Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 2 (1963).pdf/77

 A Rival Road Takes Shape allotment of $6,000 as usual to meet the weekly payroll and in some unknown manner, one of the superintendents stole the money and decamped for parts unknown. As a result the laborers and other creditors were left unpaid and the contractors were compelled to forfeit the contract. The event caused quite some excitement locally, for numerous boarding houses and saloons depended on the weekly payroll quite as much as the laborers. The board of directors hastily renegotiated the contract with a very reliable local man, John Higgins.

Beginning with the new year 1869, the company purchased 150 tons of new iron for the road into Long Island City, began work on building a way depot at Woodside, and put into service several handsome new passenger coaches. Meanwhile, the train schedule on the old New York & Flushing route was tightened up and additional trains added for rush hour and late night travel. In February work began on a terminal building at Long Island City on the site of an oil factory that had burnt down the previous fall.

With the return of fine spring weather in 1869 intensive work resumed all along the road. Conrad Poppenhusen himself stepped in as president in April to personally supervise the work, and Orange Judd did the same in the post of vice-president. On April 26 contractor Roe began driving piles on the meadow from the new Whitestone Junction to the Woodside & Flushing R.R. drawbridge over the creek. On May 16 one of the small "jobbing" locomotives, the Uncle Tom while being transported from one section of track to another, toppled into Flushing Creek, inconveniencing the track gangs and draining manpower from the road for salvage operations. A week later the eight-ton engine was hoisted from the mud and the $300 worth of damages repaired.

By mid-June 1869 the roadbed for the new track between Long Island City and Winfield, which immediately adjoined the Long Island R.R. track, had been largely graded and the west end nearly ready for rails. In July there were two minor setbacks: a new passenger coach consigned to the road became detached while crossing the Harlem River on a car ferry and fell into the water. More serious was a shortage of timber which should have been delivered in June but which arrived only the third week of July. In the last days of July the rails were laid to College Point.