Patchogue Tram

The place Patchogue on Long Iceland in US -Bundesstaat New York had from 1911 to 1919 an about 18.5-kilometer tram network . The single-track, standard-gauge lines connected the place with the neighboring towns of Sayville , Blue Point and Holtsville . Except for the section in Sayville, the entire network was in the area of ​​today's city of Brookhaven .

history

As early as 1895, the Cross Island Traction Company planned a tram from Port Jefferson to Patchogue.

South Shore Traction Company

The South Shore Traction Company , founded on March 2, 1903, planned a route from Port Jefferson via Setauket , Stony Brook , Ronkonkoma , Sayville, Blue Point to Patchogue, as well as a line from Patchogue to New York City. She took over the Cross Island Traction Company in April 1907. But first a short section of track was built in Sayville, starting from the station along Railroad Avenue, Merrick Road (now Montauk Highway) and Candee Avenue to the coast, which was opened on July 4, 1909 as a horse-drawn tram . For financial reasons, the building was not continued and operations were stopped at the beginning of September 1909 after the end of the summer season. On November 21, 1909, the company took over the operation of the tram shuttle line over the Queensboro Bridge in New York City, as a pioneer for the already licensed continuous operation from Patchogue to New York. However, the company filed for bankruptcy in 1911 and was up for sale in early 1913. The operation of the railway over the Queensboro Bridge was given to the Manhattan and Queens Traction Corporation on December 28, 1912 , which built routes in Queens.

Suffolk Traction Company

On June 27, 1906, the Suffolk Traction Company was founded, planning the routes from Patchogue via Bellport to Brookhaven , via Holtsville, Farmingville , Selden and Terryville to Port Jefferson, as well as the already licensed route via Blue Point to Sayville. The track construction began in 1907, but was interrupted after a short time because the railway company ran out of money. The first section of the line was opened on July 1, 1911, from Patchogue Station through South Ocean Avenue, Main Street and Merrick Road (both now Montauk Highway) to the neighboring community of Blue Point to the west, where the terminal was at the post office. Scheduled operations began on the following day every 30 minutes. The depot was on the western outskirts of Patchogue near West Lake on the south side of Main Street. Initially, the route was not electrified with an overhead line, but rather with two accumulator railcars. The fare was initially five cents. The electrification was planned for a later date, as soon as the network was completed and operated economically.

For the planned route to Port Jefferson, construction began in 1912 in Port Jefferson and Patchogue. In Port Jefferson a track was laid from Broadway through Main Street and Terryville Road, which probably reached about as far as Terryville. Patchogue from one built by the North Ocean Avenue (now part of Old North Ocean Avenue) and then their own rail body in a northwesterly direction to the Waverly Avenue, next to a steel bridge over the railway line New York City Greenport the Long Iceland Railroad built was up to Holtsville. The route had already been leveled to Farmingville. The further construction between Holtsville and Terryville was not carried out, however, as the financial expenses required for this far exceeded the income. Operations began in 1912 on the six kilometers to Holtsville station. The battery cars would have had to drive on two steep bridge ramps to cross the railway line, which was not done for reasons of energy saving, so that the cars ended at the southern edge of the bridge and the bridge was therefore not driven along a line. Due to the extensive planning, the fare was now set at a respectable ten cents per tariff zone. The track built in Port Jefferson was not opened, but remained lying. A connecting track to the Hicksville – Wading River railway line crossing here was installed at Port Jefferson Station , and during the First World War the Long Island Rail Road used the track from the station to the port for freight traffic.

In early 1913, Suffolk Traction took over the bankrupt South Shore Traction Company and now connected the disused horse-drawn railway track in Sayville through South Main Road (now Middle Road), Oakwood Avenue, Railroad Street, Maple Street, Blue Point Avenue and Merrick Road Network, so that from August 8, 1914, three railcars commuted on the nearly nine-kilometer route from Patchogue to Sayville. The track on Candee Avenue in Sayville was now also used again, with a pendulum line from Sayville station, which was shut down after a short time. Meanwhile in Patchogue a route from Main Street through South Ocean Avenue from the train station to the coast and a short distance from the town center eastwards through Main Street to East Patchogue (corner of Bay Avenue) had been opened. Sayville's cars now ended in East Patchogue while a shuttle car drove along Ocean Avenue.

In 1915 a fourth railcar was procured. After the USA entered World War I, the most important source of income, the excursion traffic, almost completely disappeared, and in 1917 the line on South Ocean Avenue from the station to the coast was shut down. The other lines followed on October 10, 1919, because due to the high fares, the number of workers transported was insufficient to operate the routes economically. Even the track in Port Jefferson was no longer used by the railroad after the end of the war and was shut down. The routes and cars were initially retained, the railway company was dissolved in May 1920. It is not known when the cars were sold or scrapped, the tracks were only removed decades later, on North Ocean Avenue only in 2007. Today, Traction Boulevard in North Patchogue is still reminiscent of the tram. The road lies on the former own railway body of the line to Holtsville. The depot building still stands diagonally across from Briarcliffe College and is in commercial use. A foundation has been preserved from the steel bridge in Holtsville, which was dismantled after its closure.

literature

• Stephen L. Meyers: Lost Trolleys of Queens and Long Island. Charleston SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006, pages 72-74. ISBN 978-0-7385-4526-4
• Felix E. Reifschneider: Toonervilles of the Empire State. Orlando FL, 1947, 35.

Web links

• Page on the Suffolk Traction Co. (with pictures) of the Greater Patchogue Historical Society
• Long Island Oddities with a sketch of the route in Patchogue ( Memento from February 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• Maps and pictures of the train on trainsarefun.com
• Bibliography on the railway

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bibliography on the Suffolk Traction Co. on history.pmlib.org ( Memento of the original from June 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Article on sayvillelibrary.org ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Article by the Greater Patchogue Historical Society
4. ↑ Article about the train with pictures on bygoneli.com ( Memento from June 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )