Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When was the Long Island Rail Road established?
The LIRR's history stretches back to the Brooklyn and Jamaica Rail Road, incorporated on April 25, 1832 to build a ten-mile line from the East River in Brooklyn through the communities of Brooklyn, Bedford, and East New York to Jamaica. B&J engineer Major D. B. Douglass soon began planning for a continuation, forming part of an 11-hour combination rail and steamship route between New York City and Boston in cooperation with the New York, Providence and Boston Railroad and Boston and Providence Rail Road. The current all-land route (Shore Line) across southern Connecticut was considered impassable at the time due to numerous hills and river valleys. Douglass attracted wealthy New Yorkers and Bostonians, who received a charter for the Long-Island Rail-Road Company on April 24, 1834, with the right "to construct, and during its existence to maintain and continue a rail-road or rail-roads, with a single or double track, and with such appendages as may be deemed necessary for the convenient use of the same, commencing at any eligible point adjoining Southold Bay, in or near the village of Greenport, in the county of Suffolk, and extending from thence, on the most practicable route, through or near the middle of Long-Island, to a point on the water's edge in the village of Brooklyn, in the county of Kings, to be designated by the trustees of that village, and to a point on the water's edge in the village of Williamsburgh, in the said county of Kings, to be designated by the trustees of that village, and in like manner to construct, maintain and continue a branch rail-road from the said main road to Sag Harbor". It was also authorized to unite with the Brooklyn and Jamaica with the consent of that company. Since its plan was not to serve local traffic on Long Island, the LIRR chose not to serve existing communities along the shores of the island, but built straight down the middle of the island, which was largely uninhabited at the time and relatively free of grade crossings. This straight route was the quickest and the easiest to build, compared to the options of being built along the northern coast of Long Island, or being built in a north-central route following the Middle Country Road. The LIRR was organized on June 17, 1835, and Knowles Taylor was elected president.
Construction began in early 1897 under the Charles F. Parker Company of New York City, and by June, the Mount Tom Railroad Company had officiated a 25 year operating lease with the Holyoke Street Railway. The inaugural ride took place on June 17, 1897, with a number of city officials, railway employees, and officials of the Wason Manufacturing Company being the first passengers. The railway briefly rose to national fame when President McKinley and First Lady Ida Saxton rode to the summit house on June 20, 1899.
On June 1, 1940, the title of the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation was transferred to the City of New York, signifying the first phase of unification of New York's subway system with the Independent Subway System as well as eventual public operation of the entire system. (The Interborough Rapid Transit Company would be merged on June 15 of the same year.) At midnight, a ceremony commemorating the transfer, with five hundred people in attendance, was held at the Times Square station. The last BMT train had left the 57th Street station five minutes earlier. When the train arrived at Times Square, BMT president William S. Menden handed over his company's properties to Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who then gave them to New York City Board of Transportation chairman John H. Delaney. The Board of Transportation operated the New York City Transit System until the creation of the New York City Transit Authority in 1953.
Operated by the Holyoke Street Railway Company, abbreviated on livery as the Hly. St. Ry. Co., the streetcar system begin operation on September 24, 1884, consolidated with the Amherst and Sunderland Street Railway in 1907, and ceased operations as a streetcar operator in 1937. Regular bus operations began in 1921, and soon after the incorporation of the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority in 1977, the company began serving as a contract operator. This service continued until 1987, when a dispute between labor and management led regular bus service to an abrupt end, with would-be passengers still waiting at stops, on July 1, 1987. After four years of inactivity and with a municipal school bus contract failing to pass negotiations, the company liquidated its assets and had dissolved by 1991.
Carl Fisher was an American automotive and real estate entrepreneur who conceived the Lincoln Highway in 1912, and helped to develop it. Connecting New York City to San Francisco, it was the first highway to cross the United States. The intention to develop the highway was announced in 1913, and Iowans raised over $5 million for the construction of the road. There were no particularly good options to cross Iowa, but the Lincoln Highway Association wanted a direct route between Chicago and Omaha. The route through Iowa was announced on September 14, 1913. They chose what was known as the "Iowa Official Trans-Continental Route," which was already being used by transcontinental motorists through the state. It covered of dirt and gravel roads that began in Clinton and traveled west to Council Bluffs. Rural roads in Iowa were notorious for their poor condition, and when it rained the mud made them even worse. The chosen route paralleled the Chicago Northwestern Railroad tracks as they followed the driest and least hilly terrain in the state.
During the mid-1920s the IMR formed a bus subsidiary that operated most of the island's bus services, and helped the railway to remain profitable into the 1960s. The first serious examination of the long term viability of the railway came with the Howden Report in 1949, which recommended the closure of the Ramsey line, which was already losing money; the eventual closure of the Peel line, which was breaking even in the late 1940s; and the retention of the then profitable Port Erin line. Howden also reported that the existing equipment of the railway had an economic life of 10–25 years. Economies were made throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. These included the ending of evening and Sunday services, the deferral of track maintenance, and cuts to train mileage as locomotives became unserviceable. To further reduce expenses, there were winter closures of the Peel line (1960-61 only) and the Ramsey line after September 1961, but A. M. Sheard, the then general manager, refused to close the Ramsey line which by this time was losing a considerable amount of money each year.
In 1923, the New York State Legislature passed a law authorizing the construction of a highway connecting Route 24 (an unsigned legislative route that is now part of NY 30) to the new Veterans' Mountain Camp, an American Legion camp on Tupper Lake. The work was funded through appropriations defined in the law. The beginning of a state road to the camp came in 1924 when earth movers were brought in by the Harnathy Contracting Company, with construction beginning in early June. The project would include construction of a concrete bridge over the Bog River. However, Hanrathy was unable to finish the job as it went bankrupt, and a second firm, the Spadaccini Realty Construction Corporation of The Bronx was brought into finish the job, which began in June 1925.The bridge over the Bog River was completed on August 29, 1925 and they announced would be opened for traffic within ten days.The route did finally open in 1925, with the Veterans Camp opening on May 15, 1926. This road was extended from modern NY 30 north to a dead end at Warren Point. In the 1930 renumbering of state highways in New York, hundreds of state-maintained highways that did not yet have a designation were assigned one. The Veterans' Mountain Camp highway was designated as NY 421 by the following year.
The First Transcontinental Railroad (also called the Great Transcontinental Railroad, known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. Construction was financed by both state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds. The Western Pacific Railroad Company built of track from Oakland/Alameda to Sacramento, California. The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) constructed eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory (U.T.). The Union Pacific built from the road's eastern terminus at Council Bluffs near Omaha, Nebraska westward to Promontory Summit.
The electrification of old horse trams came within less than a decade for the Holyoke Street Railway and in Massachusetts as a whole. When the railway's first electric cars appeared in 1891, at the time about a third of all street railway lines in Massachusetts had electric overhead systems. However by the turn of the century not only were these cars commonplace in the Holyoke system, they comprised more than 99% of such streetcar lines in the Commonwealth.
The fare hikes did not effectively increase revenue for the Board of Transportation to offset increasing operation costs, while system ridership plateaued due to the American car culture and increasing migration to the suburbs. After two years of financial surplus, the BOT experienced a $1.2 million deficit in 1950, and a $24.8 million deficit in 1952. The BOT was also criticized due to the influence of politics on the organization, the direct control over the board by the mayor, and the use of the city's operating budget to subsidize transit operations. In March 1953, the New York State Legislature created the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA), a public authority without direct control from a political office, with members appointed by both the Governor and Mayor. Governor Dewey signed the bill approving the creation of the TA into law on March 20, 1953. On June 15, 1953, operation of the New York City Transit System was turned over to the Transit Authority, with the Board of Estimate leasing the system to the TA for a period of ten years. The Board of Transportation, meanwhile, was dissolved. The new Transit Authority was modeled after the existing Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the latter of which is also now part of the MTA.
While routes have changed in the decades since the railway's closure, the PVTA continues to provide bus service in Holyoke as well as all other municipalities previously covered by the former carrier's services. Due to several recessions in the 1980s, the railway's former amusement park Mountain Park shuttered the same year as buses ceased, in 1987. This year coincides with the Railway Company's closure however the two were unaffiliated by that time; Louis Pellissier Sr. had sold the amusement park to the Collins family of Lincoln Park in 1952, they assumed operations the following year until its closure.
The railway's ties with the Holyoke Street Railway began in 1902 when the stockholders and directors voted to increase the capital stock of the company to construct a line across the Notch in the Holyoke Range and connect with the Hampshire Street Railway system at the Granby town line. The Hampshire Street Railway, organized that same year, served as a collaboration of the interests of the Amherst and Holyoke railways, with Walter Cowls and William Loomis elected as sitting directors in the following year at an annual meeting at the Holyoke company's offices. In the following year the railway began advertising jointly with the Holyoke Street Railway as the best way to reach "The Famous Amherst 'Notch'", and by 1905 the entirety of the system was leased to Holyoke.
The history of the MTA's bus operations generally follows the history of the New York City Transit Authority, also known as MTA New York City Transit (NYCT), which was created on June 15, 1953 by the State of New York to take over operations then operated by the New York City Board of Transportation. In 1962 the State established the Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority (MaBSTOA) as a subsidiary of NYCT to take over operations then operated by two private companies, Fifth Avenue Coach Lines, Inc. and Surface Transit, Inc. Both NYCT and MaBSTOA operate service pursuant to a lease agreement with the City of New York.
In 1788 and 1789 stage lines are established linking Albany to Lansingburgh, New York and Springfield, Massachusetts, prior to this the only stagecoach service was to New York. This is the very beginning of Albany's rise as a transportation hub, stage lines being an early version of intercity bus lines. In 1791 stage coach mail route is established to Bennington, Vermont and a stage line is started to Oneida County in 1792. In the following few years stage lines are established with the surrounding communities and beyond, such as Ballston in 1793 and to Buffalo and Niagara Falls in 1811. Within ten years turnpikes would start to radiate out from Albany to surrounding communities and farther.
1782: The first steam-driven train is invented by Richard Trevithick in Boston, Plymouth Commonwealth. A race is held in a commonwealth bordering the New Nile starting in Springfield and ending in Cairo, with one of the hairy elephant-pulled trains they threaten to replace.
On 11 October 1883, a convention of railroad executives met in Chicago and agreed to the implementation of five time zones in North America, using as a basis Greenwich Mean Time. Before the invitations to the Washington conference were sent out on December 1, the joint efforts of Abbe, Fleming and William Frederick Allen, Secretary of the US railways' "General Time Convention" and Managing Editor of the "Travellers' Official Guide to the Railways", had brought the US railway companies to an agreement which led to standard railway time being introduced at noon on 18 November 1883 across the nation. Although this was not legally established until 1918, there was thus a strong sense of "fait accompli" that preceded the Washington conference, although setting local times was not part of the remit of the conference.
The ILGWU was founded on June 3, 1900 in New York City by seven local unions, with a few thousand members between them. The union grew rapidly in the next few years but began to stagnate as the conservative leadership favored the interests of skilled workers, such as cutters. This did not sit well with the majority of immigrant workers, particularly Jewish workers with a background in Bundist activities in Tsarist Russia, or with Polish and Italian workers, many of whom had strong socialist and anarchist leanings.
The world's first commercial maglev system was a low-speed maglev shuttle that ran between the airport terminal of Birmingham International Airport and the nearby Birmingham International railway station between 1984 and 1995. Its track length was , and trains levitated at an altitude of , levitated by electromagnets, and propelled with linear induction motors. It operated for 11 years and was initially very popular with passengers, but obsolescence problems with the electronic systems made it progressively unreliable as years passed, leading to its closure in 1995. One of the original cars is now on display at Railworld in Peterborough, together with the RTV31 hover train vehicle. Another is on display at the National Railway Museum in York.
In March 1953, the Board of Transportation was abolished, and was replaced by the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA). The NYCTA formally succeeded the BOT on June 15, 1953, being composed of five unsalaried members. Hugh Casey was elected as the agency's chairman at the authority's first meeting. The new Transit Authority was modeled after the existing Port of New York Authority which now calls itself the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, the latter of which is also now part of the MTA. At this time, the city government leased the IRT, BMT, and IND subway lines and the surface system (buses and, until 1956 street cars). A major goal of the formation of the NYCTA was to remove transit policy, and especially the setting of the transit fare, from City politics. The fare was increased to fifteen cents on July 25, 1953, and a token was introduced for paying subway and elevated fares. Bus and trolley fares continued to be paid by cash only.
In Frank Bowden's own lifetime, Raleigh publicity material stated that the firm was founded in 1888, which was when Bowden, as he himself confirmed, first bought into the enterprise. Thus, Raleigh's 30th anniversary was celebrated in 1918. The 1888 foundation date is confirmed by Bowden's great-grandson, Gregory Houston Bowden, who states that Frank Bowden "began to negotiate with Woodhead and Angois and in December 1888 founded 'The Raleigh Cycle Company'." The December 1888 foundation date is also confirmed by Nottinghamshire Archives. In recent years, the Raleigh company has cited 1887 as a foundation date but, whilst this pre-dates Bowden's involvement, the Raleigh brand name was created by Woodhead and Angois and the enterprise can, as demonstrated above, be traced back to 1885.
On January 19, 1959, the library moved to its fifth location and first permanent home, the former Briarcliff Manor station originally on the New York City & Northern Railroad (later the New York and Putnam Railroad). The station had been built in 1906 by village founder Walter W. Law in the Tudor Revival style, as a replacement for a smaller station, which was moved to nearby Millwood. In its later operation as a station, the building was rarely used, and only four trains stopped there each day. Due to the railroad's tracks ending in the Bronx and requiring a transfer to continue on to Manhattan, many Briarcliff Manor residents would drive to Pleasantville or Scarborough, which had stations along lines ending in Manhattan, and more trains ran along those lines. The passenger railroad, then known as the Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad, discontinued service in 1958, freeing up use of the building for the library.
By the early 1880s, there had been pressure to expand rail service eastward. At this time another railroad, the Northern Railroad of Long Island threatened the Long island Rail Road's monopoly. The Northern Railroad was incorporated on March 23, 1881, and it planned to build a road from Astoria to Northport via Flushing, Great Neck, Glen Cove, Oyster Bay and Huntington. By June 1881, construction plans were authorized and in mid-July the building contract was signed, with work set to begin in August. The Long Island Rail Road attempted to undermine the Northern Railroad's project before it could sell stock and acquire a roadbed. It was going to link its north side branches together as a continuous railroad to Northport. Construction cost from Great Neck to Roslyn and from Locust Valley to Northport was approximately $400,000.
In 1912, William Kissam Vanderbilt II used the Central Rail Road bridge over Bell Boulevard as part of the Long Island Motor Parkway right of way. This caused the parkway to curve slightly south for the crossing. New York State Parks Department later built the current bridge over Bell Boulevard just north of the original site when they acquired the land for a bicycle path in 1938. The original Rail Road right of way leading to the bridge can still be seen when headed east immediately prior to the current crossing.
In late March 1877, Brooklyn finally authorized the LIRR to return to Atlantic Avenue with steam locomotives, and the LIRR leased the main line of the Atlantic Avenue Railroad (the final successor to the B&J) east of Fort Greene Place (just east of Flatbush Avenue) on June 1, 1877 for $60,000 per year. An opening excursion from the new Flatbush Avenue terminal was held on July 1, 1877, and regular service in the form of through trains to Long Island began on July 2. Small Atlantic Avenue rapid transit steam locomotives began providing local service for five cents west of East New York on August 13, later extended all the way to Rockaway Junction (east of Jamaica). (The Brooklyn City Rail Road established a similar "rapid transit" service a week later on its Third Avenue Line to Fort Hamilton.)
The Long Island Rail Road was begun as a combined ferry-rail route to Boston via Greenport. The predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road began service in 1836 from the ferry terminal (to Manhattan) through Brooklyn to Jamaica in Queens, and completed the line to the east end of Long Island in 1844. Other rail lines to Coney Island, the Rockaways and Long Beach serviced the beach resort towns. The growing and merging railroads opened up more than 50 stations in (present-day) Nassau County and over 40 in Suffolk Country, laying the foundation for the future suburbanization of the island.