Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/117

The Heyday of the Poppenhusens into this depot in the summer of 1875 for the Fire Island traffic and to service the Watson House across the street. In any case, the change effectively ended all schemes of moving the Central depot down to the Steamboat Dock, seriously considered only four months before. To bring the railroad between Babylon and Patchogue up to Central R.R. standards, much of the line was rebuilt with fresh ballasting and new rails.

The change of terminus from Babylon to Patchogue was no doubt motivated partly by optimism and partly by vanity. The directors hoped to court the east end trade by giving high-speed, limited-stop service to New York, something that the South Side and Long Island R.R. could not do; there was also an element of vanity in still further extending the range of the road and flaunting its superior rolling stock and roadbed in an era unaccustomed to such splendors. Poppenhusen followed up his purchase of the South Side R.R. with purchase of the controlling interest in the subsidiary Hempstead & Rockaway railroad in June 1875.

The urge to extend and enlarge the Poppenhusen system was by no means sated with the absorption of the South Side network in 1874. The officers and directors of the company were tirelessly seeking to extend the North Side system still further eastward to tap the remaining areas still monopolized by the Long Island R.R. It will be remembered that when the railroad was first projected in 1868, Poppenhusen and Locke expressly stated in the incorporation papers their intention of reaching Roslyn. The scheme lay fallow for awhile, partly because construction of the main line absorbed all the energy and money of the company. In the summer of 1871 the directors were stirred into action by the appearance on the scene of a potential rival, the North Side R.R. of L.I., which published grandiose plans for building from Richmond Hill to Orient Point all along the North Shore.

With the arrival of good spring weather in 1872 surveyors were sent out for the first time to sound out the territory to the eastward. In March a team surveyed from Farmingdale to Huntington with the idea of extending the Bethpage brickyard spur north through the hills to the shore. A second team surveyed south from Flushing through Jamaica to Rockaway. A month later in May a route was traced out from Floral Park northeast to Glen Cove. It was reported that the property