Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/54

 Operations: 1867–1872 sula. In July and August, however, a "Rockaway Express" ran through to the beach stopping only at Jamaica and Valley Stream beginning in 1869 and in 1870 two more such expresses were added. The trip was accomplished in only forty minutes and enabled the average Brooklynite to spend four hours at the beach and still return home by 6 P.M. In the 1871 season the railroad inaugurated moonlight excursions to the beach, the return trip leaving the Pavilion at 1 A.M.

When the South Side began running express trains on the main line beginning in 1869, it unwittingly ran into difficulties. The crack train left Bushwick and made no further stops until reaching Merrick, Mr. Fox's own town, after which it made all stops to Patchogue. This non-stop run of twenty-three miles outraged the citizens of Jamaica who took mortal offense at the affront. The local journals commented acidly on the road's indifference to accommodation and spitefully commented on the danger to life and limb from expresses hurtling through the village at thirty miles per hour. The rival Long Island RR, hitherto reviled and scorned by the press, suddenly found itself basking in the sun of editorial favor.

In 1870–71 the South Side made efforts to speed up the service, especially the expresses. The double track, laid with sixty-pound rail, was a step in this direction and so was the purchase of the newest and fastest locomotive available. The advertised express speed was thirty miles per hour but this could be exceeded on occasion. In September 1870 a new South Side engine, the "Massapequa," drawing two cars bearing President Fox and several of the directors, made a speed run between Amityville and Babylon, a distance of six miles in five minutes. This new record of seventy miles per hour was the fastest known on Long Island up to that time.

One feature of the South Side operation would strike us today as being rather curious: there were no trains on Sunday. President Fox was a practicing Baptist, and most of the directors were eastern Long Island men reared in the strict tradition of Sabbath observance. The people of Brooklyn were not in accord with this uncompromising Sabbatarianism, and regarded the absence of Sunday trains as a hypocritical device on the part of wealthy Rockaway property owners to keep the beach on Sunday to themselves. Fox and his directors regarded the prosperity of the