Degnon Terminal Railroad, plus

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

The New York Connecting Railroad (the old New Haven line from Oak Point Yard across the Hellgate Bridge
    and down through Fresh Pond to Bay Ridge) will not be covered on this site; a new book about
    the NYCRR is coming out, sponsored by the LI Sunrise-Trail Chapter, NRHS (see below).
    Better yet, there is now a NYCRR Society!  See below.

    However, see my Z-Scale Articles page for a detailed writeup on the Hellgate in Z (1:220).

MODEL RAILROADING Long Island Sunrise-Trail Chapter
    (National Railway Historical Society)

Sunrise Trail Division
    (Northeastern Region)
    (National Model Railroad Association)

Note:  There is also a Long Island Rail Road Historical Society, run by Dave Morrison, Branch Line Manager - Port Jefferson and 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 at dmorrison4@home.com.  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).

Steam Locomotive #35 Restoration Committee
    (Friends OF LOCOMOTIVE #35 INCORPORATED)
  Restoration of Pennsy Class G5 Long Island Rail Road 4-6-0 #35

Steam Locomotive #39 Restoration
    (Railroad Museum of Long island)
  Restoration of Pennsy Class G5 Long Island Rail Road 4-6-0 #39

Long Island Live Steamers

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

On this page:
Long Island Railroads
Port Washington/Soundview/Manorhaven/Sands Point Railroad Tunnel
The Steinway System.
Cold Spring Harbor RR?   (14 Jan 06)
LIRR FIRSTSand LIRR Bibliography
    (both formerly on this page; moved to LIRR Continuation page 1a on 10 Dec 01)

* NOTE:  There is The New York Connecting Railroad Society, an all-volunteer organization started in 1993 and incorporated to preserve the history of the joint venture between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New Haven (NYCRR and the Hell Gate Bridge); they publish a newsletter, "The Connecting".

# - the BF&CIRR and NYG&CIRR are new ones to me (10 Dec 01) and the gentleman who inquired about the latter sent along a scan of his stock certificate:

[Thumbnail image; click on the picture to get larger image.]

The STEINWAY SYSTEM:

William Steinway was not only a famed manufacturer of pianos; he was also quite an entrepreneur and innovator.  Borrowing heavily from Jim Dent's fabulous Railway Station Historical Society site:

Steinway moved his works to Long Island City in 1870 and, in 1881, built worker's housing near Bowery Bay, open to all, not just his workers.&bsp; He also put up the power plant (today's Con Ed Ravenswood plant) in Astoria.  Steinway built Daimler motor carriages (the American Mercedes, under license at his LIC plant (one of the earliest automobile factories in the US, circa 1896-1916).  He also came up with what amonts to today's rapid transit system and his first lines included the Astoria and Hunter’s Point RR and the Steinway Avenue and Bowery Bay RR. Eventually he bought most of his major competitor's and consolidated them as the Steinway System in 1892 and electrifying in 1893.

He planned the first Manhattan tunnels (the Steinway Tunnels) in 1887; they actually opened in 1907 but was built before the H&M tubes.  The Steinway Railway Company was sold to the NY and Queens County Railway Company in 1896 and had a brief resurgence as an independent railway in 1922 but was finally dissolved in 1939.

However, there was a survivor, the 1.64 mile line on the remanent two outer tracks on the Queensborough Bridge .  An elevator on the north side took one to Blackwell's/Welfare (today's Roosevelt) Island and I well remeber that station up on the bridge.  A subsidiary of the Steinway Omnibus Company ran the trolley and it was the last trolley line to run in NYC, lasting until 1957.

Cold Spring Harbor RR?  -   When churlish LIRR President Oliver Charlick refused to run the line up to their village, a whaling port then, the leading family of Cold Spring (now Cold Spring Harbor to avoid confusion with the one up the Hudson), the Jones family, decided to build their own, to connect with the LIRR at today's Cold Spring Harbor station on Woodbury Road at the head of Cold Spring Harbor Road.  The line was laid out and graded but the Joneses were unable to make satisfactory arrangements with Charlick for a terminal and track was never laid.  The RoW, which ran on the west side of the line of ponds and streams south of St. John's Episcopal Church and the Fish Hatchery and west of CSH Road (Route 108), is now part of the LI Greenbelt Trail.   (14 Jan 06)

Dave Morrison, former LIRR Branch Manager on the Oyster Bay and Port Jefferson branches, was hiking there and looked into the origins.  So far, we have no maps or definitive information.  The RoW is mentioned in Seyfried and in Ziel (see LIRR bibliography) and the most information found so far Dave reported from page 393, Vol. 1, of "The Borough of Brooklyn and Queens" published by Lewis Historical Publishing, 1925; the same write-up appeared in the October 1952 issue of the LIRR's "Long Island Railroader" under the series "117 Years of Long Island Railroading" and is excerpted here:   (17 Jan 06)

" - - - a few wealthy members of the Jones family - - - undertook to grade the railroad to their community on the harbor.  The job was completed in 1862, the route entering Cold Spring Harbor along the west side of the stream and mill ponds where the State Fish Hatchery is now located.  The Jones family and the railroad could not agree on the arrangements for a terminal, however, and the railroad finally abandoned the idea of going into Cold Spring at all.  No rail was ever laid on the route, which included some tortuous curves and grades."

Here are Dave's photos of a straight section of the RoW (from the lay of the land, I assume we are looking north):

[thumbnailed image; click on the picture for a larger image]
(Jan 2006 photo by D. Morrison - all rights reserved)

(Jan 2006 photo by D. Morrison - all rights reserved)

Stay tuned for further details as we uncover them.

---

LIRR Bibliography: - (moved to separate page)

(Map by and © 1996/2006 - rev'd:  18 Feb 2006)

I went over on 11 Oct 99 in the late afternoon and took pictures of the east side keystone surmount (looking upward and west-northwest and west-southwest) and of the west side portal from the east sidewalk on Ashwood Road looking east along a fenced-off sidewalk and RoW going towards the west portal.  As the light was failing, and I wanted morning light on the east portal, I went back at mid-day on 12 Oct 99 and took two shots of the east portal, looking west-northwest and closer up looking just slightly more westerly and then another shot looking upward at the surmount, but in differing light and looking northwesterly:

   

      [The lower set are thumbnail images; click on the pictures to get larger images.]
(All photos 11-12 Oct 99 by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III - All Rights Reserved)

There was a series of articles, "Port Remembered", by Ernest Simon, in the Port Washington News ca. 1970-75, one of which touched on the tunnel, with a photo.  Those familar with the area know that both the east and west shores of Cow Neck were high bluffs of pre-historic ocean sand, eaten away by commercial sand mining operations in the 19th and early 20th centuries (just as happened over here in Sea Cliff); the entire Soundview area, then known as the Morewood Property, is the bottom of a sand pit and the sand was taken out by rail to a dock (or docks) on the west shore.  At some point, the pit owner wanted to remove Sands Point Road, itself!  Local residents set up a storm of protest and the tunnel was built to allow passage of the road without disrupting rail service or v.v. (I knew that was no simple passageway but never dreamed of an east-west rail line so close to the water's edge.  The tunnel was, however, later used as a passageway for Sousa students.

I found the article; it appeared in the 05 Oct 1972 issue (no page number given) and tells all about the story related above, adding that the sand company was the Goodwin Sand & Gravel Co.*, later merged with the Gallagher Sand and Gravel Co., and then acquired by today's Colonial Sand and Gravel Co.  The battle royal was joined in 1909, resolved in NYS Supreme Court in 1910 with an agreement between Goodwin and the residents.  According to Simon, the application for the tunnel was only granted in 1912, and the tunnel was abandoned around 1920 or so and closed off after high school students took to setting off cherry bombs or such inside.

* - That keystone inscription is quite obviously GS&G CO, Goodwin Sand & Gravel CO., once you realize and look again!

Here is an old photo of Goodwin-Gallagher Sand & Gravel dinky tank engine #55 by Win Boerckel:

(Goodwin-Gallagher S&G #55 tank engine in the sand pits.)
[Photograph by W. S. Boerckel; courtesy of A. Huneke - all rights reserved.]

#55!  How many engines could they have had?

I am seeking information about the Metropolitan Sand and Gravel Company's mining railroad operation in Port Washington, which used an ex-Cincinnati and Lake Erie box freight motor (with a diesel engine installed inside to power it) to haul the cars used to carry the sand.

Those interested in that part of Long island should visit the site of the Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, also noted above.