History
The Franklin Avenue Line was part of the original main line of the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway or Brighton Beach Line, later known as the BMT Brighton Line. It formally opened on August 18, 1878, about six weeks after the rest of the Brighton Line opened. This portion of the Brighton Beach Line represented a routing compromise. The BF&CI would have preferred a more direct route to downtown Brooklyn, but instead had to settle for a route which took it north to the Bedford station of the Long Island Rail Road, where Brighton trains could operate to the latter railroad's terminal at Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue.
The LIRR, however, gained control of the New York and Manhattan Beach Railway, a competitor of the BF&CI, and breached its agreement to provide equal access to the Flatbush Avenue terminal. After the 1882 season, the Brighton was forced to end its trains at Bedford, a situation which soon led to bankruptcy.
In 1896, the Brighton, now the Brooklyn and Brighton Beach Railroad gained a connection with the Kings County Elevated Railway by means of a ramp and short elevated railway, connecting to the former line at Franklin Avenue and Fulton Street. This enabled the KCERR to operate its steam-powered elevated trains on the Brighton Road via the Franklin Avenue right-of-way, providing Brighton riders with direct service to downtown Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge.
The KCERR connection was still less than ideal, and the Brooklyn Rapid Transit company, which ended up as the lessor of both the KCERR and B&BB roads, negotiated a more direct subway route under Flatbush Avenue as part of Contract 4 of the Dual Contracts of 1913. Construction of this new connection indirectly contributed to the worst rapid transit wreck in world history, known as the Malbone Street Wreck or Brighton Beach Line Accident when, on November 1, 1918, a five-car wooden elevated train left the tracks and crashed into one of the new tunnel walls, killing at least 93.
On August 1, 1920, the new subway opened and became the new main line for the Brighton Line. At that time, the Franklin Avenue alignment was established as the Brighton-Franklin Line and disconnected from the trackage to Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan. The line continued to operate elevated train service on the Brighton Beach main line until 1928, after which similar services were continued with steel subway cars.
For the summer excursion season of 1924, the Franklin Avenue Line was upgraded for the operation of six-car subway trains, and assigned the BMT number 7. Services used the Brighton Line during most daytime hours. During warm weather, express services ran to Coney Island on weekend days.
After the city gained ownership of the line in 1940, Brighton-Franklin services gradually declined. A major blow to through service viability occurred in 1954 when the D train of the IND Division was extended to Coney Island via the Culver Line, deprived the Franklin of a major source of transfer traffic, consisting of passengers from Harlem and the Bronx, who now had a more direct route to Coney Island. Brighton-Franklin express service ended by 1959, and the Franklin Avenue Line became a full-time shuttle in 1963.
Read more about this topic: BMT Franklin Avenue Line
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
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