Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/103

 The Central Railroad of Long Island it gravel of glacial origin. With the primitive earth-moving equipment of 1870 this ridge loomed as a formidable barrier to the railroad builders of that day. In June the contractors brought to the attack the most formidable artillery that had yet been seen on Long Island up to that date: two steam shovels, the first of their kind on Long Island, sixty dump cars, two locomotives and a portable track. It was planned to work at the Rocky Hill cut both day and night. The estimated time was three to four months. In July the first steam shovel went to work and the second followed in August.

The operations at Rocky Hill were so spectacular that people came from miles around just to watch. One hundred men were constantly at work and locomotives with trains of cars moved up and down on each side of the summit. Two miles of trestle work were built, one mile on each side, to create a grade of precisely fifty feet to the mile. The cost of the machinery on the Rocky Hill section alone was $50,000 and the expense of furnishing the water needed for men and locomotives ran to $30 a day.

While the heavy work of excavation was progressing at Rocky Hill, materials for track laying, etc., were beginning to arrive. In the third week of April, railroad ties by the schooner load began arriving at Hunter's Point. In June, the steamboat Artisan began unloading both ties and rails, the latter wrought iron with steel facing. By the end of June thousands of ties and thousands of steel rails lay stacked on the piers with more cargo constantly arriving. Immense quantities of stone were also being landed on Carll's dock in Flushing and on Sanger's dock on Alley Creek near the head of Little Neck Bay. In July arrangements were perfected between the South Side R.R. and the Central R.R. by which the iron and ties for New Hyde Park and Garden City through to Farmingdale should be transported over South Side rails. About August 1 a switch was laid between the Long Island R.R. and the Flushing & North Side at Winfield to transship rails and other material consigned to the Central R.R. without loading and unloading.

The building standards on the Central R.R. of L.I. were so high as to attract the attention of the public and railroad men alike. The most unusual feature was the almost entire elimination of grade crossings all along the line, and this on a road which traversed rural country almost exclusively. In Queens and Nas-