gene maag posted:Thanks for the memories...As a kid in the 50's I would visit my Grandmother in Richmondhill, Queens. I'd sneak under the turnstile at the Fresh Pond Road station and ride the open end cars back and forth all day until it was time to go home...We lived in Bellerose so that was a treat for me...
Hello Gene !
THANK YOU for the appreciation --- and good to have stirred your nostalgia and memories ! We both have similar nostalgia memories of this line.. I rode the 1300 series all motor BMT EL Gate (all motor) Cars on the EL over various "solo joyride outings" from mid 1955 thru mid 1958 as they were the last old wood EL (and being Gate cars) Cars in NYC after my own neighborhood Manhattan IRT 3rd Ave EL and its IRT wood "MUDC" class EL cars were gone by end of 1955 -
Some of those IRT "MUDC" Class wooden EL cars surviving there along with the entire fleet of 1600 series Q Type wood EL Cars - until Dec. 1956, when all the wood EL Cars on the remaining Bronx portion of the 3rd ave EL, were replaced with 6 car trains of old IRT steel ex-subway "Steinway" class Low-V Motor Cars.
The Q Types were stored on the EL - and some in E.239th St IRT Yards, -- and later gradually all moved to Coney Island Shops in mid to late 1957 and overhauled to run on the Myrtle Avenue EL in order to replace the last wooden BMT El Gate cars on that line, as well as in operation in NY City and NY State, and in the USA ! The BMT Myrtle EL and its gate cars, and after May 1958, the ex- 3rd Ave EL operated (from May 1950 thru Dec. 1956) Q types, defined the early era of N Y City EL systems from the turn of the century. A living relic in even back then, modern times. Too bad the neighborhood went to crap in the late 1960s' and thereafter, and ridership dropped as crime rose. And the EL was closed late October 1969 replaced by buses by then. The end of an "era" !
Regards - Joe F
