LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — Over the years, disgruntled riders have suggested a host of other names for the Long Island Rail Road: the Death Valley Railroad, the Wrong Island Rail Road and the Long Island Snail Road, according to New York’s Newsday.
Now, after 168 years, the name could go the way of the steam locomotive. Officials announced yesterday that the LIRR will merge with the Metro-North Railroad into a new commuter service called the MTA Rail Road.
The LIRR, the largest commuter railroad in the nation, is the third-oldest railroad in the world still in operation under its original name.
There were just 100,000 people on Long Island – and the U.S. president was Andrew Jackson – when the Long Island Rail Road laid its tracks in 1834. Another railroad was running trains from Manhattan to Jamaica, and the idea was to connect Jamaica to Greenport, and then use ferry service to shorten the travel time between New York City and Boston.
The track got as far as Hicksville before the railroad ran out of money on March 1, 1837. And it wasn’t until the state lent the railroad $100,000 in 1840 that construction resumed, the first railroad engine steaming into Greenport on July 27, 1844.
That inspired protests in places like Hardscrabble and Punk’s Hole – now Farmingdale and Manorville – where residents tore out sections of track, causing derailments.
The advent of the New Haven Railroad in 1848 caused the Long Island Rail Road to lose its New York-to-Boston clientele, forcing it to become a regional freight and passenger railroad.
It was then that the railroad added branches to serve the North and South Shores.
Over the decades, the Long Island Rail Road had its share of highs – and lows.
The 1870s brought the “newspaper train,” a train that delivered city newspapers to every station. And Charles M. Murphy, later the first motorcycle policeman in Nassau County, became “Mile-a-Minute Murphy” after he covered a mile in 57.8 seconds while riding a bicycle behind a train on the Babylon run on June 30, 1899.
The February 1950 crash in Rockville Centre killed 31, while the Thanksgiving Eve crash of Nov. 22, 1950, just east of Jamaica station, killed 79 — the second-worst in state history and one of the 10 worst worldwide.
That crash, allegedly caused by poor operating procedures, led Queens District Attorney Charles P. Sullivan to dub the line the “Death Valley Railroad.”
“In the minds of local citizens … a ride on this railroad is an open invitation to the morgue,” Sullivan said.
The accidents brought a takeover of the Pennsylvania Railroad owned-and-operated Long Island Rail Road by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and safety improvements in the 1960s.
Recently, with the MTA planning East Side access for the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal, the railroad made a $1.3-billion commitment to purchase a new fleet of 678 cars. It expects to have the full fleet in service by 2007.