BMT Brighton Line

The BMT Brighton Line, also known as the Brighton Beach Line, is a rapid transit line in the B Division of the New York City Subway in Brooklyn, New York. Local service is provided at all times by the Q train, but is joined by the B express train on weekdays. The Q train runs the length of the entire line from Coney Island–Stillwell Avenue to the Manhattan Bridge south tracks. The B begins at Brighton Beach and runs via the bridge's north tracks.

The line first opened in 1878 as a two-track surface-level excursion railroad called the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway, transporting riders from Downtown Brooklyn via a connection with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to the seaside resorts at Coney Island. When its connection with the LIRR was severed in 1883, the line became the Brooklyn and Brighton Beach Railroad, which was eventually acquired by the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT, later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation [BMT]). From 1903 to 1908, all of the original line's grade crossings were eliminated; This project also widened the line from two to four tracks from Church Avenue to Sheepshead Bay; From 1918 to 1920 the portion of original open-cut right-of-way from Church Avenue to Prospect Park station was widened to four tracks and a new subway alignment was built north of the Prospect Park station. The northern part of the original line became the modern-day BMT Franklin Avenue Line, which still runs today. In subsequent years, numerous improvements were made to the Brighton Line.

The Brighton Line opened from the Willink Plaza entrance of Prospect Park (modern intersection of Flatbush and Ocean Avenues and Empire Boulevard, now the Prospect Park station on both the renamed Brighton and the Franklin Avenue Shuttle lines) to Brighton Beach (modern Coney Island Avenue at the shoreline) on July 2, 1878, and the full original line on August 18. It was an excursion railroad – the Brooklyn, Flatbush and Coney Island Railway – to bring beachgoers from downtown Brooklyn (via a connection with the Long Island Rail Road) to the seashore at Coney Island on the Atlantic Ocean, at a location named Brighton Beach at the same time the railroad arrived. It has been known since its opening as the Brighton Beach Line but is now described as the Brighton Line in MTA literature and in public usage.

After losing its connection with the Long Island Rail Road in 1883, the railroad fell on hard times, reorganizing as the Brooklyn and Brighton Beach Railroad. Seeking a new route for its excursion business and its local trade in communities along the way, it formed an agreement with the Kings County Elevated Railway to connect to its Fulton Street Line, which gave access to the new Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan passengers. This was accomplished in 1896.

A series of mergers and leases put the Brighton Beach Line in the hands of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT), a holding company which eventually controlled most of the rapid transit, streetcar, and bus lines in Brooklyn and part of Queens. The line was electrified with trolley wire and, for a time, trolleys from several surface routes and elevated trains operated together on the line.

The BRT was reorganized as the Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) in 1923. In 1940, the BMT was purchased by the City of New York, and operation passed to the city's Board of Transportation, which already operated the city-built Independent Subway System (IND).

The original line was a two-tracked high-speed surface steam railroad operating from Bedford Station, at Atlantic Avenue near Franklin Avenue in the City of Brooklyn, at which point it made a physical connection to the Long Island Rail Road's Atlantic Branch. From Bedford the line ran on a surface private right-of-way several blocks south to Park Place, which it crossed at grade, and then in an open cut with street overpasses through what is now Crown Heights and Flatbush, as far as Church Lane (now Church Avenue) in the Town and Village of Flatbush. From that point the line continued on the surface to a point at current Beverley Road between Marlborough Road (East 15th Street) and East 16th Street, curving southeast and running on the surface between the lines of the latter streets through the Towns of Flatbush and Gravesend to Sheepshead Bay, then turning southerly to reach the beach at Brighton Beach on Coney Island in the Town of Gravesend.

The line was extended westward from Brighton Beach in 1903, so that it could terminate with the former Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad at Culver Depot in Coney Island. Passengers, with this short extension, were given access to the developing area of Coney Island. The Culver Depot became the center of operations for the Culver Line and the Brighton Beach Line.