Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/44

28 Worse still, part of the route had already been occupied by the tracks of the Brooklyn City R.R. and the Grand Street & Newtown R.R. and payments would have been necessary for operating over their rails. Finally, the rapidly expanding population of Williamsburgh in the 1860's was making street travel increasingly crowded and slow. The traveler, after a long slow horse car journey from Hunter's Point through the streets of Williamsburgh, would still be faced with the prospect of a ferry ride to reach Manhattan. It was fortunate that the Flushing R.R.'s poverty prevented it from entering on a project that could only have proved disastrous.

Mr. Litchfield, unlike his predecessor Oliver Charlick, bent backward to ingratiate the Flushing road with the public. On a foggy day in late February, for example, when the boats from New York were running late and uncertainly at best, groups of Flushing-bound commuters straggled at odd times into Hunter's Point station. When the number became substantial, Mr. Litchfield authorized a special train to be made up, which bore the belated passengers to Flushing in time for their suppers, and extolling the benevolent management of the railroad.

The summer schedule of 1860 was expanded for the first time to seven trains a day each way, two via the new Thirty-fourth Street ferry and five via the Fulton Market Slip. The ferryboat Mattano, placed on the route in 1859, continued to serve the Fulton Ferry route. The superintendent, Mr. J. S. Bottorff, was also given freerein to repair all the locomotives, paint the cars and overhaul the road's physical structure. The largest repair work was earmarked for the Flushing Creek draw, which project was brought to completion in the following November.

The sole "improvement" which distressed the Flushingites was the resumption of the four Sunday excursion trains in May. Mr. Litchfield had been so gentlemanly and gracious in his dealings with the villagers that the ministers and the prominent men of the town felt some sense of delicacy as to the manner of voicing their disapproval; finally, a private committee circulated a petition, bearing the names of no less than seventy of the most influential men of Flushing Village, and on receipt of this impressive document, Mr. Litchfield, with his usual grace, withdrew the Sunday trains as of August 1.

To everyone's surprise and intense disappointment, Mr. Litch-