On This Day in History, March 6: Last Local Over the Bridge

March 6, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
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The Brooklyn Eagle of March 6, 1944, reported that the last ā€˜Lā€™ train across the Brooklyn Bridge made its trip on March 5 with 200 passengers aboard. The train had started the run 46 years previously, becoming the major form of transportation between Brooklyn and Park Row in Manhattan.

Many of the 200 passengers that day remembered when one train followed another in rapid succession over the span, sometimes at the rate of several each minute. The service was discontinued to modernize the bridge and widen the auto roadway.

One of the veterans making the last trip was 61-year-old Fred Decker of 249 Conklin Ave., who made the first trip on the line at the age of 15 and later got a job as a motorman and piloted trains across the bridge for 32 consecutive years. For him there was ā€œno sound like the clicking of an ā€˜Lā€™ train over the Brooklyn Bridge.ā€

Mrs. John Connors was also on board. She had traveled for 40 years over the line. Harry Page, of 36 Logan St., had been motorman on the line for 16 consecutive years and estimated this last trip was his 12,776th over the bridge ā€œor something like that.ā€ The destination signs on the car, which read ā€œEastern Parkway,ā€ were given as souvenirs at the end of the trip.

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