New York, Westchester & Boston- Nov. 20th, 2016 Field Trip

Extremely cool pics!

Thank you.

Peter

Great post

Hello Tom  (P) --

Thanks for your private email to me also with these photos --- and thanks for posting this set here also for others to see who follow the old  NYW&B Railway and its history.!   Excellent photo views -- and even tho the day was dull and cold,  cloudy and very heavy winds (wind chills in the 20's) -- you persevered and got some great shots.  I will send you a private email also.  Its good to see these saved, restored (maintained) ex-NYW&B Stations and related Structures, remains,  still around in 2016. 

So much has disappeared and been removed, wiped out,  since my own decades ago 1960 thru 1980's  many photo-explorations of the line !

Regards - Joe F

Thanks everyone for your comments.

Tom 

Thanks for sharing this with us all, the NYWB had to be a classic example of something that was done right, that seemingly should have ended up on top of the world, and yet failed. I can see the guy who was the head of it thinking to himself sarcastically, "where did I go right?".  I have heard various stories why it never had the ridership it should have, some argue it was built too early, before the mass movement to the suburbs had happened which might have made it successful, other arguments was that pinning its hopes on commuters being willing to switch to the subway at 180th street and finish the run on the subway was kind of foolish (rather than using New Haven tracks into NYC), others blame the fortunes of the parent company for its fate. Almost nothing I have read about the line blames it never getting out of Westchester, let alone to Boston, as a cause, and I think that is true, that running a relatively long distance route to Boston likely would not have saved the line. 

Hi Tom.

Thanks for the detailed summary of your outing. I feel as if I was there with you!

Bob 

Thanks again everyone for your feedback.

Bob-- it was one of those days like we had walked in the Summer where it felt like rain any minute, but it held off this time.

BIGKID--Yes, it was sort of done right ...but failed. It has some similarities with the New York Central's Putnam Division in that it did not terminate in Manhattan, requiring a change-over in the Bronx. It also had as its "big brother" the New Haven which had its own financial troubles. Keep in mind, you had the Depression in the 1930's (lasting until around 1939) and the New Haven went bankrupt in 1935. Roger Arcara's book on the NYW&B hints at the flawed ticket collection system they used, that he believed left them open for riders to cheat on their fares. Maybe some or all of these were factors that shut down the NYW&B by 1937.  On a positive note, having any of these stations or remnants or just pieces of ballast that exist like at Ridgeway even in 2016 (going on 2017), still makes me smile.

Tom   

The Wykagyl station was all concrete cement. I remember it well.

I used to live off off corolyn in white plains ny when i was a kid

i hauled home a 4 foot piece of track in my wagon and collected some insulators from the row

we used to play war back in the woods and called one of the overpasses the tunnel

one of my knucklehead friends wrote skip Led Zeppelin over the top

me being a train guy made a penn central insignia on the inside 

looking back it may have be graffiti but we were kids having fun in the 1970s

wow, I like that Mamaroneck station too.

The line was a victim of greedy labor unions, and short-sighted politicians who taxed the line to death, and a poor location for a southern terminus. And when the right-of-way was available, communities North of the City limits refused to subsidize continued service. At the very least the line should have continued as a subway extension to Mount Vernon.

In the end...I believe the unions offered to work without pay to keep it running, but that did not pan out. Also, it would take until late 1969, for government's to realize they needed to get off the sidelines if commuter rail traffic was going to survive. At that point, New York State (Harlem & Hudson Lines...under the MTA) and Connecticut (for the New Haven...under CDOT) would indeed end up subsidizing commuter rail traffic in the region (covering operating losses and maintenance costs), but the Westchester was long gone. 

Tom

For a taste of the NYW&B, ride the Dyre Avenue subway between 180th St and Dyre Ave. I used to get on the subway at the Esplanade station when I went to Spellman in the late 60s. I always wondered why the Dyre Avenue subway stations were nothing like the rest of the New York City  Subway System. It wasn't till the mid 80s that I realized that they were built originally for something else....

Peter

I got this book at the Strand on 12th St last Thursday. I see it was mentioned above. It is a nice book and the then contemporary images are as old dating to now as they were to when the trains were running. What I mean to say is the 1972 date of publication is about midway between today and when the trains were running. 

Andy/SILVER LAKE, If you like that one you should like this even more. Picture quality is quite good. 

Tom 

Also look under:

www.nywbry.com

Peter

This is another good book:

Peter

Also look at "abandoned railroad stations of the Bromx" on Forgotten NY and the Wiki article on the NYW&N RR and, specifically on the Wiki article on the Westchester Ave station of the NYW&B.

Peter

We can blame unions, management and government but the reasons the NYW&B died were the same for all such commuter-based railway failures: Government subsidized roadway competition (car and bus), government regulation and insufficient freight revenue to subsidize passenger operations until eventual government rescue.

I used the word "government" three times in once sentence... does the NSA monitor the Forum?

GOD SAVE THE SIRT!

The blame for the failure of the NW and B was likely a variety of causes. It never really achieved the level of ridership it was supposed to and given that its parent company was in serious financial trouble for most of its life, they couldn't afford to 'eat' the losses the line had. This was at a time when there was little recognition of the need for commuter service, which generally relies on government subsidies to make them work (at the time this was built, remember, the subway system was run by private operators), and the idea was that if it was worth it, it could run as a profit making business...What is now Metro North only survived because first conrail and then the MTA taking over the old NY Central and New haven lines, there was no such savior back then.

Given the growth of commuter rail after WWII, I wonder if the NW and B would have survived, given the growth of Westchester and the northeast Bronx post war, what became the Dyre Avenue branch of the IRT was heavily built up after the second world war, and it might have helped save the line along with the growth of Westchester. I used to wonder about these things riding the number 5 train from the Esplanade station for several years I worked nights and lived in the Bronx. 

As I have stated before, When I was a little boy I asked my father what NYW&B stood for. He told me  That it was for an old railroad that used to run here in the East Bronx. It was called The New York Westchester And Boston Railroad. Folks that lived here referred to it at The New York Westchester and Back.

Happy holidays to all!

Nate