LIRR Freight operations at Hicksville Yard

JJ:

Thanx for the link . . . I'd have never thought Pabst, of all companies to be brewing so many of the old names besides Piel's.

Also had no idea Piel's was still brewed by ANYBODY! Limited area of availability. One distributor in West Babylon. None in Florida!

The beer memorabilia on the Pabst site was nostalgic, especially the old can of draft with white label, pre-aluminum and pop-topped cans!

My kids have no concept of how a can opener was used on an old beer or soda can!

For those who don't know, Piel's regular brew was "Piel's Light Beer" but it wasn't light in the way of today's light beers. It was light as opposed to dark beer. It was a nice lager. Piel's also made a special dark beer around Christmas for employees only. Each employee got a case or two (not sure how much) as a Christmas present. It was a limited run and was called "Kapuziner." This treat ended sometime in the early 1960s.

Thanx again, JJ!

Dave

Whenever we go to Maine, where I run trolleys at Seashore, We head right to the supermarket to pick up some local suds, passing right by the Piels and Knickerbocker--Yeh!! Knick.
They both seem to be all over up there.
And with Gearys and Shipyard for starters, I can't understand it.

Hey!! are we forgetting what kind of forum this is.
Mike's gonna call "Last Call" on us.

Hi Y'All,

Why don't you call that beer can opener that no kid ever heard of by its proper name ??? Call it a "Church Key".

Now, let's see you explain the origin of that one to him.

If I called it a "church key" the kids would really be lost!

You should have seen the looks on their faces when they went to grandma's house when they were really young and saw a dial phone for the first time!!!

I agree with JJ: we might get the "last call" any time now . . . .

Dave

"Church Key"?
We called it a "Switch Key" and there was one hanging on every belt.

Hi All,

Never heard the Switch Key one.

Dave; this is a one up on you;

My neighbor, Charlie Taylor, a gentleman in his mid 80's, likes to work with wood in his garage. On the wall is a telephone that has NO dialing mechanism of any kind. Yup, this is the phone that you picked up and the operator would ask you what number you wished to call. This phone goes back to the days of Party Lines, and NO lines. You never got a dial tone with this phone, all you got when you picked up the phone was the operator, she would dial the number for you. We are talking about a phone from the 1930's and 1940's. I offered him an old phone I put away in my garage some time ago. It has a rotary dial, weighs a ton, and is also from the 1940's. It was my mom's phone from the old Brooklyn days, and was originally a Party line. I even remember its phone number, it was Dickens 6-1845. No Area Code. In those days in order to make a long distance call, you dialed the operator.

Back in the early 1950s, we had party lines out in Holtsville where I gew up.

I know the type phone of which you speak. Some also had a crank to ring the operator or your party. A certain # of cranks got you your party.

"Is this the party to whom I'm speaking? (snort)" Remember that?

The LIRR used the same system in their old T-boxes and for their block-line phones.

A carryover from telegraph days when messages came in over the line all day long and you only listened when you heard your call letters being tapped out.

As for JJ's "Switch key" that had to be just railroad men's own name for it. I doubt the common guy on the street even knew what a "real" switch key was.

Dave

Is the LIRR still able to use the yard for M.o.W. equipment storage and work trains, or is it exclusively now for NYA's use?