John Delach

The El, the Gate Train and the Conductor’s Song

John Delach

April, 2002 Revised June 2025

The train’s crew leaves their rest house at the Bridge-Jay Street Station of the Myrtle Avenue Elevated line. Four conductors and the motorman amble along the wooden platform and take their assigned positions on their five-car train. Each conductor steps onto the two open platforms between each coach, facing the station straddling the two cars observing the passengers remaining on the platform and commands them, “All aboard.”

Each man pushes two iron levers away from him closing the gates and then performs the same ceremony, pulling the cord to his right ringing the bell on the next platform working toward the front of the train. Clang-clink, clank-clank, cling-clank, clang-clink, four bells, each rung twice, eight repetitions, the sound of the conductor’s song. None sound the same; each bell expresses the identity of the conductor who rings it. The sound alerts each conductor that the gates behind him are secured. The chorus continues until the final conductor rings a bell in the motorman’s cab signaling him: “You’ve got the railroad.”

With a lurch, the gate train leaves Bridge-Jay Street and downtown Brooklyn, its courthouses, law offices, banks; its shopping district featuring the department stores, Abraham & Straus, Mays and Martins and its theaters, the Brooklyn Paramount, Fox and the RKO Albee. Noisily, the train crosses Flatbush Avenue and makes its way north into Fort Greene and the Navy Street Station. As the train eases into the station, the conductors make ready to open the gates.

Working outside forces conductors to adjust their uniforms to meet their environment. Winter’s cold and freezing rain are the worst elements and quilted vests, rubber gloves, ribbed shoes and plastic hat protectors’ help. But, at every station, they must leave the warmth of the coach and return to straddle the open platforms between each coach.

Navy Street Station; appropriately, workers from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tired and dirty, lunch pails in hand, board the train. Continuing north the old wooden cars rattle through Bedford- Stuyvesant past tenements and public housing projects, parks, stores, churches and schools. These apartments, some with open windows and curtains pulled back reveal living rooms and kitchens, containing plants, bird cages, furniture, lamps, radios and televisions. Peering out from coach windows, passengers glimpse images of these apartments and their occupants. On hot summer days, women relax on pillows propped on windowsills and stare back forcing those peering passengers to avert their eyes in embarrassment.

Sparks fly from the third rail, motors strain emitting an electrical odor as coaches sway as they move over track joints. The train crosses streets active with new trackless trolleys, diesel buses or the trolley cars they will shortly replace. Delivery trucks, horse and wagons, automobiles and pushcarts compete for space while pedestrians’ cross streets dodging this traffic.

The train progresses stopping at the wooden platforms with ornate Victorian style station houses that line the El. Each is named after the street below, many for famous Americans; Washington, Vanderbilt and Franklin. As the train idles, each stop provides curious passengers a better opportunity to spy more intently into second and third story windows.

Afternoon trains carry a melting pot mix of passengers. Black and Hispanic women carry groceries, their wash or packages from the central post office. German and Italian housewives, together or with children return from shopping trips downtown. High school students take the train home from school. Boys from Brooklyn Tech carry slide rules, science and engineering textbooks, girls from Dominican Commercial wear uniforms and knee-high socks and boys sporting ties and jackets ride home from St John’s Prep and Bishop Loughlin. Brewery workers from Rheingold and Schaefer board at Broadway. The train continues north through Bushwick as the blocks become less dense and flats and tenements shrink in size revealing the spires of small Protestant Churches. At Wyckoff Avenue, the last surge of passengers board the train, some returning from trips to The City transferring from the Fourteen Street-Canarsie subway, others from shopping trips to local stores on Myrtle Avenue.

Crossing into Ridgewood, Queens apartment houses continue to shrink to two and three stories and single-family homes begin to appear. The conductors play their song one more time at the Fresh Pond Road Station and the train descends to ground level for its final run to Metropolitan Avenue, the end of the line in the communities and cemeteries of Maspeth and Middle Village.

The last passengers detrain and the crew takes a break awaiting their next assignment to return to Brooklyn to play their song again.