(rshsdepot) Lincoln at rest on the move at Desbrosses Street and at Hudson River RR Depot

["Paul Luchter" <luckyshow_@_mindspring.com>]

NOTE: This message had contained at least one image attachment.
To view or download the image(s), click on or cut and paste the following URL into your web browser:


http://www.Railfan.net/lists/listthumb.cgi?rshsdepot-06-09-03

train.jpg (image/jpeg, 33892 bytes)

...well, not quite at rest....his funeral train, heading to Springfield, 
Illinois, leaves Philadelphia and arrives Jersey City Pennsylvania 
Railroad Terminal April 24, 1865.

"After a six-hour trip from Philadelphia, the martyred President's final 
journey home to Springfield, Illinois, brought the train on Monday, 
April 24, to Jersey City's huge railway station at 10 a.m. But the big 
clock inside had been deliberately frozen to read 7:20, the time of Mr. 
Lincoln's death April 15 in the District of Columbia. "

From there his coffin was ferried to Desbrosses Street Ferry...see:
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/gunther/ferryterminal.jpg
Here we see Mayor Gunther  accompanying the funeral carriage from 
Desbrosses Street Ferry Terminal to City Hall.

Desbrosses Street Pennsylvania Railroad Ferry only began three years 
earlier in 1862; it would run to 1930, though I doubt this 
classical-style ferry terminal lasted so long.

Desbrosses Street is a bit south of Canal Street. The horsecar we see is 
of the Belt Line Railway...this line was never electrified...It had 
opened just two years earlier as  the Central Park North & East River 
Railroad Company, leased in 1892 to Metropolitan Crosstown Railway, 
leased 1893 to 1908 to Metropolitan Street railway, reorganized 1912  to 
Belt Line Railway when it was acquired by the 3rd Avenue Railway.

It did do a sort of loop, or belt, plying the ferry terminals on the 
Hudson side. It was known as the Belt Line RR very early, though, a 
loop, or belt from South Ferry up the North River side across 59th, the 
east side serving the East River ferries. This route was surveyed by 
engineers on loan from the Barge Canal Commission, pre-cursors to the 
Port Authority of New York. I guess the rails doubled for freight, 
pulled by horses (?) on the river sides at least on the Belt Line 
railway...

On April 25th, Lincoln's coffin left the City hall rotunda, on a 14 foot 
long funeral car, up Broadway across 14th up 5th Avenue across 34th to 
9th Avenue to the Hudson River Railway Depot.

The attachment is picture of the funeral train departing the Hudson 
River RR terminal (at 30th between 10th and 9th Avenues)







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

------------------------------