Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/124

 108 and fraternal groups of all kinds. An official calculated that in 1875 $80,000 a month was spent at College Point on lager beer, retailing at 5¢ per glass. The village had its own water and gas works, three Institutes besides a public school system, and supported two newspapers.

The Great Neck Branch, with its five small village stops, originated little traffic in comparison. Bayside was a booming community in the early seventies, when the break-up of the great estates was already in progress, but with only 1,078 persons in 1875. Little Neck with 780 persons and Great Neck were small crossroad villages, with scattered houses dotting the roads beyond the villages. For the four-year period 1873–76, the branch had six or seven trains a day, never more or less. Service was given only from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M., and at intervals of from two to three hours; the fourteen-mile run from Hunter's Point was scheduled for fifty minutes' running time. The fare remained uniform because of the absence of any competition. The rates from New York to the following communities were:

Scheduling on the Central R.R. was always generous, largely because this was the prestige run of the system. The best trains operated over the best roadbed, and gave a service well in excess of the requirements of traffic. The Hempstead Branch, serving a large and well-established village, got eight trains a day in 1873, and this was increased to ten or eleven for the years 1874–76. Unfortunately for the Central, the Long Island R.R.—and, at times, the Hempstead & Rockaway railroad—also shared the patronage of Hempstead. The Central Extension eastward from Garden City had three trains a day when service opened to Bethpage and then Farmingdale. When through service to Babylon opened, trains fluctuated between seven and ten, depending on the season, running at roughly two-hour intervals. This was remarkably good service considering that the entire route ran through an unsettled territory with no villages at all to furnish patronage except the terminus at Babylon. The run from Hunter's Point through to Babylon was scheduled for one hour thirty minutes to one hour forty minutes for way trains