Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/54

 38 cars, the first wholly new equipment seen on the road in twelve years. These were longer and somewhat wider than the older cars.

In the midst of these improvements the New York & Flushing R.R. changed hands, the owners having probably concluded that nothing further could be taken out of it without the prior investment of an unpleasantly large sum for rehabilitation. The road was sold in the summer of 1866 for $200,000 to the superintendent, Mr. J. O. Stearns and a party of his friends, who had acquired an underlying mortgage of $125,000 on the property.

Mr. Stearns and his fellow investors continued valiantly to rehabilitate their ailing investment. In May 1867, after intermittent requests over the years, Mr. Stearns saw fit to gratify the requests of the people of Flushing for restoring the commutation system. On June 1, 1867 depots along the line again sold commutation tickets for the first time since 1862. A chance letter from a commuter in 1866 gives us a brief glimpse of conditions at both termini at this period. After the last train on the L.I.R.R. came in at Hunter's Point, the gas lights on the platforms were extinguished, and the Flushing passengers for the two subsequent trains had to grope their way in absolute, unrelieved darkness to the ferry, because the strict economy practiced on the road made the officials reluctant to defray any portion of the expense of lighting the depot. At the Flushing terminus only one solitary lamp was lighted at the extreme end of the depot, hardly sufficient to disperse the surrounding darkness.

Nine months passed quietly, and fortunately, uneventfully, when the people of Flushing were startled in June 1867 with the news that Mr. Stearns, their able and hard-working railroad president, was dead, and that just before his death, he had sold his interest in the road to Oliver Charlick for $300,000. Rumors as to the sale were put to rest on July 13 when Charlick took formal possession of the road. As might be expected, there were considerable misgivings at the news. Flushingites had had a taste of Oliver Charlick's management once before, and feared a return of his high-handed, autocratic rule. When Charlick left the Flushing road in 1860, he was still a private individual of large means. Within months he had bought many of the outstanding bonds of the railroad, and by February 1863 was reported to have secured stock control. In April 1863 he reached