(The following is copied from a historical pamphlet published by retired L.I.R.R. ticket clerk Thomas R. Bayles in 1974 and handed out gratis to anyone interested in Long Island history.)
“Camp Upton was located on the site of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, on a tract of about ten thousand acres, east of the William Floyd Parkway and extending from the Middle Country Road to the Montauk Highway. Later, several thousand acres were purchased north of the Middle Country Road and west of Lake Panamoka for a rifle range.”
“On June 21, 1917, Col. Frank M. Lawton, of the Department of the East and Ralph Peters, President of the Long Island Rail Road, made an inspection of the property, which had been determined from a U. S. Geological map of the area. The location of the camp was approved and the contract for the construction of the camp was let to Thompson Starrett Co. on June 24th.”
“Work during that summer was very difficult, with extreme heat, rain and millions of mosquitoes, which made working conditions almost unbearable. Rates paid for labor were $.375 an hour for laborers and $.625 per hour for carpenters. The men were fed in commissaries operated by the contractor and the prices charged for meals were $.25 for laborers and $.35-$.40 for mechanics. The largest number of men employed on any one day was 15,000. A total number of 5,742 carloads of lumber and other materials were used in the construction of the camp.”
“The Long Island Rail road extended tracks for the two miles into the camp from the main line, with tracks running to the passenger station, the freight yards, coal trestle and to the ten warehouses where merchandise was received for the operation of the camp.”
“The first 2,200 drafted men arrived on Sept. 10th and up to the end of October about 30,000 men arrived. The camp was built to accommodate 37,000.”
“A station called Upton Road was built on the railroad east of the present William Floyd Parkway and a shuttle train was operated into the camp from the Main Line that met the trains, in addition to the trains operating into the passenger station in the camp. Trains were operated on Saturday mornings to New York about an hour apart for the thousands of men on weekend passes, and returned Sunday night. Also, visitors’ trains from New York came into the camp on weekends, bringing thousands of the relatives and friends of the men in the camp. Tickets for the soldiers were sold at $1.30 for a round trip to New York. The railroad station was a busy place in those days.”
“That first winter of 1917-1918 was a hard one with lots of snow, ice and muddy roads in the spring, as most of the roads were not hard surfaced at that time and the only hard surfaced road out of the camp was the one to the Montauk Highway, four miles distant. The Barrett Company had the contract for building the roads in the camp. The Longwood Road and the old “Hay Road” that came into the camp from the Middle Country road were dirt roads and became almost impassable that winter. At one time the mud was so bad that autos and trucks could not get around and mule teams were used for trucking.”
“Irving Berlin, the famous songwriter, was an early soldier in Camp Upton, and with all the other men hated to get up in the morning when the bugle blew, so he wrote the song “Oh How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,” which became an instant success. He got many Broadway performers to come out to the camp and entertain the soldiers in the camp theater and he directed a musical comedy called “Yip Yip Yaphank,” which soon became famous and had a short Broadway run.”
“Thousands of men were trained at Camp Upton during 1917 and 1918 and went overseas. The men of the 77th Division were trained there and most of them were from the New York and Long Island area. After the war ended in November 1918 the camp was made into a debarkation camp, as the men returned from overseas to be discharged. The American Railroad Association had an office with 24 hour telephone switchboard service and handled all the railroad operations for the troop movements in and out of the camp. The railroad ticket clerks worked nights making up the tickets for the lists of men who were being sent out the next day to their homes all over the country.”
“The army had thousands of mules that were kept at the old ‘Remount’ in the part of the camp near the main line of the railroad. These were sold at auction and shipped around the country. We had a train of 50 stock cars with engine attached backed to the loading platform and, as the mules were sold, they were lassoed and the government brand burned off, then herded up the loading platform and loaded 21 mules in a car. As each car was loaded the train moved ahead to the next car until the train was loaded. The waybills were given to the train conductor and the train departed.”
“The 1,660 buildings, utilities and improvements in the camp were sold at auction on August 21, 1921 by the auctioneers Smith & Jaffee. Everything was to be removed within 60 days and the purchasers took down the buildings and salvaged the lumber in them. Hundreds of carloads were shipped around the country as far west as Indianapolis, Indiana. Some of the smaller buildings were moved to various location on Long Island.”
“The pot bellied stoves that were used to heat the barracks were sold and shipped to Pittsburgh, Pa. to be reconditioned and sold by the mail order houses, as were the army cots, by the thousands.”
“I was employed by the Long Island Rail Road in the freight department at Camp Upton for the five years the railroad operated there, from August, 1917 to April 15, 1922 and was the last man on duty when we closed the freight office in April, 1922. I could write a great deal about those years in Camp Upton but space forbids. A detailed report of the construction of the camp by Major O’ K Myers, the Construction Quartermaster, is in the Middle Island Public Library and may be inspected by anyone interested.” Thomas R. Bayles, 1974
Unfortunately, Tom Bayles never wrote down that wealth of Camp Upton information he mentioned as having and it is now lost to history. D.K.
Art Huneke has kindly provided the following list displaying some of the amazing numbers of people, trains and freight handled at the camp during WWI:
1. 543,830 tons of freight handled
2. Over 1 million troops handled on 1,954 trains
3. Over 1.1 million furloughed troops and visitors handled on 2,040 trains
Article added on the war-time construction of Camp Upton from the Engineering News Record, August 23, 1917.
********************************************************************************************
by Dave Keller
Upton Junction was the connection off the L.I.R.R. Main Line into Camp Upton during both World Wars. The block office cabin during WWI had the call letters "WC" and the cabin during WWII had the letters "CU".
“WC” cabin was originally built at Central Islip in 1914 and given the call letters of “CP”, however it was decided not to be put into use, and remained at Central Islip, out of service, until it was loaded on a flatcar and moved out to Camp Upton for use during WWI. A photo of that cabin accompanies my railroad vignette about Central Islip Station Agent George G. Ayling.
As mentioned by Tom Bayles in his “Camp Upton in World War I” pamphlet, there was a station just west of the junction on the Main Line called Upton Road, which was named for the main road going into the camp. The remains of this bridge used to be visible from the William Floyd Parkway overpass at the Main Line. I don't know if it's still there or not, as I no longer live on Long Island. I photographed it in 1968.
The Upton Road station building which was put into service on 5/24/18 was moved to Yaphank for use as the agent’s residence (1922 – 1948). The Upton Road newsstand was purchased by Tom Bayles and moved to his property in Middle Island for use as a work shed.
When in use, the junction had a wye and a water
tower north of the tracks and west of the west leg of that wye leading into
the camp. The west leg of the wye continued for a good distance before
connecting with the
During the summer of 1968, at age 16, I slung my camera over my shoulder and rode my bicycle from my house in Holtsville, along the yet unopened and semi-paved stretch of Long Island Expressway out to the site of the “junction”. (The LIE crosses the LIRR Main Line just slightly west of where the junction was.) The water tower and two metal crossing shanties were still standing. The west leg of the wye had been disconnected from the Main Line and from the spur going into Brookhaven National Laboratory. The water tower toppled over a number of years later as a result of a forest fire that swept through the scrub pines.
|
April 15, 1918 Troop Train Wrecked Leaving Camp Upton east of C. Islip |
||||||||
|
On April 15, 1918 one of many L.I.R.R. troop trains left Camp Upton and was heading westbound along the Main Line under the control of engineer Tom Kelly when it derailed at speed just east of Foot’s Crossing (the present day crossing of the Veterans’ Memorial Highway over the L.I.R.R. east of Central Islip). Operator
Ayling told me he found out soon afterwards that the wreck was a result
of sabotage. He mentioned to me that the train was full of soldiers
heading towards
Had
this happened today, the media would have been pouring all over the site
with helicopter coverage and high-powered zoom lenses and we’d all be
watching it on television. And
. . .. had George Ayling known the real reason for the wreck, he’d
have slept easy. I
recently acquired the official ICC report on this wreck and, despite
George’s facts, which were obviously typical railroad-man rumor and
hearsay of the day, the derailment was a result of defective rails.
The reason George never photographed the locomotive, was that it and the
first three cars were still on the tracks. Chances are, it was
uncoupled from the fourth car whose rear truck had derailed, and left
the scene to make way for the wreck train. I’ve scanned the first portion of the ICC report for anyone interested in reading it. It gets extremely technical (i.e. boring) for us non-engineers so at that point I skipped to the very end and scanned the engineer’s summary and closing statement. Info: Dave Keller |
Explanation of photos:
|
1. Head-on view of derailed coach |
 |
|
2. Interior view of derailed coach |
 |
|
3. Three coaches laying on their sides |
 |
|
4. Two coaches laying on their sides with trainman walking at center of photo |
 |
|
5. Two derailed coaches and torn-up tracks |
 |
| 6. Railroad workers walking past three derailed coaches and torn-up tracks |  |
Be sure to see more of Art Huneke’s great LIRR historical photos and
memorabilia at
www.arrts-arrchives.com
.jpg)
.jpg)
-W.%20Switch-Upton%20Jct-View%20W-Upton-5-3-64%20(Makse-Keller).jpg)
