Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/143

 Collapse of the Poppenhusen System sole reason for keeping the White Line intact at all was that there had been some difficulty in handling crowded military excursions to Creedmoor in the 1875 season, and it was decided that the White Line track would be handy to handle overflow crowds.

To permit easy movement of trains from one railroad to another, so that there would be genuine physical unification, several other interesting connections and abandonments were made:


 * 1) At Central Junction in Flushing the White Line track was connected by a curve with the Central track for the movement of freight and Creedmoor excursion trains.
 * 2) The Long Island R.R. and Southern R.R. were connected at Springfield Junction in June 1876, and passenger service abandoned on the Southern track between Jamaica and Springfield.
 * 3) The Long Island R.R. Rockaway Branch over the meadows from Springfield Junction to Cedarhurst (Ocean Point) was abandoned on June 1, 1876, all trains using the Southern R.R.s Rockaway line henceforth.
 * 4) A switch was installed at Hempstead Crossing to connect the Hempstead Branch of the Long Island R.R. with the Central's Hempstead Branch.
 * 5) The original Long Island R.R. Branch to Hempstead south of the Central R.R. track was abandoned, all trains using the Central terminus.
 * 6) The repair and construction shops of the North Side R.R. at College Point were closed, and personnel and machinery moved to Hunter's Point.
 * 7) The South Side freight docks on Newtown Creek and at Hunter's Point were abandoned; also the North Side R.R. freight dock on Flushing meadows was abandoned.
 * 8) The Central Junction roundhouse and yard at Flushing was abandoned in April 1877.

The complete integration of all the railroads permitted an intermixture of rolling stock to a degree never before possible. In a single train one could now observe coaches painted in different colors and bearing the legends of the Southern, Long Island, White Line, and North Side roads, all coupled together.