page_title: History of the Long Island Rail Road
section_title: Pennsylvania Railroad ownership, 1900–1949
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Long Island Rail Road / Pennsylvania Railroad ownership, 1900–1949
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: electrictraction00burc (find matches) Title: Electric traction for railway trains; a book for students, electrical and mechanical engineers, superintendents of motive power and others .. Year: 1911 (1910s) Authors: Burch, Edward P. (Edward Parris), 1870-1945 Subjects: Railroads Publisher: New York (etc.) McGraw-Hill Book Company Contributing Library: The Library of Congress Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: for its New York-Lo:Island, suburban service; and in 1911 to Newark, New Jersey. Tmotor-car train requires greater energy than the locomotive becauof the continuity of service, the higher acceleration, and the freque-iustops. Motor-car train equipment already purchased consists of about 225 steer motorcars, for passenger service. Pennsylvania standard trucks are used with side-extendedbolster springs and 8.5-foot wheel bases. Power equipment per motor car consists oftwo Westinghouse 215-h.p., direct-current motors. Forced draft is used to cool andto keep out the dust and grit. The entire axle is enclosed to keep the dust out ofbearings. The motor equipment was described under Ventilation of Motors. SeeFigure 42, page 184. Each car is a motor car and weighs 53 tons. MOTOR-CAR TRAINS 251 Long Island Railroad, a subsidiary company, operates 138 steel 38- to41-ton passenger motor cars, with two 200-h.p. motors per car, forsuburban service west of Brooklyn to distant points on Long Island. Text Appearing After Image: h Fig. 70.—Long Island Railroad Motor-car Train. Steel Coaches - New York, New Haven &amp; Hartford Railroad purchased, in 1909, )_ notor cars and 6 trail coaches for its local service between New York J Gy and Stamford, Connecticut, 34 miles. The motor cars are designed pull 2 trail cars. Steel cars, built by the Standard Steel Car Company, Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: The Long Island Rail Road is a railroad owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in the U.S. state of New York. It is the oldest United States railroad still operating under its original name and charter. It consolidated several other companies in the late 19th century. The Pennsylvania Railroad owned the Long Island Rail Road for the majority of the 20th century and sold it to the State in 1966.
context_section_description: Corbin began planning for direct access to Manhattan by the late 1880s, considering plans to extend the Atlantic Branch under the East River in a tunnel and north to Grand Central Terminal (this was later built as part of the New York City Subway, now the IRT Lexington Avenue Line and IRT Eastern Parkway Line), or to cross the East River on a bridge from Long Island City to near 37th Street and again run to Grand Central. The Pennsylvania Railroad simultaneously began planning access across the Hudson River to Manhattan, and LIRR president William H. Baldwin, Jr. started negotiating in 1900 to enter the PRR terminal. That year the PRR paid $6 million for a controlling interest in the LIRR, and soon incorporated the companies to build the New York Tunnel Extension from New Jersey through Manhattan to Long Island City. Simultaneously, the new Sunnyside Yard at Long Island City was built to provide a place to turn New Jersey trains. The new Pennsylvania Station opened on September 8, 1910, serving only LIRR trains for over two months before the New Jersey side was completed.
  The James Slip and Annex ferries to Lower Manhattan were abandoned in 1907 and 1908, before the tunnel was completed, but the ferry to 34th Street continued to operate until 1925.
  The new station and tunnel network provided direct rail service from Long Island to Manhattan, resulting in vast increases in both total passengers and daily commuters. Total annual ridership increased from 34 million in 1911, the first full year that Penn Station was in operation, to a peak of 119 million in 1929. By then, 61.7% of LIRR passengers were daily commuters, up from over 30% in 1911. But the IND Queens Boulevard Line subway reached Jamaica in 1937, and by 1940 80% of the short-haul commuters from Queens had switched to the five-cent subway ride; along with other factors such as trolleys and automobiles, this lowered the annual ridership to 67.5 million.
  During this period, the LIRR gained control of most of the connecting and competing trolley lines on Long Island. Its first acquisitions were the Ocean Electric Railway and Huntington Railroad, both by 1899. Several more lines were built in the early 1900s, and Long Island Consolidated Electrical Companies was incorporated in 1905 as a holding company for the LIRR's trolley properties. It gained 50% ownership in the closely related New York and Long Island Traction Company and Long Island Electric Railway in 1905 and 1906 respectively, the other half going to the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. Most of the lines had ceased operating by 1924, and the NY&LI and LIE were both sold at foreclosure in 1926. The final abandonment was the Ocean Electric on Rockaway Beach Boulevard in 1928.
  In 1905, the Oyster Bay Branch was double-tracked to Roslyn.
  When Belmont Park opened on May 4, 1905, about 19,000 passengers—nearly half of all attendees—took the railroad to the racetrack on opening day. The first electric trains to Belmont Park ran on October 2, 1905, the opening day of the fall meet. The original station was located south of Hempstead Turnpike; the present terminal north of Hempstead Turnpike was opened in 1957.
  The LIRR also began electrifying (with third rail direct current) and grade separating its urban and suburban lines in the 1900s.
  Because of increasing fatalities at the Atlantic Branch's 50 grade crossings, a law was passed from the City of Brooklyn and the City of New York to remove grade crossings in 1897. As part of the law, a tunnel would have been built to Lower Manhattan, but because of the large cost, it was removed in 1900. Work commenced in December 1901, after a new version of the law was passed on April 8, 1901 without any mention to the tunnel. The portion from Flatbush Avenue to Bedford Avenue the line was to be a tunnel, and the portion from Nostrand Avenue to Ralph Avenue was to be elevated. The next section, between Ralph Avenue and Howard Avenue was to be built as a tunnel, and the remaining portion to Atkins Avenue would have been an elevated structure. The first portion of the line to b
caption: Electric coaches of the LIRR, ca. 1911
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