In the fall of 1969 and the following months, I boarded a 6:29 a.m. Ronkonkoma train at Jamaica. Often, it included some Florida East Coast cars that were probably Jim Crow cars, as they may have been built about 1948. The seats were long-distance reclining seats. A glass partition with etchings of palm trees separated the passengers. An exterior photo of the Boynton appears HERE, where you can see six picture-windows for the seating area. Each end of the car has smaller windows. Unless my memory is wrong, the toilets were spacious, leaving a narrow passageway along the right. My commute was brief, Jamaica to Hicksville, and I think I never used a toilet in these FEC cars. Maybe two of the four were locked. Maybe the ladies' toilet had a powder room with chair and mirror as anteroom. At that time, the cars were smokers. Workers were headed to Central Islip hospital. Only with electrification to Hicksville did the train get cut back to Farmingdale.
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My memory can be faulty, and I have found no interior shots of these cars. Were there four toilets? Recall that it was the Southern states that enforced segregated travel even after WWII.
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My memory can be faulty, and I have found no interior shots of these cars. Were there four toilets? Recall that it was the Southern states that enforced segregated travel even after WWII.
