Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/126

 110 shops, while the original engine went on to Great Neck. At other times Great Neck shuttle trains emptied their passengers out at Whitestone Junction, and left them there for the College Point & Whitestone train to pick up. After the opening of the Woodside Branch in April 1874 another routing was instituted. College Point and Whitestone trains ran through over the new branch to Woodside and Hunter's Point instead of joining the old main line at Whitestone Junction. This left the old main line free for the Central trains, and Great Neck passengers then transferred at Central Junction for their shuttle trains.

At "Long Island R.R. Crossing" on the Hempstead Plains all Central trains were required to stop, and a man was stationed at that point to make sure there was no possibility of collision with a Long Island R.R. train. A tower was erected at the crossing, which displayed colored signals in the daytime and lighted ones at night. Here passengers for Hempstead changed to the Hempstead shuttle, waiting on the spur to transport them 1.4 miles south to Hempstead village. Four trains daily ran through to Hempstead without change.

Passenger traffic on the Flushing, North Shore & Central R.R. was fairly heavy on the North Side division, but light on the Central division. From the annual reports we get these overall statistics:

Only rarely do we get breakdowns of such general figures for the different parts of the system. On a Sunday in June in 1873 one conductor who made five round trips on the North Side division turned in the following report: 11-car trains were running all day, yet there were many standees. On five westbound trips there were 105, 59, 152, 531 and 640 passengers, respectively; on the five eastbound trips there were 445, 317, 601, 142, and 73 passengers, respectively. The total number of passengers passing over the road that day was 3,065. During 1874 we read that the Poppenhusen system had captured most of the Hempstead and Babylon traffic, and that on August 16 the Central carried more passengers to Babylon and Fire Island than on any Sunday since those roads were built. A brief remark of 1874 mentions that the Fourth of July traffic that year netted the