S. Berliner, III's courtesy
times since the counter was installed.
2. See also the LIRRHS Courtesy Home Page.
3. You may wish to visit the Webmaster's RR and
LIRR pages* (et seq.), as well.
There IS a difference!
The Long Island Rail Road is the official name of the oldest Class 1 railroad still operating under its original name and charter (the B&O was older but has been subsumed into CSX). Although there was (and still is, on occasion) rolling stock and some official documents with the two words combined, the correct name of the LIRR has the two words separately, "Long Island Rail Road"!
There were and are other railroads on Long Island - these also are (or will be) covered here and on the Webmaster's Long Island Railroads page.
Re ex-railroad personnel
records - neither the LIRR nor any other local railroad (to your
Webmaster's knowledge) maintains any old ex-railroad personnel records in it's
archives (nor do the LIRRHS or your Webmaster - so please don't ask).
Those records are most likely lost. Click HERE
to go to the Webmasters RR page for hopefully-useful recommendations.
On the LIRRHS Home Page:
Long Island Rail Road Historical Society.
Books on the Long Island Rail Road.
End-of-Steam Ceremony, Hicksville, 08 Oct 1955.
On this page:
End-of-Steam Ceremony, Hicksville, 08 Oct 1955.
On the Webmaster's Pages:
ALCO-GE-IR BOXCABS, now on a separate page,
including LIRR boxcabs #401, the world's first production diesel road switcher,
#402 (first and second), #403, and many others.
Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal Railroad,
and its successor roads, the New York Cross Harbor Railroad and New York Regional Rail.
Degnon Terminal Railroad, plus
The New York Connecting Railroad (the old New Haven line 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).
However, see my Z-Scale Articles page for a detailed writeup on the Hellgate in Z (1:220).
Webmaster's LIRR pages (selected links - heavily truncated - see the full LIRR Index):
On the (first) LIRR page:
Long Island Sunrise-Trail Chapter
Sunrise Trail Division
Steam Locomotive #35 Restoration Committee
Steam Locomotive #39 Restoration
On the LIRR Continuation Page 2:
Odd Incident at Wreck Lead (on the LIRR)
LIRR and LI Railroad Miscellany
On the LIRR Continuation Page 3:
Victorian Stations Still Standing on the LIRR
etc.
On the LI Railroads Continuation Page:
Long Island Railroads
[with a link to the NYCRR (Hell Gate)]
etc. - see the full LIRR Index
On separate pages:
The New York & Atlantic Railway, lessor of LIRR freight operations.
Railroad Eagles - Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, etc.
Bill Russell has a RR site about NY metropolitan area railroading and rail-marine operations (car floats, ferries, pocket terminals, BEDT, NYCH, LIRR and PRR, tugs) etc. Take a look starting with his Penny Bridge page.
One of his newsthreads was about the West Side Freight Line (the elevated trackage rotting away in southwestern Manhattan); it reminded the Webmaster of a rather bizarre feature of LI railroading (another item, about the WSFL, is on the Webmaster's RR page):
Across Manhattan and the east River, in the old Degnon yard, there is a line into the back of one of the IDNY buildings (the Webmaster forgets which, but thinks it may have been American Chicle) in which there is (probably dismantled, although certainly no longer usable) a freight car elevator that took cars up to the floors on where their cargo was needed or v.v. Scoff if you will but Vince Seyfried confimed just such on 02 Aug 2002.
NOTE: There is now The New York Connecting Railroad Society, an all-volunteer organization started in 1993 and recently 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".
See also HOW TO BOOT A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE or
How to hostle without really tiring (firing up a cold oil burner - 1:1 scale, that is).
The Long Island Rail Road Historical Society is 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 David D. Morrison.
Dave is also the author of a book of LIRR steam locomotive photos (see the
LIRR Bibliography - with a special offer for readers of the Webmaster's RR pages)
or below. The Society was founded in 1987 to help celebrate the 100th
anniversary of the opening of present bi-level Jamaica Station.
(14 May 03)
10-8-1955,Hicksville (See sign). Engine #39 and car #2924 facing east & engine #35 and car #2923 facing west. Later, Alco diesel #1555 replaced #35 & #1556 replaced #39. #1555 operated back to Riverhead with car #2923 but returned to Jamaica at 6:00 PM with a different car of the same type.The actual original 04 Oct 55 train order sheet for the special trains (the G5 steamers and the light RS-3s and v.v. and the P72 coaches) is also reproduced on Art's site.
I have asked the various LIRR affinity groups to also post this text to assure its promulgation and preservation.
After the ceremony, #35 and #39 coupled up nose to nose and ran light back to
Morris Park. #39 was the last steam engine to travel to Greenport in June
1955 and #35 was retired after one last excursion on 16 October 1955. As
noted, both G5s survive and one of those RS-3s, #1556 (via the Naporano
scrappers, the Gettysburg Rwy., and the Maryland Midland Rwy.), is preserved
along with #39. Sister 1955 P72 coach #2935 is preserved along with #35
(and 1956 P-72 #2956). I believe #2924, one of the original coaches from the
ceremony, may be preserved with #39. RS-3 #1556 was horribly vandalized
ca. 1998 or so; some maniac poured concrete down her stack and it ran into the
turbocharger and set! Painstaking work will get #1556 back into running
condition.
(16 May 03)
There was some additional steam service on 09 (#39) and 11 Oct (#50) and a major fan trip (a fund raiser) for the Branford Electric Railway Association which ran with #35 out from Jamaica and back, all over the Island, on 16 Oct, and that was it, all detailed on Art's " Final Week of LIRR Steam" page.
* - There were 18 scouts aboard #2923 from Riverhead and 55 on the #2924 from
Jamaica (where they had changed from a Brooklyn train); the passenger lists survive
and are archived.
This page is prepared and maintained as a courtesy by:
Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
To tour the Webmaster's Long Island railroads pages in sequence, the arrows take you from the previous page to the LIRR index to the first LIRR page, and on to LIRR continuation pages 2 and up, then to the other LI railroads page, and lastly to this LIRR Historical Society page. Follow the links to the various yard maps and other related pages and sites.
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"changing materials with high-intensity sound"
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
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Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher
of this series of the Webmaster's LIRR pages.
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