Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/106

 90 and the then fashionable watering place of Fire Island. A subsidiary, the Central Extension Railroad Company, was formally organized in 1871 to build the proposed road. There was a great deal of guessing on the part of the speculators as to the exact route of the line of road. A few miles to the southeast lay the booming village of Breslau, then being intensively advertised and developed. The leader of the development, Thomas Wellwood, had earlier approached engineer John Kellum to align the Babylon extension through Breslau, and had gotten some sort of oral commitment from him. As chief engineer, Kellum had established the exact right-of-way of the Central R.R. through the Stewart purchase, and he would again have the deciding voice in the routing of the Central Extension. Unfortunately for Wellwood and the whole Central R.R. project, John Kellum died suddenly on July 24, 1871,and with him went Wellwood's dream of a Breslau R.R.

In January 1872 all speculation was ended with the filing of the map of the Babylon Extension. The road, most of which is still operated today by the L.I.R.R., was laid out south of Farmingdale, crossing the pine barrens in a straight line to West Babylon, where it crossed the South Side R.R. tracks, and was to terminate at the Babylon Town dock, whence the boats left for Fire Island. The contract for building the road was awarded to Thomas Wellwood & Co. (in his capacity as a contractor) at $20,000 per mile; seventy-pound rail was to be laid on ties spaced two feet apart, and the grading to be completed by August 1, 1872. The residence of Jonathan Sammis on the east side of Fire Island Avenue and just north of the S-curve in that road, was purchased for the depot site.

With the return of good working weather in 1872 the Babylon extension project was temporarily shoved into the background and all efforts were concentrated on opening the graded road from Flushing at least through to Garden City and Hempstead. In March all the grading on the road was pushed through to completion, and on the twenty-second the long and expensive cut at Rocky Hill was completed by the meeting of the two steam shovels. The bridges were now ready to be installed across Queens County, and the steep sides of the Rocky Hill cut smoothed off. Iron for the spans was unloaded from freighters at Hunter's Point on March 29.