Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/75

 A Rival Road Takes Shape issued against construction work occurred in July when a stockholder obtained a temporary stay against driving piles on the Flushing meadows. This did not prevent the work from going on along the right-of-way from Hunter's Point to College Point where gangs of men toiled at numerous points. In the last week of July ties were being unloaded at Flushing Creek and the first installment of rails due the following week. Finally, in the second week of August the first two locomotives were completed and delivered; they were named, predictably, the College Point and the Whitestone.

At this point in the construction work another surprise was sprung on the public. When Oliver Charlick took over the old New York & Flushing in July 1867, he naturally assumed that his acquisition of the road effectively ended the ambitions of the Woodside & Flushing people. When he discovered that the road was not a dead-letter after all, but actively under contract, and with the backing of powerful capitalists besides, he realized that his New York & Flushing R.R. would prove to be a liability. To rehabilitate it would cost a great deal of money and even then it could not compete with a rival boasting new engines, new cars, a new roadbed and a youthful management. After a few months of soul-searching Charlick made overtures to the rival road, suggesting that the New York & Flushing might be purchased very reasonably. Within a year the tables had turned completely.

The motives of the Flushing & North Side R.R. people, in agreeing to Charlick's proposition, were not difficult to guess. Possession of a completed, operating railroad would mean that only three miles of their own road would need to be built, namely, from a point on the Flushing meadows to Whitestone. At the Hunter's Point end there was already a terminal, although the New York & Flushing was presently using the Long Island R.R.'s depot under a lease.

On Tuesday, August 11, 1868 the Woodside & Flushing people entered into formal possession of the old New York & Flushing property, the rumored price being $500,000. Many people in Hunter's Point, Woodside and West Flushing were alarmed at the purchase, realizing that the original right-of-way, now largely graded, would not be built on after all, and their newly acquired real estate become valueless overnight. The