(rshsdepot) A Trolley Grows in Brooklyn

["jdent1_@_optonline.net" <jdent1@optonline.net>]

This is not a trolley email list, but the following article may be of interest to those listmembers interested in NYC his=
tory and Robert Moses's heritage, something that has been discussed on this list.  Just last week the Giants were back in=
 town and now the trolleys are back...

Also, does anyone know what tunnel was "discovered" under Atlantic Ave - perhaps an original railroad structure?

From New York Newsday...

Trolley Back on Track
After a decade of delays, Brooklyn railway rolling forward

By Joshua Robin
Staff Writer

June 9, 2002

The clang of the trolley, missing from New York's bustle for 42 
years, could soon ring out again in Brooklyn, where trolley buffs 
are laying tracks along two waterfront streets in hopes that vintage 
cars will be rolling by late summer. 

"It's gonna happen,=94 predicted Bob Diamond, president of the 
Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, who proposed the project 
a decade ago and leads the digging. "It's no longer a pipe dream. 
It's actually being laid out in pipe.=94

Diamond, 42, has spent 10 years raising money and gaining 
hard-won city approval for his dream of restoring trolley 
service to Brooklyn. (That's the place, after all, where a 
certain baseball team was named for those who dodged the trolleys.) 

Now, a few days a week, he and a handful of volunteers -- including 
a cartographer and a heavy-machine operator -- can be found on Reed 
Street in Red Hook, jackhammering asphalt and lugging rails. Their 
ultimate plan is to connect Red Hook on 1.6 miles of rail to a 
subway station in Downtown Brooklyn. The once-gritty waterfront 
neighborhood was cut off from the rest of the borough by the 
building of the Gowanus Expressway in 1941, a project of master 
builder Robert Moses. 

Red Hook is now being gentrified, and the city has approved 
laying track on six blocks, starting near the site of a 
planned Fairway supermarket on the waterfront near Reed Street.

Diamond hopes to start the trolleys running occasionally once the 
first two blocks are done, which is contingent on his getting 
$50,000 promised by the City Council. The price of a trolley 
fare has not been determined.

It would take about $4 million more to reach Downtown Brooklyn. 
The last time trolleys thumped through New York, in 1960, the 
ride cost 15 cents, Diamond said -- or nothing if you hitched 
a ride on the back. But building them now costs about $260 per 
foot, even with volunteer labor.

"If we had the money, we could get to Borough Hall in about 
18 months,=94 Diamond said.

The city transportation department seems open to adding the 
whole 1.6-mile route -- if Diamond can find funds elsewhere.

"Red Hook felt the brunt of Robert Moses more than any other ,=94 
said Tom Cocola, the department's spokesman. "The Gowanus 
configuration has essentially ostracized Red Hook.=94

Diamond hopes for $550,000 from a program to preserve landmarks 
sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. He already 
went through $238,000 in federal funds and about $250,000 in 
private donations.

The next step is to build tracks down Richards Street, to the 
mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, where there are plans to 
build dual tracks, possibly on old rails long buried under 
asphalt.

The route would then continue through a tunnel under Atlantic 
Avenue that Diamond discovered in 1980 while he was on a break 
from college. Electric lines have yet to be installed, but all 
the equipment has been bought or acquired somehow.

In a city where waiting for a driver's license can take a year 
off your life, Diamond said "it took us almost 10 years to get 
all the permits and approvals.=94

When not filling out paperwork, or pounding spikes, Diamond, 
who is trained as an electrical engineer, manages an apartment 
complex in New Jersey and hunts for used trolley equipment 
aided by a network of trolley aficionados around the country. 

He already has scooped up 16 usable trolley cars, now wrapped 
in weather-resistant tarps and stored at the Brooklyn Navy 
Yard, a former warehouse and in a lot near the start of the 
tracks.

One real find was a regal-looking car from 1897 that was used 
to ferry Norwegian royalty from Oslo to a nearby skiing mountain. 
That one will be saved for special occasions, Diamond said. "We're 
not going to use that one to haul people from Borough Hall,=94 he said.

The steepest expenditure of this project is insurance. The 
cheapest will be electricity. It only costs about $6 an hour to 
power a trolley, which coasts down streets after an initial jolt 
of energy. Cars normally hold about 100 people.

"The word is simple,=94 John Smatlak, a Los Angeles-based consultant 
with Railway Preservation Resources, said of street trolleys. 
"It's probably safe to say it's a very inexpensive thing to 
operate. I mean, you're just using up electricity.=94

Residents of Red Hook see the trolley revival not as a touristy 
throwback, but as an alternative to the mercurial buses to 
Downtown Brooklyn.

"I have to work around their schedules,=94 said Leslie Chapman, 
a homemaker who has lived in Red Hook all her 25 years. 
She said she sometimes waits an hour for a bus.

Told of the trolley, she said: "That would be cute, if it 
gets me where I'm going.=94

Although the tracks are being laid far from the housing projects 
where most people in Red Hook live, there seems to be no 
disappointment -- only patience. "It's something we need, 
because in any other community, you have a choice=94 of ways 
to get around, said Emma Broughton, 71, who has been called 
the mayor of Red Hook.

Diamond, a Brooklyn native with a beard as thick as a shaving 
brush, estimates he's plunked down about $75,000 from his own 
pocket. He's too young to have seen trolleys clatter down 
Church Avenue, where they ended their Brooklyn run in 1956, 
four years before the last city trolley clanged over the 
Queensboro Bridge. But Diamond is nevertheless charmed at 
the prospect of their return.

"It's really fun, seeing a piece of Brooklyn's history come 
back to life,=94 he said. "Some people like to plant roses and 
watch roses. I like planting trolley lines.=94 
Copyright =A9 2002, Newsday, Inc. 



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