John Delach

John Delach

February 2026. Originally published January 2002

This is one of my two favorite pieces about Brooklyn. These gate trains were taken out of service in 1958 and the el itself ceased operating in 1969 and was torn down south of Broadway.

Clang-clink, clank-clank, cling-clank, clang-clink, four bells, each rung twice, eight repetitions, the sound of the conductors’ song. No two sound the same; each bell identifies the conductor who rang it. Four different conductors play their song every day at each station on the Myrtle Avenue Elevated line.

The train’s crew, four conductors and the driver (or motorman) amble from their rest house at the Bridge Street Station and take their assigned positions on their five-car train. The conductors work outside forcing them to adjust their uniforms to meet their environment. Winter, 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 their position onto the open platforms between each coach.

With a lurch, the gate train leaves Bridge Street and downtown Brooklyn, its courthouses, law offices, the cavernous Dime Savings Bank, department stores like Abraham & Straus, Mays and Martins and its theaters, the Brooklyn Paramount, Fox and the RKO Albee. Nosily, the train crosses Flatbush Avenue and makes its way north through Fort Greene and Bedford – Stuyvesant past tenements and public housing projects, parks, storefronts and schools. Hovering two stories above Myrtle Avenue, trains travel on rails supported by wooden ties and steel beams past windows with open curtains, blinds, or shades revealing living rooms and kitchens, plants, bird cages, furniture, lamps, radios and televisions. Peering from coach windows, passengers glimpse people in their apartments. On hot days, women relaxing on pillows propped on windowsills stare back forcing the voyeurs to avert their eyes in embarrassment.

As the train pulls into a station, each conductor steps between the two platforms and faces the station. Straddling the space between two coaches, he observes the passengers waiting to detrain and board and pulls two iron levers toward him opening the gates. Passengers hurry by and, when all are on board, he takes a final look at the activity on the platform, reverses the levers and closes the gates. Then each conductor in turn 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-clang” it sings alerting the next conductor that the gates behind him are secured. He yanks the cord twice confirming that his gates are closed. The chorus continues until the final conductor rings a bell in the motorman’s cab signaling him “You have the railroad and it’s okay to go.”

Sparks fly from the third rail, motors strain emitting an electrical odor as coaches move over track joints. Trains cross busy streets active with trackless trolleys, diesel buses, cars, delivery trucks horse, wagons and push carts, relics of a bygone era, Pedestrians J-walk weaving and dodging to avoid colliding with this traffic.

Wooden platforms with ornate Victorian style station houses line the El. Each is named after the street below, many for famous Americans like Washington, Vanderbilt and Franklin.

Afternoon trains carry a melting pot mix of passengers, residents returning to their homes, Black and Hispanic women carrying groceries, their wash or packages from the central post office and German and Italian housewives, together or with children returning to Queens from shopping trips downtown. Post school time trains include high school students, boys from Brooklyn Tech with slide rules, science and engineering textbooks, girls from Dominican Commercial wearing pleated skirts and knee-high socks and boys sporting ties and jackets from St John’s Prep and Bishop Loughlin. Workers from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tired and dirty, board the train at a station appropriately named Navy Street and brewery workers from Rheingold and Schaefer board at Broadway. The train continues north through Bushwick, crossing into Ridgewood, Queens until it reaches the end of the line at Metropolitan Avenue and the low-density communities and plentiful cemeteries that populate Maspeth and Middle Village.

For 75 years, the melody of the gate train is played until the tide of time and progress stills its sound in 1958. More efficient rebuilt wooden cars requiring only one conductor to operate doors replace the gate trains and the gatemen. For eleven more years trains continued to roll. Then in 1969, to the relief of all who live there, the Myrtle Avenue El meets the same fate as the gate trains did and is demolished south of Broadway.

Sunlight returns to a 35-block stretch Myrtle Avenue after years of perpetual darkness and the relative quiet of a Brooklyn street replaces the repetitive noise of passing trains. Still neighborhoods like Fort Greene, Clintonville and Bed-Sty struggled through economic downturns, the drug invasion capped by crack and other crises. Now these neighborhoods are changing once again as gentrification takes hold. Ready or not Brooklyn is back.

In 2016 my daughter, Beth, her husband, Tom and their two children, Marlowe and Cace move into a brand-new apartment building on the corner of Flushing Ave. and Vanderbilt Avenue across the street from the old Brooklyn Navy Yard and two blocks from Myrtle Avenue. There is nothing visual to indicate that the elevated structure was once there.

February 2026 (Originally published November, 2002)

“New York, New York, it’s a hell of a town,

The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down,

The people ride around in a hole in the ground…”

A New York Minute is defined as the millisecond it takes from the time a traffic light turns green until a NY driver beeps his horn at the car in front of him.

Dick Schaap coined the expression, “Fun City.” John Lindsay called it, “The fastest track in the world.” For your pleasure, here are  stories the New York Times will never include in The Metropolitan Diaries.

Commotion at Hearld Square

I am walking south on Sixth Avenue (A New Yorker never calls it The Avenue of the Americas) destination Penn Station. At about 36^th Street, I realize that there is hardly any northbound traffic. Instead, I witness a sea of flashing lights from atop cop cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles gathered across Broadway and Sixth at 33^rd Street. In the twilight, the lights multiply in intensity as they bounce off the windows of ground floor stores and shops.

I ask a bored cop leaning across a barricade, “What’s up?”

“It’s (bleeping) Con Edison. They tore up a steam pipe. Last week it was the (bleeping) Arabs, next week, it will be (bleeping) Sharpton.” He shrugs, “All the same to me, I get overtime no matter who it is.”

The New Hotel

The Times Square Marriot Marquis Hotel was designed around a unique central atrium. The glass elevators, mounted on the exterior of a central concrete column provide a continuous view of the atrium. The column was constructed first, before steelwork began. It ascended as a solitary structure and I watched its progress each morning on my walk to work. What was this thing? One morning I knocked on the door of the construction trailer. “What is it?”

“It’s a (bleeping) rocket and we’re shooting it off at noon.” Came the reply as the door slammed shut.

Barney

Barney was a veteran LIRR Conductor nearing retirement. One morning the 6:24 AM train out of Port Washington pulled into the Plandome Station and an elderly woman boarded. Once the doors had closed, Barney made his way over to her to collect her fare. “Conductor, could you please tell me what time this train arrives at Grand Central Station?”

“Lady, you are on the wrong (bleeping) railroad.”

Izzy and the Hippe

It is 1970. I am standing inside United Salvage, a junk store in Chatham Square. I represent an insurance company and my purpose is to negotiate the sale of water damaged and rusted wire cutters. The Kauffman brothers are skilled traders and Izzy Kauffman holds out for a lower price. A young “hippie” woman waiting to purchase a stained and slightly moldy pair of boots interrupts us. “Excuse me, how much do these cost?”

 “$3.00,” Izzy tells her brusquely.

She accepts hands him the money and he offers her a paper bag. Waving it away, she says, “Save a tree.”

The incredulous look on Izzy’s face is priceless. “Save a tree? Save a tree! What are you a crazy person? Get the (bleep) out of my store and stay out.”