In the 1950’s my parents and siblings lived on Evergreen Ave between Stanhope and Stockholm. My dad and I got the Myrtle Ave El at Central Ave travelled to Jay St. (the last stop) and go to Sid’s Hardware Store then a visit to the historic Firehouse. The fire house was the headquarters of the Brooklyn Fire Dept before It was merged with the Fire Dept of New York (FDNY). It remained an active firehouse into the 1970’s. The Engine 207 and Ladder 110 moved into it’s newly built firehouse on Tillery St. near the Manhattan Bridge and theBrooklyn Navy Yard. After a short walk to Fulton St. going to Korvets and Abraham & Strauss Dept stores. Along walk back to the Mrytle Ave El we would stop for a hot dog or hamburger. Those were good times and good memories.
I grew up on Lexington Ave bet. Throop & Tompkins (1983-1997) and never knew about the elevated train until I saw an old picture of Lexington & Tompkins Ave from the 1940s.
When I was little it was the dark color of the trains the wood like smell and the sounds they made especially in the subway...this really great steelo thxsomuch🌺💥🙏💥🌺
I lived in marcy houses in late 50s to 1964 and use to marvel at the el train. From my bedroom I could stare and watch the trains go by . 3 cars during the day, 6 at rush hour.
I went to one end of the line one day and watched the workers couple 3 car trains together for the PM rush hour. It was dirty, dangerous work because nothing was automatic like it is on modern cars with fully automatic couplers. A pin had to be inserted into a receptacle on each car to secure the connecting link and cables and hoses had to be connected between the cars to make the 3 car sets work as a 6 car train.
Absolutely true! In the rush hours my late father phoned my mother and asked her to bring the keys to the house with her to his work in Bushwick. We saw the 6 car rush hour train on the upper level that still had the original wooden roof and platform. In Old America in Old NYC during the Mad Men era of the 1960s!
I understand why the city replaced some of the Els with subways (after all, the subways were much faster and higher capacity, and they didn't take up as much space), but they should not have torn down any of the Els before constructing a replacement subway. The loss of the Myrtle Ave El and 2nd avenue El is still felt to this day, as neighborhoods lost a vital rapid transit connection. Buses just can't replace trains, and at the very least, the city could have upgraded the Els to handle faster, higher capacity modern trains (much like what they did for many of the elevated lines in the outer boroughs) as opposed to tearing them down without building a replacement subway.
@@robertn3232there’s no longer a 1 seat ride from bushwick or ridgewood queens into downtown Brooklyn without transferring or riding into the city first then crossing back into downtown Brooklyn via lower Manhattan. The B54 bus sucks.
If people today complain about the. subway service, let them take a look at this video!! Great shots! I think I rode this el once when I was in high school!
I have a kerosene 🏮 lantern that fell from a wooden gate car overhead, in 1955. It missed my father by a few feet when he was getting into his car on Myrtle and Washinton.
1958 was the last year the open platform gate cars were used on any NYC El line. I was a little boy at that time. We were unaware of it because we lived then in Woodside, Queens where el train service ended in 1942 from the 2nd Avenue El. I wish we had known about it and brought our 1955 Kodak camera with us.
I wish they rebuilt all els in New York, but with floating slab track, pillars relocated to outside of the curbside, and wheels with variable taper in order to prevent flage contact altogether just like with upgraded trains and bullet trains in Asia and Europe. That would enable New York to return the iconic aesthetics of its historic els while still ensuring a whisper quiet experience and giving a unique world-class sightseeing experience just like with Chicago's Loop. Unlike the CTA L however, my proposal would have a Business Class car in every trainset (just like with commuter rail in Asia, especially Green Cars in Japan) that travels on elevated lines in order to ensure that sightseers get a great experience from having a comfortable ride with a luxurious interior free from homeless. The Business Class fares for tourists and upper class commuters would also cost many (perhaps a dozen) times more than a standard fare in order to subsidize the low-income commuters in order to ensure the financial security of the railway operator so that future generations can continue to enjoy the elevated signseeing experience on infrastructure maintained to certified pre-owned like-new condition. I bet that such a modern el (but with historic aesthetics) built to my high standards would still be way cheaper than tunnelling the Second Avenue Subway through ultra-hard metamorphic schist rock hundreds of feet underground. After all, even the economically much-worse-off Philly was able to completely rebuild the Market Street western elevated portion of the Market-Frankford Line (including the foundations of the pillars) in the 2000s to a modern concrete structure, though I'm not sure whether floating slab track was used or not. Perhaps Chicago's el's weren't demolished because the original builders went the extra mile to lengthen the transverse girders in order to be able to place the pillars on the sidewalk or place the els over alleys alltogether, both in order to not block horse and automotive traffic? That is unlike New York, where the pillars were placed in the middle of the street on most elevated lines presumable to save money on having shorter transverse girders.
I wonder what New York City would be like if the transit authority maintained and upgraded all the elevated railways instead of knocking down all the lines that didn't tie into one of the tunnels?
Why didn't these so called transit buffs ever film the conductors operating the gates for the passengers ? this should have been these historic films. Rail fans don't even do this today when they run these museum gate cars and they call themselves rail fans, if your a rail fan you record on video as much as you can.
