Metropolitan New York's Third Avenue Railway System

Book excerpt: Metropolitan New York's Third Avenue Railway System features never-before-published photographs documenting the final years of this streetcar system, from 1940 to 1957. Chartered as the Third Avenue Railroad Company in 1853, the system provided streetcar service on Third Avenue from Ann Street to 61st Street. The line eventually extended north to Harlem and across 125th Street and, in its heyday, north of Manhattan into the Bronx and northern Westchester County. Individual lines, such as the Yonkers Railroad, the Westchester Electric Railroad, the Queensborough Bridge Railway Company, and the Union Railway, are featured in this book. Metropolitan New York's Third Avenue Railway System recalls the bygone street scenes of Manhattan, as well as some of the carbarns and work cars and the car-scrapping yard employed by the system.