Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/74

 The South Side Falls to the Long Island sneaked into the Hempstead depot, tore up the tracks and switches, ran the engine and cars off the track, and completely looted the freight house and ticket office of their contents.

On the morning of October 31 a Brooklyn judge granted an order canceling all the bonds of the Hempstead & Rockaway RR. Robert White, who had gotten the contract to build the road for $100,000, had thus far received only $5000 and he now began an action to recover the balance. He traced $80,000 of stolen bonds to Vandewater Smith, the agent who had gotten him the contract and notified the court. Judgment was ordered for the transfer of $80,000 worth of bonds to White and $4000 damages in addition. Meanwhile at the auction sale of the road on October 29, 1874 the whole was knocked down to the Brooklyn Trust Co., trustees of the bonds, for the benefit of the stockholders. These gentlemen expected to make a satisfactory disposition of their property as soon as the referee determined the validity of the disputed bonds.

About November 1 the road was reopened to traffic, the trust company making arrangements with the Southern RR to furnish the equipment and crews. The old engine, equipped with a new boiler after the explosion of 1871, was still in service but the two coaches had been repainted and transferred to the Central RR.

Hardly four months later the Hempstead Branch again made news. The week of January 31, 1875 opened dark and stormy over Long Island; wind-driven rain pounded down intermittently and swelled what were normally small rivulets into swollen streams. On the line of the New York & Hempstead RR there were two such crossings, the Pine Brook at Norwood and Schodack Brook just east of Woodfield depot. The latter stream rose only a short distance north of the tracks; one fifteen inch pipe carried the water under the track; the embankment here was about nine feet high and the rainfall had backed against it a lake a few feet deep.

On Wednesday evening, February 3, 1875, after the last scheduled train had pulled into Hempstead, the crew, instead of laying over, decided to go back to Valley Stream slowly to check on the storm damage which had been getting worse all day. Accordingly, a party of seven, consisting of the engineer, conductor, trackmaster, assistant superintendent, fireman and