Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/157

 Collapse of the Poppenhusen System however, this rehabilitated stretch was linked up to the Main Line at Farmingdale (Bethpage Junction) and the plains section cut back to Stewart Avenue, Plainedge. Once this track connection was broken, the remainder of the Central Extension on the plains was doomed.

During World War II the Salvage Division of the War Production Board considered tearing up the long disused and weed-grown plains track, and asked the LIRR to give up the unused rails. To the surprise of the railroad it was discovered that the rails were already gone, and the railroad was accused of abandoning without permission. An investigation disclosed that the rails had, in reality, been stolen by a scrap dealer living near the right-of-way, who claimed that someone had sold him the rails. In his own defense he testified that he had assumed the seller was an authorized representative of the railroad. Since no additional rails were available in wartime to re-lay the road, and there being no need for service, the Long Island applied to the Office of Defense Transportation and the regulatory bodies for post de facto permission, to abandon, which was granted.

In 1946, in order to bring building materials to the huge new Levittown development, the rails were re-laid eastward to a point just east of the Wantagh Parkway, where a temporary freight terminal was set up. The track crossed the parkway at grade and trains were flagged across. As soon as Levittown was completed, the track was cut back to the rear of the Meadowbrook Hospital, where coal was occasionally hauled in. Finally, the opening of the Meadowbrook Parkway and the laying out of Salisbury Park by the county in the late 1950's further cut the track back to the present Roosevelt Raceway terminus. A line of high tension wires still marks the old right-of-way all the way to Bethpage. Thus, after almost a century roughly half the old Central Railroad trackage has disappeared, but the other half still forms an indispensable part of the present Long Island Rail Road, a living memorial to the energy and vision of those two great Long Islanders, Alexander T. Stewart and Conrad Poppenhusen.