The Best Laid Tracks...
Things did not go as planned; the nationwide Panic of 1837 interrupted construction east of Westbury. The LIRR could not move people between Boston and New York with the partial infrastructure it had built, but could it get enough revenue to outlast the depression that had literally stopped it in its tracks?
The place where it had stopped was given the name HICKSVILLE, after Valentine Hicks, LIRR President. A handful of things would have to be built so that Hicksville could function as the terminus of the line from Jamaica until construction resumed:
- buildings/sheds to store tools, spare parts, oil, cleaning supplies, and dry wood (early locomotives burned it as fuel)
- a well, pump, and water tank (locomotives carried water to turn into steam)
- holding tracks (for locomotives and railroad cars not running at the moment),
- a “turnaround track” (so that locomotives at the end of the line could be turned around to point back at Jamaica)
It was Spring, and the railroad hoped that crops from farms several miles away might be shipped West to market in the summer. Passenger traffic – the local traffic it had once disdained, but paying customers nonetheless – would help, too, but a newborn town didn’t have a built-in supply of passengers. Or did it?
