Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/116

100 Stewart accepting about $700,000 of the bonds of the new company in payment.

In the fall of 1873 the South Side R.R. of L.I., one of the three big systems on the island, the main line of which tapped all the southern villages, began to experience financial difficulties. In November 1873 the railroad went into receivership and in September 1874 was put up at auction. A property of this size and importance proved an irresistible temptation to Conrad Poppenhusen and his compliant board of directors, and at the sale, Elizur B. Hinsdale, the treasurer, bought in the South Side road for $200,000. It was an easy purchase; no one else appeared anxious to buy a road that had slipped into a tangle of financial difficulties. Oliver Charlick of the Long Island R.R., the only other railroad tycoon likely to rise to such tempting bait, lay ailing and sickly in his Flushing home, with death but a few short months away, his old time aggressiveness and uncanny skill at manipulation blasted by sickness.

On September 25, 1874, the South Side R.R. of L.I. formally became a Poppenhusen subsidiary and was reorganized as The Southern Railroad Co. of Long Island. Within days the telegraph wires of the North Side and Southern systems were connected and two track connections were made: one in Long Island City through Van Alst Avenue, and the more important one at a point west of Babylon, now called Belmont Junction. The reason for the unusual haste in carrying out this latter change was to enable the managers to make use of the Southern R.R. rolling stock on the day of the International Rifle Match at Creedmoor on September 26; as it turned out, this proved a wise precaution for 8,000 persons used the road to attend the meet.

The joining of the two systems at Belmont Junction created another change of importance. On November 1, 1874, with the change of timetables, the Southern R.R. tracks from Babylon east to Patchogue were detached from the control of the Southern R.R. and added to the Central's main line, and all Central trains were henceforth routed from Long Island City to Patchogue. This meant that the former Babylon station of the Central R.R. on Fire Island Avenue ceased to be a terminus only eleven months after its completion. It is probable that the station was not immediately abandoned; there is some reason to believe that the Central R.R. continued to operate at least some service