236 The Story of The Bronx 



railroad. The length of the road is eleven and one half miles, 

 but with sidings and other tracks the entire trackage runs 

 well over one hundred miles. The possession of this branch 

 gives the New York, New Haven, and Hartford an outlet for 

 its freight business, as the length of water front controlled 

 by it on the East River gives ample space for its car floats 

 and freight yards. In addition, several through passenger trains 

 are run on board large steam ferry-boats and transported to 

 the connecting roads in New Jersey without putting travellers 

 to the inconvenience of transfers through the city of New York. 

 The road is to be connected in the near future with the Long 

 Island Railroad, and will thus have access to the Pennsylvania 

 Station; this will be done by means of a bridge across the 

 East River to Queens Borough by way of Randall's and Ward's 

 islands. The corporation constructing the bridge and road is 

 known as the New York Connecting Railway. About $20,- 

 000,000 are to be expended; and the American Bridge Com- 

 pany, the contractor, began work in the fall of 191 1. 



While the construction of the Hudson River Railroad 

 required a good deal of blasting and cutting down, that of the 

 Suburban branch required the reverse; as owing to the low 

 lands and meadows abounding on the eastern side of the 

 Borough a great deal of the Suburban road-bed had to be 

 filled in. Its construction has been one of the factors in the 

 development of the eastern part of the Borough. Beginning 

 in 1903, work was begun to increase the road to six tracks and 

 to install electric traction. This has entailed an enormous 

 amount of work and the construction of numerous heavy 

 steel bridges to carry the streets across the tracks, and the 

 work is not yet finished (April, 1912). 



The mutations of the Putnam division of the New York 

 Central and Hudson River Railroad have been numerous. 



