a destination -- but riding the Alexander Hamilton was one of those things, like seeing the pathetic excuse for a view from the World Trade Center deck when it was new, that got put off indefinitely as something to do later until there abruptly wasn't a later.

[Firelock76]

54, I remember the "Ghost Fleet,"  we could see it from the road ( I think Route 9W)  going up to Bear Mountain Park, this was back in the early to mid-60's.  Liberty ships and Victory ships, I don't remember how many but there were quite a few of them.  A very impressinve sight.

And the "Mary Powell" was a famous Hudson River steamer, even known in Europe.  You can find the story easily on-line.

[wanswheel]

https://archive.org/stream/newyorkqueenscou00seyf#page/n41/mode/2up

http://www.trainsarefun.com/lirr/seyfried.htm

Excerpt from Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_F._Seyfried

Seyfried was born in Ridgewood, NY on April 18, 1918 and as a child lived in Hollis.  After receiving bachelor's and master's degrees in Classics from Fordham University in 1941, he was inducted into the Army in October 1941. After first being assigned for defense of the Panama Canal, in 1943 he qualified as a navigator in the Air Force. He flew 50 missions for the 15th Air Force based in southern Italy and was discharged 1945.

http://www.qgazette.com/news/2012-04-18/Front_Page/Seyfried_Belongs_To_The_Ages.html

[wanswheel]

http://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/05/archives/fate-of-sunken-alexander-hamilton-rests-in-raising-funds.html

[54light15]

Fascinating video! I recall on the commericals for it how they mentioned the ghost fleet at Indian Point. I always wished I could have seen those ships. In Kingston, New York there is a place called the Rondout creek, an inlet off the Hudson. There is or was a restaurant called, "Mary Ps" named after an overnight boat, the Mary Powell. It had three-abreast stacks and was abandoned in the Rondout in 1917.

It's an interesting area; it's the eastern entrance to the old D & H canal and the New York Trolley Museum is nearby. If you travel west along the creek up into the hills you will see the place used by Iron Mountain to store valuables. It's an actual iron mine converted to a secretive storage facility. 

To bring this back to trolleys, does anyone know if they've hung wires at the trolley museum? There weren't any the last time I was there 25 years ago. 

[Firelock76]

Found an "Alexander Hamilton" video!  No, Lin-Manuel Miranda's not in this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmK8HrCtg6k

Look for shots of another vessel that came to a sad end.

[wanswheel]

https://ia601905.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/35/items/interpretiveanal00mcli/interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2.zip&file=interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2/interpretiveanal00mcli_0076.jp2&scale=2&rotate=0

https://ia601905.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/35/items/interpretiveanal00mcli/interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2.zip&file=interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2/interpretiveanal00mcli_0077.jp2&scale=2&rotate=0

https://ia601905.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/35/items/interpretiveanal00mcli/interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2.zip&file=interpretiveanal00mcli_jp2/interpretiveanal00mcli_0078.jp2&scale=2&rotate=0

https://archive.org/stream/interpretiveanal00mcli#page/n0/mode/2up

[Firelock76]

I can understand that 54Light, I (and everyone else!) got sick of "Nights In White Satin" by the Gloomy Blues when WABC played THAT one to death!  Forty-plus years and I'm still sick of it!

Off-topic, I know.  "Nuff said.

I got curious and looked up the "Alexander Hamilton."  It was removed from service in 1971 when Circle Line purchased the Hudson River Day Line.  It spent some time at the South Street Seaport, then the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and then was moved to a pier at the Naval Weapons Station in Earle, NJ.  In November of 1977 it caught fire and sank in a storm.  The wreck is still in Earle, but in a secure zone not open to the public.  Sad end to a fine ship.

Maybe it just died of a broken heart.  Some things, ships, houses, buildings, just seem to know when they're not wanted anymore.