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(rshsdepot) The Dolly Varden Terminal

This was the name the Times used for the 30th Street NY Central and Hudson River Railroad station, the Dolly Varden Terminal. In this 1930 Times article the train was a "crack train" and said to last run in late 1906, implying that no passengers after that...

At this point, behind 404 to 418 West 29th Street (in 1930) were nine pre-Civil War private homes...I am sure those were soon gone, I forget what's there now, a factory building, maybe ?

I know that when the New York and Northern (later the Putnam Division) terminated outside the Polo Grounds it connected with and transferred baggage onto the New York Elevated Rail Road.....the southern point, with a NY& Northern ticket office and baggage handling, was at 30th Street on the 9th Avenue El, passengers would come down using that amazingly high S curve at the NW corner of Central Park.

Now would there have been interchange between the NYC&Northern/NY Elevated and the NY Central and Hudson River RR?, both are north-south, so it wouldn't make much sense...

but the 30th Avenue 9th Avenue El station was a pretty busy one, wasn't it?

2/26/1911...CNJ and PRR ferries relent to allow smoking on upper deck of double deck ferries due to falling off of passenger traffic due since the McAdoo tubes opening...men not able to gauge their cigar lengths on the train were forced to put them out one board unless they were in a stuffy smoking room inside downstairs...hmmm

August 23, 1902 at 96th Street where the New York Central tracks skirted Riverside Park, a northbound train hit two running children, 4 year old William Achnitz of 807 Amsterdam. 7 year old Julia Myers of 72 West Ninety-eighth may get well, doctors said. "The train which did the cruel work was the "Dolly Varden," of cheerful name but murderous record, and is the sole relic of the hundreds of Hudson River Railroad passenger trains which used to thunder up and down the same roadbed to the old Thirtieth Street Station in the days when the Park Avenue tunnel was still a dream and when their course lay all the way past wooded hills and pasture land,  instead of the crowded city which the "Dolly Varden" traverses in these latter days."..The children had been on the old dock (this is 1902) and heading back...the train was moving slow but they panicked. The policeman road the train to the end of its run at the main line junction at Spuyten Duyvil, and then arrested  the engineer, William Laspointe.

Here we are in July 1893 and the West Side Gang made another raid Friday afternoon on the "Dolly Varden" train of the New-York Central Railroad, running between Thirtieth Street station and Spuyten Duyvil. ..half a dozen were caught and are now on Blackwell's Island serving two months

About 3 o'clock, as the train stopped at a  crossing at Eleventh Avenue and Thirty-third...a score of rough young men jump on the train...they annoyed the passengers by singing...they wouldn't pay a fair, and started abusing the conductor and brakeman, threatening to attack them, they jumped out the windows and ran down the platforms but were apprehended...they had been very obnoxious it reads......they had been very obnoxious it reads...this after the train was stopped by alerted police at 59th Street & 11th, "for a moment there was a lively time on the 'Dolly Varden'"  The article was titled Ruffians Threaten Trainmen

Earlier in 1893 a Rapid Transit proposal would have elevated the West Side line of NY Central from 30th to 69th and connected it to the 9th Avenue El..

In 1893 the Times says on the main line the 59th Street station was never used, 72nd Street once a day, 86th Street and 110th Street stations "semi-occasionally" used...this he also proposed for Rapid Transit expansion.

Dolly Varden is a character in Charles Dickens' novel "Barnaby Rudge" quite flirtatious her favorite attire a green dress with pink polka dots.

A Dolly Varden is also a fish in the Arctic Char family, they are dark with light colored spots.....the Dolly Varden fish was once considered a "trash fish" and a threat to salmon as it was thought the char ate salmon fry and eggs. Bounties were put on the Dolly Vardens. 6 million were killed 1921 to 1940...people were paid by the tails they turned in...Later the US Bureau of Fisheries discovered that most of the tails were from trout and coho salmon...Dolly Vardens coexisted with salmon for thousands of years...the declines were man-made...Dolly Vardens are a distinct species it is now known...they are the exact opposite coloration from trout and salmon who have dark spots on light background bodies, but are protected by  US Fish and Wildlife under a "similarity of appearance" provision of the Endangered Species Act because the Dolly Varden resembles the threatened Bull Trout, a threatened species (but it is opposite...oh, never mind...) Dolly Varden= Salvelinus malma

Dolly Varden is a music group from Chicago, "forging roots music that mixes rock and pop and folk and country in a manner that is heavy on the heartfelt and light on the cliched" since 1995, or so it reads, supposedly they have sparked a "veritable alt-country revival" The band is named after the fish, not the Dickens' character.

Dolly Varden was the name of an early anti-political party  movement in the 1800's, anti-bossism was another of their causes., it was strongest in Nevada. The Dolly Varden mine was discovered in (present Elko County) June 1869. It became one of the richest copper mines in southern Elko County (!)..a drop in prices closed the mine until 1905..by 1927 it was abandoned..it is a ghost town today...


Dolly Varden is a campground in Lowell, Oregon

A character in Dickens's novel "Barnaby Rudge," a beautiful, lively, and coquettish girl who wore a cherry-colored mantle and cherry-colored ribbons.

On October 14,1951 the NRHS Buffalo and Rochester chapters ran the Dolly Varden Special over the Valley Branch Dunkirk to Titusville. The Dunkirk, Alleghany Valley and Pittsburgh RR was once nicknamed the Dolly Varden, later the Valley Branch of the New York Central  (Last passenger train 1937)






Dolly Varden was a passenger train between Spuyten Duyvil and 30th Street and 9th Avenue.








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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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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #907
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org