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Re: (rshsdepot) Stony Brook, NY

>The rain let up just in time for an announcement at the Stony Brook  railroad 
>station of over $2.5 million in improvements to the site adjacent to  Stony 
>Brook University. Appropriately, SBU President Shirley Strum Kenny and  

I really have to laugh -- back around 1965 when Philadelphia ordered the LIRR to get rid of taxable property as fast as it could in anticipation of the end of the rehabilitation law. Stony Brook was to be demolished. "It's termite infested," the Manager of Stations, Joe Sabina told me.

What's more, Robert Moses was planning to make Route 25A a Four lane highway from Kings Park to Setauket -- and the then-right of way and the station would be in the path of the four-lane highway. 

But there was some community interest in saving the station and some of us got a hold on demolition while we worked to see if we could move it to the Stony Brook Museum to go along with Locomotive 39, which then st in its lonesomeness at the Carraige House. Maybe a combine and a coach, the station and its semaphore block signal making a nice static display.

As we studied the possibility, the state worked out the deal to purchase the LIRR, and most of the demolition plans came to a quick halt, as there was no more fear of property taxes being re-imposed by the local munipalities and school districts. Then Ron Ziel persuaded the museum board that they didn;t really want the locomotive at all, and it was removed and headed east. It's now in Riverhead at the RMLI, with the boiler being rehabbed at STrasburg.

The tracks have been re-aligned and straightened somewhat to the south as originally planned as part of the demolition scenario -- but the station building is still there.

So -- 42 years later, the termites and Robert Moses are both thwarted <g>.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
   
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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1803
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org