The long
Island rail road was
incorporated by a special act of the legislature April 24, 1834. The
purpose was to construct a railroad from Brooklyn to Greenport. From
there it was planned to operate a steamship line to Stonington, Conn.,
and then the old colony railroad to Boston It was not thought
practical to build a railroad to Boston through New England as there
were too many rivers to bridge that emptied into Long Island sound.
The railroad was completed to Hicksville 1837, to Farmingville 1841,
to Thompson now Brentwood 1842, to Suffolk now Central Islip 1842, and
to Greenport July 29, 1844.
The completion of the railroad to
Greenport was the occasion for a great celebration. On Saturday two
days before the opening of the line for the public, a special train
from Brookhaven carried officials of the road and several hundred
invited guests to Greenport where they were entertained at dinner. Speeches were made by
President Fisk of the railroad and others. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle devoted 3,000 words to the trip from which we quote:
"The interior of old Suffolk, which until that day had been
sacred to the gambols of wild deer, and the wilderness had only been
disturbed now and then by the sharp crack of the hunter's riffle the
low rumbling of the stage coach as it plodded on at five miles an
hour, was saluted for the first time by the shrill whistle of the
steam locomotive. The iron horse, with lungs of brass and sinews of
steel came dashing on at a furious rate puffing volumes of smoke and
flames from his nostrils and warning the people who gazed in
astonishment that the prediction of prophets was accomplished."
It
was a day of great rejoicing in all the villages along the lines as
a trip from the east end to the city that had taken two to three
days by stage coach, now took only the same number of hours. Manorville was an important stop of the
"Boston" train, where
wood was loaded to fuel the wood burning engines, and refreshments for
the passengers was provided." Prime in his history of Long Island
describes the coming of the iron horse as follows:
It is impossible
to divine the amazing changes which this improvement will have upon
both the intellectual and secular interests of the eastern part of
the Island. The inhabitants have scarcely yet recovered from the
consternation produced by actual opening of the railroad. When they
beheld with their own eyes the cumbrous train of cars drawn by the
iron horse, spouting forth smoke and steam, passing like a steed of
lightning through their forest and fields with such velocity they
could not tell whether the countenances of the passengers were human,
celestial, or infernal, they would not believe that a railroad had the
power almost to annihilate both time and space."
For a brief time the
dream of a through route to Boston was realized and traffic
flourished. But in 1848 a new route from New York to Boston was opened
through Connecticut and Rhode Island. This played havoc with the
traffic of the Long Island Its steamboats were sold and the Boston
connection abandoned. From that time on the Long Island Railroad
became a local road, depending upon its own territory for its traffic.
The two earliest locomotives were the
Ariel built by the Baldwin
works in Philadelphia in 1835, and the Post Boy built in 1836. These
engines weighed seven tons each and cost $7,000 a piece.
In later
years, Manorville was an important station and the Cannon Ball split up
there, with one section going to Greenport and one to Montauk,
returning the same way in the morning over the branch line to
Eastport. The Cape Horn train or "The Scoot" as it was called ran from
Manorville to Riverhead and Greenport. An agent, block operator and
clerk were on duty at the station, which was an important meeting
place for passenger and freight trains. At one time great quantities
of cord wood were shipped by freight from there and G. W. Raynor
shipped thousands of cords during the winter for many years all the
potatoes and cauliflower from the east end were shipped by freight
in the years gone by.