would you like another question? Should it be outside the NYCity area?
Apparently, no one was interested in doing the reasonably simple research to answer this question. A look at a 1945 map of the subway and elevated system would show that there are two Bronx Park stations, one a branch of the 3rd Avenue elevated (before June 1940 also served by 2nd Avenue elevated trains during rush hours), and one the north end of 7th Avemue Express subway service at 180th street. The euphamistically-termed "sold-state destination indicators," were exactly the same for the subway cars and elevated cars for the two services, just metal bars painted black on both sides with white lettering on both sides. Neither station remains today. When Lexington Avenue Express service was rerouted (except for some five or six rush hour trains) from 241st Street and White Plains Avenue to Dyre Avenue on the old NYW&B RoW, the 7th Avenue Express took over the service to 241st & WPA. (The subway system has used the word road, White Plains Rd. for years, but in The Bronx it is called Avenue.) The short spur, the orginal northern end of line, opeend first by 2nd Avenue elevated trains before the tunnels under the Harlem River were complete and in service, from the junction just north of 177th Street West Farms Square station, was demolished.
The 1945 map also shows two subway 7th Avenue stations. In 1945, the one in Manhattan at 53rd Street and 7th AVenue was served by the E on one set of tracks, the north set on both levels, and across a single island platform on both levels by the D and BB. Prior to the opening of the Sixth Avenue subway, the south pair of tracks were not used. The one in Brooklyn was on Eastern Parkway and served by Brighton Locals ("1," usually articulated D-types) and Brighton Expresses (usually steels, two As,single units and two Bs, three-car units, during rush hours). But after 1967, with the Christie Street connection, 53rd and 7th in Manhattan was served by the E, D, and B (no longer BB), and Eastern Parkway and 7th was served by the Q, Brighton Express, QB, weekend and night Brighton semi-local, and the D local in Brooklyn (This may have been switched around on occasion.) For the last several years, service at this Brooklyn Station has been the Q, full-time via-Bridge local, and the B on weekdays, express in Brooklyn and on 6th Avenue, local on Central Park West and in Washingtib Heights. The B stops at both. The D did for a while.
But a wise pe;rson could have pointed out that South Ferry on the elevateds, at one time 9th 6th, 3rd, and 2nd, and the subway South Ferry station below, were also two separate stations, again using the same "soid-state destination indicators."
So, my replacement question is: Which North American PCCs had the very SHORTEST passenger carrying career before being removed from streetcar service completely with most material going to scrap.
There was a lot of competition for the title of most-wasted PCC conversion. Chicago scapped the bodies of almost 600 PCC streetcars built between 1947 and 1949 between 1956 and 1959, pooling the parts to build 570 PCC-control L cars between 1957 and 1960. The trucks, controls and some door aand window parts were all that were re-used.
You are correct, with some of those cars in-service only seven years, and they were the largest, and highest capacity, on-street PCC cars ever built in Norh America. (Brussels has and may still have some double-articulated four-truck PCC cars.) Two-man, rear loading, three people could board at once, exit at the middle or at front. Could really move a crowd.
Look forward to your question!
Other short-timers were Vancouver and Montreal, about 13 years each.
I went back and looked at the dates. The first conversion PCC L cars arrived in 1953, the last in 1959, with parts from cars dismantled in 1958. St. Louis Car "bought" each streetcar for $14,000 from CTA before stripping it for parts. Motors and controls were Westinghouse or GE, depending on the parts pool. The last four cars delivered, "high speed" single unit cars 1-4, were given special non-PCC control systems that had been tested earlier on a married pair from the first, non-conversion order.
So here's another Chicago item. Several railroads entered Chicago from more than one direction, C&NW and CMStP&P from three each, IC, PRR and NYC from two each. Another, smaller class I entered Chicago from two different directions, connecting via the tracks of another railroad.
Wabash, from St. Louis and Detroit?
Johnny
Wabash may be right, but the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee, believe it or not, was classified by the ICC as a Class One, because of its revenues. And it entered Chicago (Howard Street was the City Line if I am not mistaken) over the tracks of the Chicago Rapid Transit, later the CTA, from the west, the Skokie Valley Line over the rapid transit tracks of the Dempster Street shuttle line; and from the north, the Shore Line, over the rapid transit tracks of the Evanston-Wilmett line. Doesn't this count?
Johnny has the correct answer. Wabash entered from the southwest (toward St. Louis) at Belt Junction, from the east on its freight-only line to Montpelier Ohio at State Line (reached via the B&OCT from Clarke Junction in northwest Indiana). Connecting railroad was the Chicago and Western Indiana, of which Wabash was a part owner. Wabash offered mixed train service east of Gary as late as the 1950s.
CNS&M entered Chicago at the same point on both lines, at Howard Street. CNS&M ownership on the Shore Line ended at the Laurel avenue junction with the CM&St.P in Wilmette, on the Skokie Valley at the junction just east of Chicago Avenue in Evanston.
In 1917, the Wabash had passenger service from Chicago to Detroit, New York, and other points to the east.
I agree Johnny has the right answer, because neither the CTA nor CRT were technically railroads, they were transit lines. Yes, at the same point, but that was not your question, the direction was your question. One line came from the west and one from the north. And while the CM&St.P may have owned the track in Wilmette, it was operated by the CRT, and then ownership did transfer to the CTA in anycase, so the CTA was the connecting road. Anyway, I look forward to Johnny's question, and just wished to make the point that the CNS&M was a class one. So was the South Shore. Was the CA&E? It was a railroad legally, but I am not sure of its class status.
On the other had, the Indiana RR was an interurban, legally. Many don't know that the Hudson & Manhattan was also legally a railroad, although the successor, PATH is not. Not sure if the H&M was a Class One though.
Between Wabash's financial woes around its Pittsburgh extension and PRR's desire to get into the Chicago-Detroit market the PRR/Wabash route via Fort Wayne was a pretty good bargain. Dropping direct service to Chicago for the few local passengers saved lots of equipment time and trackage rights fees.
It was competitive speedwise with the Central's more direct service, despite the engine and crew change in Fort Wayne.
In the good old days of the Atlantic Coast Line, there were through trains between Jacksonville and Tanpa, going through Sanford.
There was through service through Sanford in 1893--but what were the roads that provided the joint service?
It is a really tough question to answer thoroughly and accurately. All the railroads making up the through service were part of "The Plant System," but names were changed, mergers took place, there was conversion from 3-ft gauge to standard, and from standard to 3 ft gauge, a really strange spaggetti bowl. There is the Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West, which became the Jacksonville and Johns River, the Sanford and St. Petersberg, the Florida, the Florida Southern. and more! All went into ACL in 1902.
daveklepper It is a really tough question to answer thoroughly and accurately. All the railroads making up the through service were part of "The Plant System," but names were changed, mergers took place, there was conversion from 3-ft gauge to standard, and from standard to 3 ft gauge, a really strange spaggetti bowl. There is the Jacksonville, Tampa, and Key West, which became the Jacksonville and Johns River, the Sanford and St. Petersberg, the Florida, the Florida Southern. and more! All went into ACL in 1902.
The Jacksonville Tampa and Kwy West became part of the Plant System IN 1893.
At Sanford, it connected with what was then the South Florida Railroad to Tampa. Not sure when that came into the Plant System.
You have the two roads--The Tropical Trunk Line's Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West Railway, which ran from Jacksonville to Sanford, and the Plant System's Florida Southern Division, which ran from Sanford through Tampa to Port Tampa, where it connected with Plant System steamers for Havana, Mobile, and Ellenton (on the Manatee River).
There were many roads in Florida at that time, and eventually most of them were collected into the threer major lines--ACL, SAL, and FEC (the L&N already had its line from Flomaton to River Junction; the GS&F also existed from Macon to Palatka).
Here is a difficult New York question, but doing the research is possible. What and where and what current rout is the oldest surviving actual RoW, elevated or surface, still in use without plans for change in the New York City subway system. Not including PATH. (parts of Newark- Jersey City)
An autobiographical hint: The promoter and boss of the steam railroad that first used this RoW graduated from the same grammar and preparatory schools that I did, CGS, Colulmbia Grammar School, the oldest in New York State and one of the oldest in the USA, started as Kings Grammar School as part of Kings College before the Revolution. The track at various times saw steam, trolley-pole-equipped elevated cars, and then steel subway cars with third rail shoes. With the latter, two routes used the RoW for a long time, but after WWII, one route, which had been an addition in the steam days, was relocated on a separate RoW slightly to the east. The junction between the two routes was a flat juncion, if I remember correctly. At the present time there is no reason for inteference between the two routes at either end of this RoW, although there is a location elsewhere where the two routes run together for a considerable distance, a much greater distance than the extent of this old and still-in-use Row. There are no stations directly on this RoW.
Not something involving the Rockaways?
Nope. A few years earlier.
Actually, more than a few years. All the original Rockaway-area route that is used by subway trains is no longer on the original RoW, because the LIRR, after electrification, elevated this portion of the line, and the remaining surface portion, at Rockway Park was an addition. Similarly, most of my fellow CGS-graduate's railroad RoW was also replaced by elevated structure. The difference is that most of the RoW not used by rapid transit trains once the elevated structure was comleted, was still in use for a streetcar line with the same name as the rapid transit (first elevated, then subway) line that used the elevated structure and the remaining RoW that is the subject of the question. The streetcar lasted until sometime in 1947.
There is a hint in a Transit thread on the Trains Forum.
This must be it then.
"Coney Island, Stillwell Avenue, has been the joint Southernmost terminal of the Brighton (now Q), Culver (now F), Sea Beach (now N), and West End (now D) lines for 99 years, since it replaced several surface terminals used by the private steam railroads that we folded into the Brooklyn United elevated system, which then became the BMT, then part of the B-Division of the Transit Authority. Only the N remains running purely on what were BMT lines; the others also use part of the IND"
I will let you have it. The terminal is new, 1918, but the tracks north of the terminal, always in use by the West End line, and a few years later used by the Sea Beach until about 1960 when it got its own entrance, are on the original RoW at grade level. The track is now used by the D. Rigth after Christie Street, it was used by the B, with the swap between Brighton Express and West End between the D and the B just a few years ago. The B now runs only weekdays and is express on the Brighton and on 6th Avenue, but local on Central Park West and in the Bronx (no longer going to Washington Heights, where now the C goes), and doesn't go to Coney Island anymore, just to Brighton Beach, with the Q running local and going all the way to Coney Island. But is the D that using the old RoW now.
A case of the question being answered by the poser of the question..sort of.
Dave what we need is for yourself to teach a 1 day course on the NYC system with EASY to follow handouts and PowerPoints. Have no idea how you can keep this all straight in your head but it is pretty amazing and I'm certain that you are the worlds preeminent authority on just what is what in NYC transit.
I will pose a question in half and hour from this posting.
OK...the question is:
Way back in April 28th, 1929 the New York Central, during a time when passenger service was still a thing of grandeur, inaugurated a new train, on the CASO, a very special exclusive train.
In a departure from standard practice it had a new stunning colour scheme.
What was the train? What was the colour scheme?
It was associated with 2 other new trains.
It is my understanding that some of the equipment, although extensively rebuilt, is still existing and preserved.
Monster bonus points for identifying the locomotive # on its first run.
daveklepper The promoter and boss of the steam railroad that first used this RoW graduated from the same grammar and preparatory schools that I did, CGS, Colulmbia Grammar School
The promoter and boss of the steam railroad that first used this RoW graduated from the same grammar and preparatory schools that I did, CGS, Colulmbia Grammar School
Dave, which steam road (on this map?) and what was the guy's name?
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/search/search.php?zoom_sort=0&zoom_query=8207&zoom_per_page=20&zoom_and=0&zoom_cat%5B%5D=0
Excerpt from New York Central Lines Magazine, June 1929, page 46
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/magazine/images/magazine-0629.pdf
A departure from standard in colors both inside and out, the Motor Queen, named after the two terminal cities on its run, Detroit, the "Motor City," and Cincinnati, the "Queen City," was put into service on April 28 by the Big Four Railway and the Michigan Central Railroad…
This new deluxe day coach train has a color scheme of brown above and below the windows. The window sashes and the spaces between are in fawn…
This is the second train in colors that has been announced by the New York Central Lines. The other is the Niagara Falls DeLuxe operated over the Michigan Central between Buffalo and Chicago, by way of Niagara Falls. It consists of a baggage car, a club smoker, deluxe coaches, a dining car of standard type and an observation car. The club smoker is being finished with walnut grained walls and brown carpet to match, while the observation car is being finished in flat colors in shades of brown and tan.
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