Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/34

 18 on Thursday and Friday and did not return to normal till the following week, yet the road had nothing to be ashamed of. Much larger, richer and better equipped roads had been wholly overwhelmed and made far less effort to resume service.

Although these winter troubles taxed the resources of the road and often gave it a bad press, operation at more favorable times of the year was reliable and rather well patronized. Regular statistics for passenger operation for this early period are long since lost, but from chance remarks scattered in the newspapers, we can glean a few interesting figures. In the summer of 1855 patronage was as follows:

In the second week of July 1854 when the road first opened, the average daily receipts were $35.34; the same week in 1855 netted $151.26 per diem, quite an increase in travel in one year. In 1856 the July total of passengers was 26,535, or roughly 1000 persons a day; the 1856 season, as a whole, reflected, we are told, an increase of 12½% over that of 1855. Only once are we given a breakdown of the monthly figures, but these are revealing:

From these fragmentary statistics, it seems obvious that by far the largest proportion of the company's income came from single trip riders, who patronized the road largely during the summer months. We lack figures on winter riding, unfortunately, but the small proportion of income from commutation holders leads us to suspect that the number of regular daily riders was small. Even the income from freight appears negligible.

Under these financial circumstances, it comes as no surprise to learn that the Flushing Railroad defaulted on the interest payment on its first mortgage bonds on September 1, 1856. The road was certainly not over-capitalized, and every effort had been made to run it efficiently, but nothing could compensate for the handicaps under which it operated. We have pointed out