Looking North from Ditmas Avenue Brooklyn 2009

This shot was taken by Leonard Wilson on 4/15/2009 and it shows a R-160B F Train emerging from the tunnel south of the Church Avenue Station.  I took this photo off the http://www.nycsubway.org website because in this one picture, many of the topics that this blog discusses is shown.  You can see the tunnel into which the F train goes into south of Church Avenue.  This tunnel was built for the Independent Subway.  This portals' construction date is not clear. It may have been built after the Church Avenue station opened in 1933 or later, perhaps before World War II.  The actual incline did not have service until October, 1954 when the IND subway "captured" the BMT Culver Line.  For many years, the incline, which has space for four tracks had only one track, the northbound local track, was actually connected to the BMT Culver Elevated.  I read someplace that in the middle of the incline, there was a large tree growing probably through the war years.   In the picture, you will also see the large radio tower at Bishop Ford High School which was the location of the 9th Avenue trolley depot that was in service until 1956.  This trolley barn had two levels.  Also, if you look at the right side of the incline, you can see serveral vertical iron beams that were used to support the McDonald Avenue trolley wires.  Believe it or not, some of the insulators and a few inches of trolley support span wire are still in the horizontal position!  These are probably the very last of the few artifacts of the great trolley operation in Brooklyn.  The only other artifacts are several trolley line support poles scattered throughtout Brooklyn and an occasional peak of trolley track through asphalt for the few tracks that have not been pulled yet.

Antenna at Former Ninth Avenue Streetcar Depot

    The former trolley depot in Park Slope Brooklyn, located between Ninth and Tenth Avenues and between 19th and 20th Streets was not only an historic depot but a huge one with two tiers.  It was active to the last day of trolley operations on October 31, 1956.  This was the beginning point of the Culver Line steam line in the 19th Century and its' location was shown on some of my posted track diagrams.  PCC research may have been conducted there in the 1930's.  Today the site is occupied by a Catholic High School that has a very tall radio transmission tower located just at the foot of McDonald Avenue.  This point is very high up on a hill and McDonald Avenue takes a plunge as it goes southward to Coney Island. It would be interesting to calculate the visibility from the top of the antenna, since the antenna is located on high ground itself.  The antenna is clearly visible from the Kings Highway elevated station on McDonald Avenue many miles to the south. Using GRASS 6.4.1, I produced a map showing the visibilty to the street surface if a person was perched on top of the antenna.  The problem is that I could not find the height of the antenna after a search on the web and I guessed that it was the same height as the Tech High School antenna at 597 feet but I may be wrong here.  The results indicate that the antenna is visible from many parts of Brooklyn and the surrounding region.  Look at the great  night photo of the antenna shown on the link below.  The former depot is at the center of the circle.  The two colored  rings indicate what street surfaces are visible from the top of the antenna using the guessed height.  Notice that the high hills of Staten Island block the view for Staten Island residents.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maiandy/4385724367/

PCC Car 1001 Aproaches Church and McDonald Avenues

http://www.davesrailpix.com/nyc/htm/bqt409.htm


  At this time, I am having trouble downloading pictures.  If you click on the shortcut above, you will see PCC car 1001 on the Number 50 McDonald Avenue route running southbound getting ready to cross Church Avenue.  This picture comes from the Dave Pirmann collection from Joe Testagrose.  If you look down the avenue, you will see a hill.  Situated on the hill was the old 9th Avenue Depot which was the home to some of the trolley lines in Brooklyn that were discussed in this blog.  This site, at 19th Street and 9th Avenue, was a two tier depot and I posted some track diagrams of lines going through the area.  The site is presently occupied by a religious high school and houses a big radio transmittal tower that can be seen for miles.  The white building on the right of the PCC car was the Greater New York Saving Bank.  The same site today is occupied by another bank and under the PCC car is the large Church Avenue IND Subway station that is presently served by "F" and "G" trains.  Click on the link above and you will see many goodies from all over.

The picture above was taken sometime between 1951 and 1956 when PCC cars ran on the line.