The line opened on July 1, 1878, originally running from the Willink Plaza entrance of Prospect Park at Flatbush Avenue and Ocean Avenue to the Brighton Beach Hotel. However, the railroad desired to get the line closer to downtown Brooklyn. There was a problem: the line could not pass through Prospect Park, since the park had been built specifically as a retreat from the busyness of New York City. Therefore, the line was to be built in a trench through the hill in Crown Heights, connecting with the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) at Atlantic Avenue. The route was built on the surface between Bedford Terminal (at Atlantic Avenue) and Park Place, and was built in an open cut to Prospect Park in order to avoid grade crossings and to placate the local community. This portion of the Brighton Beach Line represented a routing compromise, since the bypass route through Crown Heights was long, while the BF&CI's preferred direct routing to Downtown Brooklyn would have measured only . The Crown Heights routing took the BF&CI north to the Bedford station of the LIRR. This portion of the BF&CI's mainline would become the Franklin Avenue Line. Later on, in order to accommodate larger locomotives for LIRR through-service, the open cut had to be dug deeper. This portion formally opened on August 19, 1878, about six weeks after the rest of the Brighton Line opened. This portion of the Brighton Beach Line went north to the LIRR's Bedford station, where Brighton trains could merge onto LIRR tracks and operate to the Flatbush Avenue Terminal at Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue. However, the LIRR later gained control of the New York and Manhattan Beach Railway, a competitor of the BF&CI, and on December 14, 1883, ended the agreement to provide equal access to the Flatbush Avenue Terminal. The BF&CI was forced to end its trains at Bedford, a situation which led to its bankruptcy in 1884. Three years later, the BF&CI line was reorganized as the Brooklyn and Brighton Beach Railroad. The Kings County Elevated Railway (KCER) wanted to link the Brighton Beach Railroad, running west of Franklin Avenue, to its elevated railway above Fulton Street. However, there was a problem: the LIRR's Atlantic Branch right-of-way, running along Atlantic Avenue, separated the Brighton Beach Railroad's Bedford Terminal to the south and the Fulton Street Line to the north. The LIRR