Steam Locomotive #35 Restoration Committee

    Steam Locomotive #39 Restoration

On LIRR Continuation Page 1a:

On this LIRR Continuation Page 2:
    Odd Incident at Wreck Lead (on the LIRR)
    LIRR and LI Railroad Miscellany
    Converted LIRR HEP/Cab Control Units
    Central RR of LI - moved Continuation Page 5 on 17 Dec 00.
    Dashing Dan and Dottie

On LIRR Continuation Page 3:
    Nassau County Police 2nd Pct. Booth D/Locust Tower
    Victorian Stations Still Standing on the LIRR

On LIRR Continuation Page 4:
    Blissville and Laurel Hill Sidings, Maspeth Yard, and Fresh Pond Yard

On LIRR Continuation Page 5:
    Central RR of LI - moved to this page 17 Dec 00.
    LIRR DE30AC and DM30AC Locomotives
    Victorian LIRR Stations (continued)

On the LI Railroads Continuation Page:

On separate pages:

Long Island Live Steamers

The New York & Atlantic Railway, lessor of LIRR freight operations.

Brooklyn Historic Railway Association and the legendary LIRR Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.

Railroad Eagles - Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, etc.

Note:  There is also a Long Island Rail Road Historical Society, run by Dave Morrison, retired in May 1999 as Branch Line Manager - Port Jefferson, Oyster Bay, and Patchogue-to-Montauk Branches, and the reigning expert on the Penn Station (and Grand Central) eagles*; it's an internal LIRR employees and retirees group which can be reached by snail-mail at "Oyster Bay Train Station, Oyster Bay, New York  11771" (where they have an exhibit in the waiting room).  They can be reached through Dave.  Dave is also the author of a book of LIRR steam locomotive photos (see the LIRR Bibliography - with a special offer for readers of my RR pages).

See also HOW TO BOOT A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE or

Well, it doesn't take too much knowledge of the geography of the South Shore of Long Island to see that such a jaunt takes one to the LIRR's Wreck Lead Draw, the drawbridge over Reynold's Channel between Island Park and Long Beach.  We usually hit it around noon on a Saturday or Sunday, just about when the morning beach rush hit.  As we tacked neatly alongside and blew our little tin whistle, the bridge tender would scream at us to strike our mast and go under.  You can guess what kind of "going under" we'd have done if we'd stood up and tackled the gear in a canoe in the middle of Reynold's Channel, which has a vicious rip.  So, we would holler back that we were a fully-rigged vessel and that he should G-d damn well raise the draw or be reported; whereupon he would yell back that he'd be eternally damned if he would. This resulted in a lot more tacking, tooting, and threatening until either a larger vessel came along and forced the bridge to open or he'd tire of our threats and raise it after a half hour or so.  He then had the cute little habit of dropping the span before we were quite through. By half-capsizing, we always managed to squeak under.  The tender never caught us, but never tired of this game, either.  What a fiend!  Clearly, he was eternally damned over and over each summer.  Could he have been mad old Sam Eldred, the Wreck Lead tender of 1904, resurrected?  [This last is a refernce to an article in the NRHS-LIST SEMAPHORE ca. September 1991; the story related here is adapted from one printed in the October 1991 SEMAPHORE.]

My memory may be a wee bit off on this, perhaps.  I think that the old draw span didn't truly lift up so much as swing sideways and up, collapsing like a parallelogram as it went.  Anyone remember better?  And just how many of you knew where Wreck Lead is, anyway, before reading this, eh?

Recreated (lost) 28 Jul 98        Updated:  04 Jul 97, 02:30

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel - this is an actual ancient tunnel under the hump on Atlantic Avenue just east of the Brooklyn waterfront, built in 1844, last used in 1859, and sealed up in 1861.  Other people's web sites about the tunnel leave out the most interesting and least-believable yarn ever.  It seems that one of the LIRR's earliest engines. ca. 1840, after the Ariel and Post Boy (possibly a high-wheeler made in England), was never striken from the detailed records, the only one whose disposition is unknown!  When Bob Diamond first resurrected the tunnel, the story was bandied about that a legend had this missing loco still buried in the tunnel!  Someone remembered playing in his basement as a little boy and climbing through a collapsed wall onto the right-of-way of the old tunnel and seeing an ancient loco with giant iron tires on rotted-out wooden wheels leaning against the wall of the tunnel; the description fits the missing engine.  Only some half or so of the tunnel has been excavated to date and the idea that the old loco is buried in there is simply fascinating (and too good to be true)!  Much more on this on my courtesy page for the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association.

Just as good is the rumor that an old engine went into a ditch along the West Hempstead branch (I think that's where; perhaps around Malverne? {wrong - see following}) and was buried on the spot; you guessed it - the story current is that it's been found!  Oh, yeah, and so have Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan!  Still, stranger things have happened and wouldn't a positive resolution of either story be great?

  FANTASTIC NEWS! - 15 Feb 01 - a close former co-worker, who I can trust implicitly, grew up in West Hempstead and assures me that he played on the side of the engine, which was barely above the muck, ca. 1970, and that his older cousin played on it ca. 1955 when it was still higher out of the muck.  It is in West Hempstead, directly behind the MacDonalds (where a steak house, that my Dad took us to, used to be) on the east side of Hempstead Avenue just northeast of where Nassau Boulevard splits away and south of Eagle Avenue, opposite Hall's Pond, immediately southeast of the little creek that runs south from Hall's Pond between MacDonalds and Carvel (all this is just north of Exit 17 on the Southern State Parkway).  The West Hempstead Historical Society is aware of the engine and the only reason locals have not recovered the engine is supposedly money.  Another wild one; my friend tells me that the land on either side of, and under, SSP in Hempstead Lake State Park contains dozens of old LIRR cars that were dumped there as fill and buried (he watched them do it)!

Fact is, there really is (or was, ca. 1965) an antique wooden truss-rod combine built by the LIRR at Morris Park in 1898 running (or stored, now) on the Moscow, Camden & San Augustine RR in Texas (see Page 278 in Ron Ziel's ill-numbered "Steel Rails to the Sunrise", first edition of 1965).  Oh, how I wish it could be brought to the Oyster Bay museum site!

05 Jun 2002 - Another fact was that there really were three LIRR cabin cars (cabooses, hacks, crummies, etc.) available for you to own.  It would have been hard for you turn this offer down but you were lucky; SOMEHOW I just couldn't bring myself to take those gems for myself!  The LIRR declared surplus friction-bearing equipment including cabin cars C-60 (class N-22A) and C-63 and C-64 (class N-22B).  All three were basically complete and suitable for any use (although rather well grafittied):

(Photo courtesy S. Torborg, 05 Jun 2002 - all rights reserved)

As it turned out, the LIRR donated them to the Twin Forks Chapter of the NRHS (not to the RR Museum of LI), and Twin Forks will restore them.

NEWSDAY, 19 Apr 98, Page J7, LIRR Advertising Section inside Section H, the Pioneers in Motion special history section on "Long Island: Our Story" -

"Boland's Landing, the employee stop for the Morris Park repair shop, was named for Al Boland, a road foremen who was also the LIRR's first environmentalist.  Boland was responsible for monitoring smoke coming out of steam locomotives, to make sure it would not discolor neighborhood laundry."

Guess that answers the question rather succinctly, even if the source is undated.

For steam fans and auto and history buffs, see the new 1866 Dudgeon Steam Automobile page; one is in the Smithsonian and one still exists, in running condition right here in Oyster Bay (Long Island, New York)!

I stumbled on directions for the "Route from 'Seaford' to 'Little Neck' in the New York City subway" (A NEAT TRICK!) at a subway site, The Subway Navigator.

Actually, I was hoping to find a site for the Wantagh Preservation Society, which has the old LIRR parlor car, Jamaica, a steel heavyweight, pretty well along in its restoration, sitting alongside the old Wantagh station, now relocated to the west side of Wantagh Avenue, opposite Emeric Avenue, about half way between Southern State Parkway and Sunrise Highway.  The Society now has its own official site.

Oh, give me a break!  At the Greenberg show at Stony Brook, Long Island (NY) on 15 Mar 98, who should I find talking to the John Scala noted above and elsewhere on my site but John Scala! , Both 6' 4", not related, both named John Joseph Scala, both born the same year (only some 3 months or so apart), and both very active in railroading!  Author John is a Director of the Long Island-Sunrise Trail Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society (linked above) and the other John Scala is a Director of the Long Island Live Steamers, also linked above.  I belong to both organizations and never realized the John Scalas were different people (I'd never noticed Steamer John's nametag before)!

LIRR modelers should look at Model Railroading on Long Island and at Mike Boland's articles in the SEMAPHORE, the monthly newsletter of the Long Island Sunrise-Trail Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society and consider joining the Sunrise Trail Division of the Northeastern Region of the National Model Railroad Association.

Didja know? - The Nassau County Police Department's Second Precinct Booth D at the Locust Valley station, in an old two-story frame structure for the past few years, is actually the LIRR's old Locust (interlocking) Tower; material moved - see next page.

Anent that 1989 caboose hop into Degnon yard (described on on Model RR page 2), fellow NRHS/LIST member J. J. Earl turns out to have been our conductor (on YFD201); he writes, "My crew and I had a hand in that train for many months, from gathering up the hacks, cleaning interior and exterior and by hook or crook, obtaining seat cushions for the comfort of the passengers.  (Holban yard, at that time, had many passenger cars stored awaiting disposal).  Gene {Collora} had made arrangements for our crew to go to the Storage Yard the Friday before the trip and make up the train to include the A/C passenger cars between the hacks.  When the big day arrived, SW10 #?, took our train on it's west end Odyssey.  Speed control not being needed in this territory, MP15ac were restricted from some places that we went.  If we had had that 1500, we may not have had to double out of Degnon."  {Thanks, J. J.!}

Converted LIRR HEP/Cab Control Units

Road Nos.     Qty.  Model
605, 607, 609  3    FA-2
611, 613-617   6    FA-1
619            1    F-9A  (c/n 18756)
620-623        4    F-7A  (c/n 10349, 16651, 12626, and 12637)
3100           1    FA-2

(per LIRR section of NYCSubway site and Scala, Diesels of the Sunrise Trail.)

Bryan Turner fully documents the LIRR HEP cabs.

Two of those EMD units (F-9A #619 and F-7A #621) ended up all the way down at the Seminole Gulf Railway in Fort Myers, Florida; they were purchased by the SGLR for HEP and control cab use on their dinner/excursion trains.  #619 has been fully reconditioned and is in service as SGLR #501, as shown in this photo by Harvey Henkelman:

(Photo courtesy H. Henkelman, 17 Jun 2002 - all rights reserved)

For an interesting detail on #622, see my EMD page.

Pennsy fans with good imaginations (or strong stomachs) gotta see my Berlinerwerke Apocrypha page!

David D. Morrison) retired in May 1999 as the Long Island Rail Road's Branch Line Manager - Port Jefferson and Montauk Branches, and remains active in the Long Island Rail Road Historical Society and the Long Island-Sunrise Trail Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.

He is also well-known as, firstly, the unofficial historian of the Pennsylvania Station eagles, about which he is writing a book, and, secondly, as the unofficial historian of the Grand Central Terminal eagles, about which he has already written a book (see the RAILROAD EAGLES page.

Dave Morrison is the compiler of:

Here he is in all his glory!  There was also, briefly, a Dashing Dottie; here she is, courtesy of Bob Anderson's LIRR History Page (and colorized by him):

Well, here's the latest (Oct 2002) incarnation, on T-shirts and sweatshirts, with the LIRR name mispelled (as usual):

{Now, are they saying Dan was established in 1834?}

Ridiculous!  A modern Dan would be wearing a digital Rolex, not an analog watch!

Here, thanks to John for digging out the card, which apparently was placed on the seats that highly auspicious day, is Pat:

[May 2003 image courtesy of J. J. Scala - all rights reserved)
(Thumbnail image; click on picture for larger image)

I picked up a tiny Dan pin on 19 Nov 2005, all of ⁷/₈" in diameter:   (22 Nov 05)

[22 Nov 2005 picture by and © 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)

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