MITCHEL FIELD, ARMED FORCES DAY - THE CIRCUS AND THE LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD.
(I make no representation to keep this current).
Art had a major birthday and his wife threw him a wing-ding of a party, at which
nearly all of the great names in LIRR and other NY-area RR history were present (why
me, then?) - from the Huneke's 2006 Christmas card:
(19 Dec 06) and
(20 Dec 06)
(photo courtesy D. & A. Huneke)
Standing at rear (l. to r.): Sid Finkelstein; NYCR author Bob Sturm; LIRR photo
collector Ron Zinn, Subway maven Stan Fischler; former Oyster Bay and Port Jeff
Branch Manager and LIRR author Dave Morrison; LIRR diesel author and
publisher John Scala (the Weekend Chief); transit author Paul Matus; MTA
Superintendent of Operation Planning and rail photographer Jeff Erlitz; and LIRR rolling
stock, facilities, and modeling author Mike Boland.
Standing behind Art: Subway maven Stan Fischler (l.) and me (r.).
Seated: Birthday boy Art Huneke.
What an array of LIRR history power; all we needed was Vince Seyfried and
Ron Ziel for a full house!
See also the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association and the
legendary LIRR Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.
The Long Island Rail Road
is an agency of New York State's
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It was chartered on 24 April
1834 to run from the Long Island City ferries across from Manhattan to Orient
Point, some 120 miles east on the North Fork of Long island where it would
connect by ferry with the Old colony railroad at Stonington, Connecticut, and
so on to Boston.
This was a great idea until the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad
bridged all the rivers and bays and inlets along the Connecticut coast ca. 1850
and provided direct rail service from New York City to Beantown. The
LIRR, having ignored all the towns along the Island and been built on the most
barren (and inexpensive) land on the Island now had no "raison d'ętre" and
had to scurry to build or buy branches to the population centers on Long Island.
The LIRR finally connected directly with Manhattan on the completion in
September 1910 of the East River tunnels and Pennsylvania Station.
Eventually, it fell into the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad (1928-1949),
before becoming part of the MTA in 1965.
For information on the wonderful LIRR #322 (the first LIRR electric), #323
(Pennsy #10001, the second), and other early LIRR boxcab electrics, see the
Odd Boxcabs page (which covers
electric boxcabs).
Vincent F. Seyfried wrote a definitive 7-volume history of the LIRR
which is mostly out of print and hard to find; however, the last volume is still
available from Mr. Seyfried - see my LIRR
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Note further that Vince is also (actually, primarily) a historian of Queens and
Garden City.
LIRR site http://www.lirr.net/ is not available; Gary Gross passed away Oct 99..
The Sunrise Trail Division of the
Northeastern Region of the
National Model Railroad Association now has its own listing on the NER
Web page.
Long Island Live Steamers (LILS)
LILS, miniature live steam (and diesel and electric)
operators running at mostly 1˝" scale (also some 1" and rare ¾") in
Southhaven Park at William Floyd Parkway (Suffolk County Route 46) and
Sunrise Highway (U.S. Route 27).
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).
On my Vest Pocket Railroads You Can Model section on MRR Continuation Page 2, after the
Degnon Terminal Railroad, and Murrer's
(3rd Street) Sidings and Kearney Sidings
writeups, I refer to Blissville and
Laurel Hill.
WARNING! Historians should note that the right-of-way of
William K. Vanderbilt, Jr.'s Long Island Motor
Parkway and that of Alexander T. Stewart's Central Railroad of
Long Island, now the LIRR's Central Branch, paralleled
each other in several areas and should NOT be casually confused.
The LIMP RoW is the one under the LIPA (ex-LILCO) lines in central and
eastern Nassau County and far western Suffolk County, at least as far east as
the Maxess Road area.
Speaking of the LIRR and the Motor Parkway, see the reminiscence about both
on the Motor Parkway page by the late LI aviation pioneer, George Dade.
1906 LONG ISLAND MAPS - For links to a huge set of segments of the
large-scale 1906 E. Belcher Hyde map of Long Island, done by Albert Volk,
"Map Engraver" of Philadelphia, click here.
There is a staggering amount of turn-of-the-20th-century (pre-WWI) LI
information, such as all the LIRR junctions, and LIRR Pres. Austin Corbin's
estate on map 15, just SSE of Deer Park. The resolution is not quite
good enough to read all property owners's names but many are quite legible,
such as William K. Vanderbilt, Jr.'s property (Deepdale) at Lakeville.
[this page was separated out from my RAILROAD and
LI Railroads pages;
you might wish to see them also.]
THUMBS UP!
THUMBS UP! - Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
S. Berliner, III
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
of this series of LIRR pages.
To tour the Long Island railroads pages in sequence, the arrows take you from the first LIRR page to LIRR continuation page 2, et seq., then to the other LI railroads page, the Bibliogrpahy, and lastly to the LIRR Historical Society page. Follow the links to the various yard maps and other related pages and sites.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2001,
2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006
- All rights reserved.
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times since the counter was re-installed 14 Sep 99.
Art Huneke, LIRR historian and pictorialist (is there such a word?)
extraordinaire has put up a fantastic site on LIRR history at