1955 NEW YORK CITY & BROOKLYN ELEVATED RAILROAD RAPID TRANSIT SUBWAY & TROLLEYS (SILENT) MD52094a

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These silent home movies of the Brooklyn and New York City Rapid Transit system were shot by Artie Keyser in 1955-56. Timecodes listed correspond to screen timecodes.
00:00 TITLE
00:41 Elevated BMT railway in Brooklyn
01:46 Grade Grossing
05:23 Yard scenes
05:59 Ramp track, Riding the Brooklyn open window Gate Cars
12:06 A Train in underground station
16:02 Elevated tracks
18:02 Work equipment
22:49 Car 1249 open gate car
22:06 Work equipment
22:39 Car 1248
23:19 Brooklyn Open gate cars
23:35 Work train over draw bridge
23:50 Work equipment
24:50 Car 1642
25:00 Car Yard in Brooklyn
26:10 Open car no. 1309
26:49 Staten Island rapid transit cars
27:20 Car 504
27:35 Car 7007
28:00 Car 8017 Coney Island shops
28:05 Car 759 BMT Motor car
28:27 Train near Coney Island
28:41 The Mineola-August Belmont’s private car, built 1904, it was a fancy private subway car used by Mr Belmont, who financed the original NY subway system. Used until 1919, - the Shoreline Trolley Museum in East Haven, Ct.
32:17 Brooklyn PCC trolley scenes
33:41 over Belt Parkway near Coney Island
34:10 under elevated tracks
35:50 Car 1066
36:11 Open ended elevated Brooklyn cars
36:40 Following Brooklyn PCC
37:00 Sweeper 6, plow 69 and car 4550 all displayed for a group
39:35 PCC on loop track
40:04 PCC 1042 pulling out
41:00 PCC 1026
41:19 Rebuilding LIRR Line to Far Rockaway into NYTA A train line
42:51 Broad Channel Station construction
44:52 New drawbridge
47:23 work train
47:55 First run on rebuilt line
50:21 elevated track scene
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference."
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFilm.com
We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment! See something interesting? Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference."
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFilm.com

[@joeyjennings9548]

oh i sure miss the past i grew up in and in all its sheer wonder simplicity and resplendent surroundings. when people dressed up just to enter thier day. hats gloves dresses shoes polished hair done up perfume makeup respect honor hard work. America at its best.. 🇺🇸 i feel truely blessed to have lived thru those times.

[@luislaplume8261]

I grew up in the 1960s Mad Men era in the borough of Queens, NYC. Absolutely true until 1970. Then afterwards.....Fooooorgeeeeeedaaabuoooooot it!

[@johnpaulkane6153]

Yeah the people today are just most of them overweight slobs I see people dressing in pajamas Fat women with their bellies hanging out disgusting No self sense of respect Don't get me started on the man buns

[@lorettacaputo6997]

i can just smell the electric traction motors and the creosoted ties, I remember the ceramic coated hand holds in the cars, the shinny wicker woven seats and the cardboard advertising on the walls. As a kid, with my Dad, I had to travel in the head end car next to the motorman cab with my nose pressed against the sooty glass. I swayed with the car as I was hypnotized by the glowing rails and the christmas tree signals of red, green and yellow. It was a magical experience of my youth.

[@parrot0051]

I loved riding the BMT 1300 series gate cars on the Myrtle Ave elevated line as a kid in the mid 1950's the open sections were the best in the summertime riding for fun from Metropolitan Ave to Bridge Street in downtown Brooklyn was for me as a kid memories I'll always remember even at 77 years old, riding through all these neighborhoods coming back from Bridge St around dinner time I'd get very hungry from smelling all the various dinners people were making from many ethnic neighborhoods made me hungry but coming home and having a big bowl of homemade chicken soup wasn't my idea at the time of what I was smelling. Those open sides allowing all the smells was always fun for me in winter when those sides were replaced with windows still were my favorites. Thank you for these great videos brings back lots of great memories.

[@luislaplume8261]

Still true in 1968 with the Q type class el trains. That summer at my request I asked my late father who worked in Bushwick, Brooklyn to take us for a ride from end to end on the Myrtle Ave El. Bridge Jay Street Terminal was in Downtown Brooklyn before the age of fast food chains took over. The Central Bronx elevated I took it in 1972 a year before it ended. But the windows were picture windows that opened from the top to midway down and you couldn't smell any food from the apartment buildings. The trains were the R12 and R14 of 1948, 1949 and the conductor stood outside on the middle of the trains.

[@jamesstark8316]

Took the el from Fresh Pond Ave to Marcy Ave mid 50's to learn how to swim at the YMCA. Good times.

[@djsi38t]

Beautiful piano music accompanies this video.

[@JokersAce0]

Crazy how this wasn't even the peak of the system but 20-30 years earlier with the full force of all street cars and elevated lines still existing.

[@chuckford5927]

I love this old footage (especially the trolleys). NYC seemed a lot more peaceful back then.

[@luislaplume8261]

At the 21.30 seconds we see the last of the rebuilt open platform BU El cars that were finished in 1940 for the 1939, 1940 World's Fair in NYC. Number 1642 QX class companion to the earlier Q class of 1939. The QX vlas was retired in 1948 when the R12 type for the IRT division was delivered on July of that year. I am a New Yorker.

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Hey thanks for this excellent and informative comment. Consider becoming a channel member kzbin.info/www/bejne/hXWliGami8abi6c

[@reginaldgillam4911]

The good ol' subway days! Miss hearing the roaring motors from the old "BU" cars, and the standards, and the "R1- R9 cars! We can use a "Do Over" of those simpler days! I would love to trade these days in for the good ol' days! Riding from Broad Channel to Rockaway Beach over the bridges on the A, E, and HH trains! No matter how hot the day was, the breeze from the roof ducts and the ceiling fans kept me cool! Great video! Thank you!!!

[@MrNorcal81]

I pretty much grew up on the L (or LL) Canarsie Line starting at the Rockaway Parkway Terminal in the mid-1950s /1960s. These movies bring back a lot of memories, especially the old straw seats. If you sat on one that had the heating vents under it you would fry your tush off. 😄

[@billfeldman2127]

If you look carefully at the fan trip near the end, you can see the car signed "Rockaway Parkway" at the front. Below that, it appears to say "Canarsie" and below that, "Express"

[@AlanRoeckel]

Our house was on Putnam Avenue in Ridgewood and backed to the Forest Avenue el station. Rode the gate cars to Myrtle and then downstairs to the Canarsie Line Standards to 8th Avenue in Manhattan and its wonders. Coming home, there was a candy store off the stairs at Forest Avenue (still there) and as a treat my Dad would get me a black and white soda at the fountain; his favorite too. Great days!

[@awizardalso]

I'm glad to watch this. I was born in upper Manhattan (Hudson Hgts) in May 1954. My parents moved to Cleveland Ohio in 1957. I have very few memories when I was 3 years old but still remember them. It's nice to see the city I was in when I was 1 year old that I don't remember at all.

[@luislaplume8261]

You mean Washington Heights! I am a New Yorker who grew up in NYC.

[@richardschindler8822]

Great video. Having grown up in NYC I’ve been on many of these trains. Sadly missed. The good ole days

[@whereisthedollar]

Open windows with nobody jumping out. What the hell is wrong with people today ?

[@villavine10]

At least there isn’t a guy talking over the video. Although some of the clips without a distinguishable landmark make it hard to know where it was taken.

[@georgeluongo2051]

NYC I remember riding on those old trains oval trains are like from 1904 1905 those were the old days in New York great film

[@jaymorgenthal9479]

A lot of footage of the S turn on the Fulton st el: turning north from Pitkin on to Euclid then turning east onto to Liberty. That line ended service on 4/26/56 when the tunnel from Grant Ave was connected to the El at 80st/Hudson. The busy street below the curve is Conduit Blvd.

[@zoomanx9661]

Classic😊. Brookline Houses in the background

[@stephendeluca4479]

Filmed right before things changed- the A train was not yet going to the Rockaways, the R-16s were not yet delivered. Brooklyn trolleys were near the end. A lot of love in these scenes. I really enjoyed the underground footage of those R-10s with the original seats and the incandescent lighting in the stations. Oops, just spotted an R-16 19 minutes in.

[@billfeldman2127]

Those scenes of the Rockaway trestle being repaired and resignaled for the subways are historic, along with the old Hamilton Beach LIRR shed. I haven't seen that anywhere else.

[@soundshaper]

Euclid Avenue station on the Fulton line was brand spankin new when this was shot, along with every station after East New York. East New York still was using incandescent bulbs for lighting in the mid-late 70s when I was taking the A and CC out to Rockaway Park.

[@whereisthedollar]

Lots of shots of the old and only East 105th Street crossing on the Canarsie Line.

[@Piggy-Oink-Oink]

a block away was the Sunnydale Farms milk store..on E104th

[@verdeslam44]

Thank you for this posting!! My late Mother was a 25yo in Brooklyn and rode these trains in 1955. So much history in those old cars and images of 1955 NYC. I wonder if any of those old wooden cars survived for posterity's sake.

[@JeffreyOrnstein]

Dano F yes they did! They are part of the transit museum fleet, and you can see them there in downtown Brooklyn. Or on fan trips.

[@chestophercolumbo4561]

Great that they survived, but NYCs strong 💪 and vibrant high paying manufacturing job base evaporated, and that's sad

[@PaulPavlinovich]

They are in here goo.gl/maps/YApH811BSLJ1v6sW8 in the old Court Station.

[@jonnda]

@@chestophercolumbo4561 The Chicago Transit Authority contracted to get some new cars that were made in China, and assembled in the USA. There’s no native company that makes subway cars. It’s sad.

[@jaminova_1969]

@@jonnda It should be illegal for any government agency to spend US taxpayer dollars overseas!

[@luislaplume8261]

The tall building in the back to the upper,right at the 15 minute mark is P.S. 54 in Richmond Hill Queens. Where I attended elementary school in the 1960s The El is on Jamaica Ave which went to the 168th St. Terminal. It ended service to Jamaica in 1977. The El was extended to Jamaica in July 1918. The Broadway Jamaica line and the Lexington Ave. El from Downtown Brooklyn both ended there until 1950. The Lexington Ave el was the first El train line in Brooklyn, it opened in 1885.

[@billfeldman2127]

It appears they show the spot in Richmond Hill where the el crosses above the LIRR Lower Montauk Line. Correct?

[@louishamilton9648]

I used to call the Euclid ave station ‘the country’ cause there was basically nothing out there. Just swampland and tall reeds.

[@truthteller8459]

Ah, the Good Old Days! Notice how clean the outside of the cars are. I miss the days when certain 'people' rode in the back of buses etc. When that changed that's when America began its decline downhill which goes on till this very day sadly.

[@oluhamilton2121]

Eh??????

[@LiLi-or2gm]

Nice film! I found it was fun to watch at 2X speed. The music is also more pleasant at that speed.

[@phillipgrey]

I remember riding the R-11, R-12 in the mid eighties to go Wall St. for training. On the outside the looked like tin cans and on the inside they were tagged up due to urban decay. I never sat down on any of those seats. These scenes were the better days.

[@PaulPavlinovich]

facinating

[@JeffreyOrnstein]

Superb. Thank you.

[@chestophercolumbo4561]

Wonderful!

[@megasoid]

Great footage, thank you.

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Glad you enjoyed it ! Love our channel? Get the inside scoop on Periscope Film! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm

[@jaminova_1969]

The grade crossing at the 1:42 was part of the BMT Carnarsie line at East 105th Street! 39:18 is the new station at Broad Channel under construction!

[@PADADDIE]

I think I saw the old Culver line, I grew up not so far from there.

[@braised44]

NY subway cars without graffiti..... WOW!

[@tomryan943]

I took one of these electric buses to high school! That so looks like it might be McDonald Avenue!

[@mtasubwaymartasubway]

Man, I wish they would of kept that railroad crossing

[@tonyringo6309]

A brookyn trolley emerging to street level was like a whale emerging from the sea 😂

[@robertko5425]

Nice fascinating and old video of the old BMT system. BTW - I thought I saw a PUDDY CAT residing in August Belmont's private subway car @ 25:34 ???

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Great comment. Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.

[@mitchdakelman4470]

An absolutely terrific film. Looks like camera original. Seems everybody is enjoying this reel. How do find such great treasures?

[@billfeldman2127]

That Canarsie Line footage near the end was clearly a fan trip. Even then, people were nostalgic for the els, they knew those cars had very little time to live. How wonderful it must have been ride those cars with the side panels removed in the summer. But I bet you got wet during thunderstorms.

[@krunkle5136]

Thanks Robert Moses, we could have had better things.

[@arrowpictures2844]

He had made the subway terrible now all because he favored cars over public transit.

[@zaphodb9213]

Good retrospective. Is this George Winston doing the music?

[@gee853]

I grew up in Brooklyn and I am a big subway buff! While I enjoy the film footage, the background music takes away from the story! It sounds more like the death of mass transit in New York City, when it should be a celebration of this monumental achievement!!

[@failyourwaytothetop]

I would love to have a complete map of the subway system of this time period.

[@GeorgeStar]

Thank you Artie Keyser whoever you were.

[@garyflythe1362]

The subways look so crisp so clean . Now I'm just probably dirt from 100 years ago still in Subway totally disgusting rat field homeless crazy overcrowded

[@mohamad-ms2pb]

It's been said that the C types that ran on the Fulton St el were ugly in appearance. But seeing them in this video, they seem fine to me.

[@amazing50000]

9:56 Wait a minute. Is it me or am I looking at NYC subway/el cars with open gangways? And I thought that the new R211T's will be the first open gangways in NYC subway history.

[@johnalbanese30]

The 1923 "C" type was the first gangway cars. The 1925 "D" type was the first gangway cars to operate on the B.M.T system.

[@Slapjabber]

I want to thank KZbin or whoever is responsible, for destroying such a peaceful, black and white film, with very calming music, with commercials every four and a half minutes. 20 years from now, when I’m taking a piss, it will be interrupted with commercials.

[@PeriscopeFilm]

20 years from now ... try tomorrow lol! (Oh and thank Google for that!!)

[@satchpersaud8762]

Wow the 3rd rail wasnt even covered back then

[@oskarsrode2167]

@@bobsemple7660 Mount C brackets and suspend a plank from them. Top mounted 3rd rails mostly have a plastic cover on top. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_rail What I'm surprised about is that this is 1955 and Stockholm already had the same kind of cover in 1950, and New York was the big inspiration for the Stockholm subway.

[@billfeldman2127]

@@oskarsrode2167 it required more than just covering them. It also required changing the current collectors on the el cars from shoes that went straight down to the rail to the current paddle-type shoe that stuck out to the side. Otherwise the cover would have blocked access to the rail. There may have been a reluctance to spend the money to refit the older cars.

[@goognamgoognw6637]

the oil industry prevented the development of the modern train in the USA, they were even afraid of trolley cars or trams that they lobbied to dismantled them and replace them by petrol fueled buses, All that american have is to watch these old movies of antiquated trains. The power of american lobbies to stop progress for the gains of a limited few crooks.

[@Madness832]

Wouldn't happen to have some similar Boston footage, would ya?

[@Baynewsvideo]

You could check the archives yourself at the company website www.PeriscopeFilm.com

[@chestophercolumbo4561]

People walked a lot more then

[@chestophercolumbo4561]

14:02: wadda ya u looking at?...you go a problem?

[@julianvanzon3242]

Hey! Does anyone know the name of the piano music?

[@sjoormen1]

Same question. Great mood.

[@F40PH-2CAT]

I'd say 1953/54 I don't see any R16s on the Jamaica line

[@johnalbanese30]

They were operating on the Rockaway branch .

[@Slapjabber]

Music?

[@tomryan943]

Too bad they don't tell you where each scene is from or what line it is.

[@oluhamilton2121]

Back when the 'J' train was the no.15.

[@anthonygallo3576]

Woukd have been better if alot if the footage was identified .

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Uhhh...did you read our lengthy KZbin description??

[@gashousegorillas1]

What? No train surfing....

[@BeryJensen]

47 minutes...and silent.... !!!!

[@awizardalso]

I was born in Manhattan in May 1954. I'm glad I get to see this even though silent.

[@nikolaospeterson2495]

You can't read the title with that counter. WHY have you the frame counter on all your videos? Plus a copyguard, it is VERY distracting, as you do have nice footage. (I had a friend who passed in 2005, who had driven the PCCs and older trams in broklyn, plus the IND and BRT (later to become the BMT) no not the IRT. He was a dispatcher and yardmaster before his retiremant on 1971. I met George E Horn in San Francisco and rode with him quite frequenty before he retired using a car that I had picked out for him the 'newest' PCC lastone by the St Louis Car Co. on 30.Sept. 1980. Then he retired from SF Muni).

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes. In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous KZbin users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do. Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.

[@xLiteraryAllusionx]

@@PeriscopeFilm Thank you for your work to preserve history, and for posting these here for the masses!

[@harshitha6062]

Looks like present india 😂

[@awilliams4543]

jesus christ. nobody had a nickel then

[@stepawayful]

Coming up next: paint drying