terminus at 221st Street and Broadway on March 12, 1906 served by shuttle trains operating between 157th Street and 221st Street. However, only the Dyckman Street, 215th Street, and 221st Street stations opened on that date as the other stations were not yet completed. The 168th Street station opened on April 14, 1906. The 181st Street station opened on May 30, 1906, and on that date express trains on the Broadway branch began running through to 221st Street, eliminating the need to transfer at 157th Street to shuttles. The station at 207th Street was completed in 1906, but since it was located in a sparsely occupied area, it did not open until April 1, 1907. The original system as included in Contract 1 was completed on January 14, 1907, when trains started running across the Harlem Ship Canal on the Broadway Bridge to 225th Street, and the nearby 221st Street station was closed. Once the line was extended to 225th Street on January 14, 1907, the 221st Street platforms were dismantled and moved to 230th Street for a new temporary terminus. Service was extended to the temporary terminus at 230th Street on January 27, 1907. An extension of Contract 1 north to 242nd Street at Van Cortlandt Park was approved in 1906 and opened on August 1, 1908. (The original plan had been to turn east on 230th Street to just west of Bailey Avenue, at the New York Central Railroad's Kings Bridge station.) When the line was extended to 242nd Street, the temporary platforms at 230th Street were dismantled, and were rumored to be brought to 242nd Street to serve as the station's side platforms. The 191st Street did not open until January 14, 1911 because the elevators and other work at the station had not yet been completed. Between 1904 and 1908, one of the main service patterns was the West Side Branch, running from Lower Manhattan to Van Cortlandt Park via what is now the Lexington Avenue, 42nd Street, and Broadway–Seventh Avenue Lines. There were both local and express services with express trains south of 96th Street. Some express trains ran to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn via the Joralemon Street Tunnel during rush hours while all other trains turned around at City Hall or South Ferry. Dual Contracts Planning and construction The Dual Contracts, which were signed on March 19, 1913, were contracts for the construction and/or