Pelham Park and City Island Railroad
| Pelham Park and City Island Railroad | |
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 Interior view of The Flying Lady around 1910
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| Gauge : | 1067/1435 mm |
The Pelham Park and City Island Railroad was a short tram in the Bronx , New York City , that connected City Island to Bartow Station on the Harlem River and Port Chester Railroad on the Bronx mainland. It was pulled by horses for most of its existence , between 1910 and 1914 the section on the mainland was operated as an electrically powered monorail . The only monorail railcar was nicknamed The Flying Lady .
history
Horse-drawn narrow-gauge railway
The railway line was established on August 30, 1884 by two railway companies , the Pelham Park Railroad Company and the City Island Railroad. The two legs were connected at Marshall's Corner on Rodman's Neck, near the bridge to City Island. The area traveled through was then in Pelham in Westchester County . The Pelham Park Railroad Company was the designated operator of the narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 1067 mm ( Cape gauge , 3 feet 6 inches ). The railway line from Bartow Station to Marshall's Corner was opened on May 20, 1887. Five days later it was extended over the bridge to City Island and along City Island Avenue to Brown's Hotel. In 1892 it reached Belden's Point, its final terminus. The total length of the two route sections was 5.15 km (3.2 miles).
In 1895 the Borough of the Bronx was enlarged to its present size. The horse-drawn railroad therefore ran within the new Bronx borders. On March 14, 1902, about two years before their own subway , the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) took control of the two companies. The demonstration of an experimental monorail by Howard Hansel Tunis at the Jamestown Exposition of 1907 in Virginia impressed the management of the IRT so much that in the winter of 1908-09 permission was obtained from the New York State Public Service Commission and other New York offices to to build a similar electrically powered monorail.
Electric monorail
The monorail between Bartow Station and Marshall's Corner officially opened on July 16, 1910, although passenger traffic had already begun two days earlier on a trial basis. More than 100 passengers took part in the official maiden voyage in a car that was designed for 40 passengers. In the curves, the mass of the passengers caused the vehicle to tilt due to the centrifugal force , which put too much strain on the wooden structure above the railcar. In the third corner, the vehicle derailed, injuring several passengers: a broken leg, a broken nose, a bruised left finger, a swollen face and cuts on the face from broken glass. Although the guide rails were bent, they did not break, so that the railcar did not tip over completely. The conductor locked the doors to prevent passengers from receiving electric shocks from the live guide rails during evacuation. The train driver Howard Tunis broke off what it did not stop them from reporters assure to the bedside, that there had it been only a little mishap, as it happens in every research laboratory daily a rib.
Operations resumed at reduced speed on November 14, 1910. The monorail was unsuccessful and the IRT forced the companies into bankruptcy on December 4, 1911 . The monorail at the western end of the line and the narrow-gauge horse-drawn railway remained in operation.
Electric standard gauge railway
In 1913, the IRT decided to re- track the line for an electric tram to standard gauge (1435 mm) and merged the two companies to form the "Pelham Park and City Island Railroad", which began operating on July 1, 1913. The tracks over the bridge were re-gauged and leased New York Railways horse trams were used on it. The operation of the monorail was stopped on April 3, 1914, whereupon a bus leased from Fifth Avenue Coach Lines temporarily took over the passenger transport.
On July 9, 1914, the company was sold to the Third Avenue Railway by its owner, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company . After assuming responsibility on August 1, 1914, Third Avenue quickly completed the construction of the standard-gauge railway, but has not yet installed an overhead line . The last horse-drawn tram in the Bronx was used at noon on August 18, 1914. Fifteen minutes later, battery-powered vehicles began operating from Bartow train station to the terminus on City Island .
In 1919, the Third Avenue Railway requested the New York Public Service Commission to cease operations due to insufficient liquidity, which was then approved. Operations were finally stopped on August 9, 1919.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ John R. Day: More Unusual Railways . Frederick Muller Ltd., London 1960.
- ↑ Bill Twomey: The Bronx: In Bits and Pieces . Rooftop Publishing,, ISBN 978-1-60008-062-3 , p. 39.
- ^ Editors of the Electric Railway Journal : American Street Railway Investments . McGraw Publishing Company, New York 1907, p. 217.
- ↑ Monorail Car Fails on its First Trip - Flimsy Structure Supporting It Gives Way and Many Are Badly Hurt. - Fall to the Floor in Layers. In: The New York Times, July 17, 1910.
- ^ John Metcalfe: On This Day in 1910, New York's Monorail Suffered a Grievous Wreck. A sad tale of extremely poor transportation planning. Version dated July 16, 2014. Downloaded September 17, 2015.
- ↑ City Island Road Sold. , The New York Times . July 10, 1914.
- ^ State of New York Public Service Commission for the First District: Thirteenth Annual Report . State of New York, 1919, pp. 264-265.
- ^ State of New York Public Service Commission for the First District: Fourteenth Annual Report . State of New York, 1920, p. 398.