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| Re: Original Sea Beach Route-What Is Gold St.? (391554) | |||
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Re: Original Sea Beach Route-What Is Gold St.? |
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Posted by randyo on Thu Feb 22 17:35:57 2007, in response to Re: Original Sea Beach Route-What Is Gold St.?, posted by RedbirdR33 on Wed Feb 21 17:45:01 2007. When I read the now out of print book "New Subways for New York" which is a compilation of some NYS PSC reports from the 1913- 1917 era, I got the impression that the station name was changed from Gold St to Myrtle Av before it was opened to the public. What is clear is the stated reason for the change. It was felt at the time that Myrtle Av was a more easily indentifiable location than Gold St and since the station entrances were so close to Myrtle Av, the decision was made to call the station Myrtle Av. Although the field personnel always referred to both the old and new interlockings as "Gold St," the model boards in both the original Gold St tower and the new DeKalb master tower refer to the area as "Myrtle Av Interlocking." As for the lack of a connection to the Myrtle Av El, when the Fulton St El was being partially third tracked in the late teens, it was the intention of the BRT to remove all el trains from the Bkln Br. While the Fulton St as rebuilt for 10 ft wide steel cars would have been able to enter the subway via the Ashland Pl connection, the unmodified Myrtle and Lex Lines could not. The BRT therefore proposed truncating the Myrtle Av El at a new station at Flatbush Av Ext and constructing new staircases directly into the Myrtle Av station in order to provide a convenient transfer to the subway for Myrtle Av El passengers. Unfortunately, the remainder of the Fulton St El was not modified for steel cars as intended and its inability to feed dirctly into midtown Manhattan coupled with Mayor Hylan's anti BRT/BMT vedetta and subsequent IND subway construction resulted in the Fulton El's ultimate demise.As a sort of aside, back when I was 11 years old, my father and I went for a ride on the Myrtle Av el and although he was born in Bkln, he was under the mistaken impression that there was a transfer available from the BMT 4 Av Subway to the Myrtle El. We detrained at Myrtle Av S/B only to find that no connection was available thus we had to go S/B to Dekalb and get a train back over the Manny B to Canal St where we took a Jamaica Lcl to Bway/Myrtle where the transfer was available. Although I have been on the now demolished S/B platform at Myrtle/Gold St, I have yet to set foot on the N/B platfom which still exists. |
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