Vanderbilt Cup Races

This is my guess.  Based on intuition.  This is current Westbury Avenue, and the bridge is over an old trolly line.

That’s the parkway bridge under construction that will carry the LIMP over the Mineola-Hicksville Trolley line which subsequently became Westbury Avenue. We are looking northeast on the Carle Place-Mineola border between Roslyn Road and Glen Cove Road. The photo was taken some time in 1909. I think it was unique because it was built for an existing trolley but also was wide enough to accommodate a possible future roadway. Additionally, the approaches were quite long extending out about 300 feet. This photo was part of an album of pictures taken by surveyor Clinton A. Robertson, discovered at a New Jersey flea market and later auctioned off on EBAY.

Motor Parkway Bridge over the New York & North Shore Traction Company trolley (aka Hicksville Trolley)
Mineola/Carle Place (Westbury Avenue) view looking north?
1909
Westbury Aveneue did not exist at the time.
Photo found in the scrapbook of Clinton Robertson

Difficult photo, possibly looking mostly north. The tracks could be a temporary service track to assist in moving materials from a nearby LIRR track. I’d guess construction of the Newbridge Road bridge (Rt 106) in Levittown. 1% accurate. The photo was found in Art Kleiner’s Levittown collection

At first I disregarded all LIMP trolley bridges.Trolley tracks never protruded above the surface, and never had railroad ties in their construction. Are there captions attached to this photo?

Greg, Regarding the Westbury Ave. bridge, that was my first thought. What threw me off was that the photo shows only the construction of the Parkway bridge over the trolley line.  The Westbury Ave. bridge was a three span bridge similar to the bridge over Clinton Rd. Each span here had an opening of about 18 feet, one for the trolley (most northerly) and the other two openings for autos.  Any idea if the photo was cropped ? The bridge came down in January 1942. In the bottom left of the photo is a wheelbarrow on it’s side, I bought it at a Mineola yard sale a few years ago.

Hi All. Though there’s only one photo of the Willis Ave LIMP Bridge ( thanks to Bob &Ruth; Valentine ) I believe this bridge had to also accommodate the same trolley line that continued west, then branched north on Willis Ave to Roslyn, From what I’ve read, most of these trolley lines fell out of use around 1925.

Wow! I would have thought, on first look, that the formation of that bridge was the construction of a wood ships hull. The way the boards are lying there seems to take the shape of the start of a fifty or sixty foot fishing boat similar to the Ida May in Oyster Bay.
See you all in November. It is not raining here yet but within the next hour I can test my Rube Goldberg style repair on my passenger side windshield wiper arm. My method was a little bit better than chewing gum and string. I used hose clamps and modified found plastic for my third attempt at repairing modern machinery what do they say ….Fix Or Repair Daily!.

Brian, Your comments about the trolley line, any idea how the trolley line reached Willis Avenue, Did they bridge the Oyster Bay Line of the LIRR. ?

Hi Al, There was a quite impressive Trolley Bridge/Trestle that needed to span over the Oyster Bay Branch. Built on each side of Searing Ave in Mineola in 1909. You’ll see some images of the trestle, trolley map, and some info about the construction.I obtained this information from an online book about Trolleys on Long Island. Don’t know how to attach the web link here, so I sent you an email with the website. I marked in red the Motor Pkwy locations - Westbury Avenue & Willis Ave.

Here’s images of the Trolley Trestle, The last image shows the abandoned East Ramp of the Trestle. Some time after 1930 I guess.

Brian, WOW ! The only thing you left out was the color of the trolley. Thanks.

No problem, Al. The entire bridge was the length of 2 Football Fields, must’ve been quite a sight to see. I’ll probably go to the library soon to look through the books about Trains & Trolleys again. The gentleman who had an avid interest in Trains, Trolleys on Long Island was Vincent Seyfried. You probably heard of him and maybe met him at some point. He even has a Wikipedia page, you’ll see it as a photo below. Any of the info I left above was researched by him. Wish I’ve met him at some point.

Great stuff all!  Brian - save yourself the trip to the library.  See if you can open this link to Vincent Seyfriend’s books.  You can find more material of his on Internet Archive and Hathi Trust, two sources I find invaluable.  Let me know if the link works.  Thanks.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015006056595

Here’s a pdf for one of Seyfriend’s other trolley books from 1952.

Click here to Download this file

Hi Art! Thanks for attaching the links to his books here. I actually have the one link saved in my email. Know there’s a way to attach links here. but I always forget how to do that lol. Mr. Seyfried was like you & some other researchers here, very thorough. There’s also the former LIRR employee Robert Emery, he hand drew the entire LIRR system maps. He was definitely a soup to nuts type person, too.