234 The Story of The Bronx 



River Railroad at Spuyten Duyvil. Its cost was $989,000; 

 and it was leased by the Central road on November 1, 1871, 

 until December 31, 1970, at an annual rental of eight per cent, 

 on its cost. It was necessary for the lessee to have control of 

 this road in order to get to the Grand Central Station in 1870. 

 It was about the same time that the Central secured control 

 of the Harlem Railroad. For many years, the passage of the 

 railroad through Kingsbridge on the surface made several of 

 the most dangerous road and street crossings in the State. 

 The course of the road-bed was very tortuous and twisting. In 

 order to overcome this, the route was changed in February, 

 1906, so that the road-bed now crosses Spuyten Duyvil 

 Creek on a causeway and then follows the ship-canal to the 

 Hudson River, its bed being on a shelf blasted out of the north- 

 ern side of the canal. It is proposed to fill in the bed of the 

 stream from the causeway up to the ancient bridge over the 

 creek. 



Beginning in 1905, work was begun to change the motive 

 power of the Harlem road from steam to electricity. The 

 first train propelled by the new power ran fron New York to 

 Wakefield on January 28, 1907. The third-rail system is 

 used. On the sixteenth of February of the same year, the 

 White Plains and Brewsters express, while rounding the curve 

 at 206th Street, below Williamsbridge, at a speed of over fifty 

 miles an hour, suddenly left the tracks, owing, so it is sup- 

 posed, to the spreading of the rails, and twenty-three people 

 were killed and over seventy badly injured. 



The construction of these roads, while giving access to the 

 western part of the Borough, has had no such effect in increas- 

 ing population as had the building of the Harlem road 

 through the middle of the Borough. Private estates and 

 domains of considerable size prevail to-day in Riverdale, 



