 The West Hempstead Branch was the indirect successor to the old South Side Railroad's Southern Hempstead Branch, which ran a similar route north from Valley Stream to Hempstead, before being torn up in the 1880s.On January 26, 1892, the New York Bay Extension Railroad Company was incorporated as a subsidiary of the Long Island Rail Road to build a line running from Garden City to a point in the town of New Lots in Kings County near the intersection with the New York, Brooklyn & Manhattan Beach Railway Company.The line was built between Country Life Press to Valley Stream and opened in 1893.