Till this day you can still the pulley system and it's wire cable in addition to the coal shoots. The real bonus is the amount of coal that is still up there. On the above linked map dragged down, You can see above the scrap dealer, the black spot on the unused north "west" track, This is the coal shoot and the remaining coal.
Looking at Bing, for some reason I just can't see it. I think I see it, just south of where the tracks cross E. Valley Stream Blvd, and where it looks like the West Track just sort of peters out (the usually quirkiness of Bing - I pan in one way, the former Inflight Newspaper site is cleared, but no construction: I shift over a bit to look at Lynbrook, then I pan back West - bang, same location now shows the Townhouse complex on S. Cottage & Hawthorne half built (and I didn't realize how tall that boundary wall is on the North side of the complex - Wow!) - some funky image stitching there, Microsoft!
Continuing further down the branch, The switch to lumber yard is long removed.
Yeah, that was the only place (when it was Baisly) to reliably catch a freight car (Boxcar, or toward the end Centerbeam flat) within easy walking distance - but not for years now.
There sure are a lot of mysteries in this area.
Eh, probably no more than any area with 200+ years of history. I'd hate to think of European or Asian urban areas with Thousands of years of history behind them. Heck, Kevin Walsh has been publishing NYC quirks and oddities in his
Forgotten NY website for years (a decade?) now, and he's no where near the only one.
I don't know what they're calling it, but the waterway between Emerson and Cornwell is not a stream, it's a sump. Maybe at some point it was a natural brook or stream but it hasn't been for a long, long time.
Man, I may have to make this a crusade. Anyway: 1st it definitely WAS a stream, as witness the
1914 Valley Stream Historic Map posted earlier in this thread (aside - it's odd not seeing Sunrise Highway in it's usual place, but even weirder seeing the Brooklyn Ave fork (where the fire house is now, and the Dunkin Donuts, and oh, look, that darn stream too - owned by Queens County Water Company then!) pretty much as it is now. 2nd FEMA certainly thinks it IS still a stream, and put it on their flood maps cross hatched as such even where the stream is not exposed (and you know - back in 2005 that block of Cornwell & E. Maple really did flood - I remember the water was up to the door of Seema Deli, and filled some of the homes' 'sunken' driveways on Maple). Now of course the FEMA interactive maps are off-line so I can't prove my point, possible because Chuckie Schumer is making FEMA redraw them or something.
BIG EDIT - so I got my chores for today out of the way (believe it or not), and since it is a pretty nice day (and I could use the exercise), I took a walk to the stream in question - first to Argyle where the stream goes underground (I noticed that that block of Argyle seems to have a lot of sidewalk half-barrel planters, BTW). I could see on the North Side of Argyle the stream entered a Culvert, and the wings and concrete cap made it look like a big one, but how big is a bit tough to guess on site since there's a black chain-link fence along the sidewalk preventing people from looking directly into the culvert - however, off to Bing, pan around a little, and bam - an Fall/Winter view with less vegation, and the culvert can be seen clearly. OK, things look good for debunking the sump theory, but could I trace the path further south? Yes, I could -on each cross street where the stream ROW would cross there's a large mid-block drainage grate on both sides of the road, and a Man-Hole cover (marked N.C. Drains) - the one on Merrick Road (as far as I went, since I then went to Li Wok's for the luncheon special) situated in the driveway behind the strip center that holds Seema Deli is a huge gaping hole - surprized nobody ripped their tires on that one going into the Driveway (maybe they did). This explains to me where some of the flooding comes from in that area, possibly this underground stream overflowing out the drainage gates (meaning in this Case FEMA was possibly right with its Flood Maps...something you don't want to say too loudly in Valley Stream these days). The village probably has the plans for this underground stream (I guess in a concrete pipe of rectangular cross-section with 'vaults' or chambers to service the cross street drains), but I'm not taking off from work to view them.
That Historic map also bears Edm out, as it shows a Trolley Line along 'Milton' (Jamaica Ave.) crossing into what would become the Village Green, but then was yet another part of the NY City watersystem (I wonder how upstate NY ownership maps look today, where NY City owns a ton of land in watershed areas)?
Another Edit - not hydro-related this time
Apparently there is a song Valley Stream, from a band Joy Zipper, off their 2004 album American Whip. Couldn't find samples, but with lyrics like this
You play the drums, I'll grow a beard
We're like two dinosaurs living here
In Valley Stream, Long Island
Not entirely sure it's favorable.
Remember the "Honeymoon Killers?" They lived on Adeline Place when they decided to retire for a while. Many bodies were found interred below their cement basement floor. I drove by that house a couple of months ago. The owner has many statuettes of angels in the bay window and I can sort of understand why.