Re: (rshsdepot) A Trolley Grows in Brooklyn

[Seth Bramson <sbramson_@_bellsouth.net>]

jdent1_@_optonline.net wrote:

>This is not a trolley email list, but the following article may be of interest to those listmembers interested in NYC history 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," 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."
>
>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. 
>
 >>>Great, great news, but shouldn't the above line have read "...a 
project of bastard 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.
>
 >>>I THOUGHT the QB Bridge trolleys quite in '57 or '58. Does anybody 
know what the "...in 1960,..." refers to?

>"If we had the money, we could get to Borough Hall in about 
>18 months," 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 ," 
>said Tom Cocola, the department's spokesman. "The Gowanus 
>configuration has essentially ostracized Red Hook."
>
 >>>Nahhh. In retrospect, the entire city was strangled, slashed, 
pillaged and raped by that SOB.

>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."
>
>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," 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," 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."
>
>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," 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."
>
>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" 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.
>
 >>>Again, is that a correct date? I thought it was '57 or '58.

>"It's really fun, seeing a piece of Brooklyn's history come 
>back to life," he said. "Some people like to plant roses and 
>watch roses. I like planting trolley lines." 
>
 >>>My hat is off to Mr. Diamond. Kudos to him for all he is doing and 
trying to do.

>


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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