The Train That Built Brighton Beach

On July 2, 1878, the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railroad started running trains from Prospect Park down to a brand-new resort called Brighton Beach. The line was the brainchild of William A. Engeman, who had made his money selling horses to the Union Army during the Civil War and sank it into a beachfront hotel he needed a way to fill. An excursion railroad, not a commuter line, it existed for one reason: get Brooklyn's upper middle class out of the city and onto the sand. Six weeks later the tracks pushed north to Atlantic Avenue to link up with the Long Island Rail Road, so a rider could step off a train from almost anywhere and step onto a train to the ocean. That little seasonal line is still running today. It became the BMT Brighton Line, the same tracks the Q and B trains use to reach Coney Island now.