Third Avenue Lightweight Streetcars

[daveklepper]

More 125th St., Martin Luther King Blvd., today.   Looking west, west of the bend, with the high station of the Broadway IRT in the background:

And the rear of a car from Marble Hill turning onto 3rd Avenue to reverse at a crossover, just south of the intersection, or to proceed south to the 65th Street Carhouse.

65th Street Carhouse interior:

 

[daveklepper]

Jack May photo of 629 at Branford:

[daveklepper]

After a short period in 1937, year of construction tn the 65th Street shop, when it was a conduit car in Manhattan, 381 ran with poles on Ogden Avenue, The Bronx (both ends of that route in Manhattan, W. 155th & Amsterdam Avenue and W. 181st & B'way) until Summer 1947.  Whenb that line went bus, it was on Boston Road, shoewn in  thne next two photos, before moving to Yonkers.

[daveklepper]

Fan-trip car at Laake & Neperhan on the Lake Av. connector between the "5," Neperhan and "6" Tuckahoe Rd. Lines. 

[daveklepper]

Picture taken a  few moments before the above picture;

[daveklepper]

two more on Yonkers' Riverdale Avenue:

[daveklepper]

from Henry Raudenbush:

Riverdale had more buildings of this type, but Riverdale was been turned into a dual highway by demolition of all the buildings on a least one side.

The dash sign “New Yok Express”  was a concoction of a group that was promoting the idea of turning the abandoned Getty Square branch of the NY Central Putnam Division into a light rail line, giving several of the TARS lines a reserved right of way from Getty Square, down to the Van Cortland subway terminal, parallel to local service on Broadway.  Warburton Ave would have been one of the possible connecting routes.

 

 

 

 

[daveklepper]

The name of that organization was Metro Transit Club.  The upper photo is (I think) southbound on Neperhan Avenue, the "5" Line.  I thought the lower one was in New Rochelle on the loop cicling the downtown area, with a stop at the eralroad station, but I may be mistaken, and  it may be another Yonkers photograph.

 

[daveklepper]

Corrections made to previous captions from tnformation from Henry Raudenbush

[daveklepper]

Same location, south terminal nof Yonkers' Riverdale Avenue Line at the New York City Line, as the photo of regular "8" car 354 ear;ier.  At the north end of the line-up, looking south, fan-trip cars  371 and 327, with regular car 354 at the rear:

On the "6" Tuckahoe Road Line on Walnut Street just north of Yonkers Avenue, with Pond Road entering from the left.  Formerly, end of double track from Yonkers Avenue at this point.

 

[daveklepper]

Note caption correction for preceding photo.

Here, the north end of the Tuskahoe Road Line at the New York Central Putnam Division station at the intersection of Tuckahoe Road and Railroad Avenue.  Anyone knoiw the name of the station?

[daveklepper]

And one more Riverdale Avenue:

[rcdrye]

Just a guess but it looks like the station name was Dunwoodie (MP 8.09).

[daveklepper]

Thanks!    Two on the northern oasrt of Warburton Avenue, the first of which may have already been posted much earlier.

[daveklepper]

About a half-mile north of Main Street, end of double track on Warburton Avenue:

 The junction on Main Street with both Warburton avenues to the right, (1 line), double-track, and Riverdale Avenue (8), left. 

Palisades, across the Hudson, in shadow, in the background.

[daveklepper]

Four Yonkers Gettys Square pictures:

 

[daveklepper]

372 I think on Neperhan Avenue between Elm Street, north of Yonkers Avenue and Gettys Square. (I can be correctd),, and 384 on Neperhan Avenue looking north from the intersection with Yonkers Avenue, tracks for the 7 on thee right, bottom of the photograph.

The location of 384 was confirmd by both Henry Raudenbush and Russel  Jackson.  What is unusual is that 384  sports a "3" sign, but south bound on the "5" line.  I surmise that this may have been a sprcial servic, possibly at factory closing time, for the factoris at Lake Street, heading to 242nd St. & Broadway (IRT Subway Terminal) anf thus displaying the 3 sign for its southbound run.  It may have even gone north on "6" anf used the Lake Street connecting track to run south on 5.

 

[daveklepper]

Two more in Yonkers.  A '4" Mclean Avenue car from Woodlawn-Jerome avenue headed to the Foot-of-Main Street at the Central's Yonkers Station, and a "5" headd from their to Neperhan and Tomkins Avenues, both east of Gettys Square on New Main Stret.  Then a northbound McLean Avenue "4" on Cntral Park Avenue, where the tracks were apart, leaving the two passing lanes between them. 

[daveklepper]

333 "4" and 355 "5"

Russ Jackson:

The photo is looking into New Main Street at Getty square.  The 4 (inbound & outbound) used New Main and the 5 & 9 used New Main only outbound.  Not far along New Main the 5  & 9 switched off and ran on Nepperhan to Elm, where the 9 diverged and the 5 continued straight out on Nepperhan.  Both returned inbound along with the 6 & 7.  In theory the 9 could have returned via New Main, but the film indicates otherwise.  It also shows a derail on route 9 not shown on the ERA map. There was once a line 10 connecting the 4 and the 7 near the race track.  Don't know when it disappeared.  The 6 once ran all the way to Tuckahoe..

Jack May:

The '10' was a continuation of the Union Railway's Jerome Avenue line, which ran from 155th and Amsterdam to Yonkers Avenue (the racetrack) via Jerome Avenue, which becomes Central Park Avenue at the City Line.  The 4 McLean Avenue line crossed it at McLean Avenue and continued to via McLean Avenue to Bronx River Road/Webster Avenue, and then down to the Bronx Park Third Avenue el station.  In 1921, after the Dual Contracts, the system was rationalized, as almost all of the Jerome Avenue line's traffic went to the elevated portion of the IRT subway, and a certain amount of the Third Avenue el's traffic to Bronx Park moved to the IRT's White Plains Road line.  The Jerome Avenue streetcar line was discontinued and the 4 assumed its final routing, turning on to Central Park Avenue/Jerome Avenue, but only as far as the subway's Woodlawn terminal.  The trackage up Central Park Avenue north of McLean was abandoned as well, and that was the end of the '10.'  It is possible that the original '4' was cut back to the intersection of McLean and Webster from the Bronx Park el station before 1921--I'll have to check.

I recall reading somewhere that only one car was assigned to the 9 and it may returned over via the 6 and 7 to avoid the steep downhill grade. 

 

"4" 333, Henry Raudenbush:

The picture of #333 is on Central Park Avenue, where the two tracks were widely separated.   The gas station does not show in a “now” view on GSV.  It may have been swept away when Central Park Ave was widened into an expressway.  Sometime after the end of trolley operation.

[daveklepper]

Two more Yonkers photos:  (1) North end of the Warburton Avenue Line at the Hastings Town Line, and (2) Mclean and Broadway, the diverging tracks doing to Woodlawn at Jerome Avenue, uused  by the "4," and the "1" pictured cintinuing to Broadway an d 242nd Street.

[daveklepper]

Three along Warburton Avenue.  Note the trolley-wire signal-control contactor and the Nachod signal:

 

 

[daveklepper]

343 on its way on McLean Avenue from the Woodlawn Jerome Avenue IRT terminal to the Foot of Main Street, Yonkers, adjacent to the NYCentral Station there.  Jack May pointed out that McLean Avenue has lots of turns.  But maybe someone more familiar with Yonkers will know the exact lication by identifying the gas station.  As  shown on a previous posting, McLean terminates westward at Broadway, and north of that intersection "4" runs with 1, 2, and 3.  But it diverges about 3/4-mile south of Gettys Square to  head northeast on New Main Street and enters Gettys Square from the east.  

[daveklepper]

After the December 1947 Blizzard, Fordham Road, then Southern Boulevard. 

See Trains Transit Forum for the Sweeper

 

 

 

[daveklepper]

Autumn, 1946, at Columbia University, view looking north, tweweked from a  screenshot. Streetcarservice ende3d at end of 1946, replaced by M104 bs,  The 1904 IRt 116th St. Station headhouse has also gone, with the subway stairs and  escalators now on the sidewalks,

[pennytrains]

You do realize that we're going to have to get you to write a book for us?  You have so much knowledge and so many stories that deserve to be collected in a comprehensive survey of traction and transit.

[daveklepper]

Making hidden photos aailable would seem to be a higher priority for the present?

And Kalmbach does have two stories of mine in their files.   Meanwhile, please visit a website not in any way competitive with this one:

www

proaudioencyclopedia

com

and read:

David Read's biography

Manfred Schroeder's Frequuency Shifter (and a chance meeting in a railway lounge car)

And I can return email as an attachment a  manscript if you email me at

[e-mail]

[daveklepper]

Corrected the email address,

[e-mail]

Apologies for the missing "p."

[daveklepper]

I'll probably find some more negatives to be  scanned, repaired, and posted zs positives on this thead.  I think I may have taken more photos of this type of streetcar than anyone else, anywhere.  I suspect that many of the color photos of this type of  streetcar that are circulating on the  web are also actually my photos.  Moving to Israel 26 years ago, I left a box of slides with the Electric Railroaders Association.  A CD was issued that included some or most of these slides. I have yet to receive the CD.

However, most of my good photos would not have been possible without the  assistance I received  from older ERA members when I was a teenager.  Major organizer of independent photo excursions and travel to distant fan-trips was John Stern.  Others who helped were Walter Druck, Harold Geisseheimer, Herman Rinke, Lester Barnett, and certainly John Kneiling and Everett White, the two who organized most of the New York area fan-trips and allowed me to often play switchman and trolley-pole retriever.

I wish I remembred the name of the Irish-American Thirf Avenue operator who gave me my first taste of Heaven-on-Earth with my right hand on a K-Type controller and my left foot on the brake, "dead-man's control," line-switch, door-closing pedal.

[daveklepper]

On Broadway, Washington Heights, somewhere between W. 181 and`W. 200 Streets. southbound, from the side window of a northbound, May, 1947.

 

o

167th St. Crosstown, east of Webster Ave., Autumn, 1947:

[daveklepper]

evised caption. 324 on the "New Rochelle - Subway A" route southbound on Pelham's Main bStreet running into Pelhamdale Avenue.