This image from the Amagansett Historical Association shows a train speeding across a fantastical snowy Long Island. The Hamptons Express ran as early as 1893 and came out as far as Southampton and Sag Harbor. The Express was sometimes called the Cannonball, a common term for trains that made no stops.
The train left Penn Station in Manhattan and carried its passengers without pause to the South Fork each weekend starting in late May, continuing through the summer season, and ending in October. The Hamptons Express provided an easy commute for those working in the city who came out to the beach on their days off. The longest passenger train to run to Long Island’s East End, its 12 cars were “all parlor cars,” a luxurious style of coach available only for single-day travel.
This romanticized image, commissioned by the Long Island Rail Road, was painted by Ron Ziel (1939-2016), a railroad historian and Long Island native. He added “1967” below his signature, and while it is unlikely the Hamptons Express train ran in snowstorms, the winter of 1967 was quite snowy, with the plowing costs exceeding local municipal budgets.
Ziel is best known as a train enthusiast and photographer, although in addition to painting trains he also gave historical lectures and advocated the preservation of railroad history. He wrote or edited more than a dozen books on locomotives during his lifetime. His passion for railroads is evident in the annotations on the reverse of this image identifying the exact locomotive engine model and types of trees depicted.
For those who share Ziel’s passion for railroad history, the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead displays one of the train engines he helped preserve. The museum is open on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Dec. 30. Admission is $15, $8 for children.
Moriah Moore is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
