Transferring at Huntington

Huntington is one of the LIRR's most heavily used outlying transfer points.  The LIRR uses transfer points like Huntington, Ronkonkoma, Babylon, and Valley Stream to connect more heavily used services to the ones the LIRR couldn't really care less about (i.e. the diesel branches).

You see, when the LIRR doesn't feel like burning fuel running a train all the way into (or at least closer to) the city like a proper railroad would, they short turn the train at one of those transfer points and have people change to a more efficient and popular train that can take them to where they actually want to go.

This whole outlying transfer point philosophy is flawed at best, and in a perfect world all of these trains would be going to Hunterspoint Avenue or Long Island City and people would only have to transfer for intermediate services, but that's not the topic of this post.

What is the topic of this post is one of these transfer stations in particular, Huntington.  As I briefly pointed out in yesterday's interlocking walkthrough of HUNT, Huntington station is made up of two side platform, which is unusual of transfer stations.

Most of the LIRR's major transfer points accomplish transfers "across the platform" style.  The train that is short-turning arrives on one side of an island platform and the connection is ready to go with doors open and all that jazz on the other side of the platform.  The short turner arrives, throws its doors open, the people scurry across the platform and into the awaiting connection on the opposite track.  After a brief wait for any senior citizens or irresponsive stragglers to make their way onto the connecting train, the second train closes its doors and heads off to bigger and better places.

The whole process is basically reversed a few minutes later when it is time for the diesel scoot to head back into the ol' country.  The electric connection arrives, throws its doors open, and the people scurry.  Only this time the scurrying is a bit more frantic because diesel connections are often shorter than their New York-originating counterparts, so those fools who cram into the first open door they see coming down the staircases in New York often have to adjust their position on the platform to get into the diesel train. 

At Huntington this doesn't happen, though.  The process is different here.  The biggest cog in the Huntington transfer wheel is the platform layout.  Take a look at the diagram of Huntington station at left (or above if you're viewing on a mobile platform).  There is no middle island platform between the tracks.  There isn't any place for the people to scurry.

Because of this odd layout Huntington has to do their transfers a little differently.  At Huntington most transfers occur on the same platform.  So instead of the scenario above happening, this happens in stead: the diesel short turn arrives from Port Jefferson on one of the platforms (usually the northern one, platform A).  All of the people get off the train and stand on the platform and wait (no scurrying for these folks).  The doors close and the train crew quickly sweeps the train for any stow always (usually people who have fallen asleep and missed the repeated calls to get off).  After the train is deemed free of passengers the diesel scoot is give the go ahead to leave the platform.  The train pulls east and usually pulls into the North Side Track to wait (see yesterday's interlocking walkthrough for where the North Side Track is).

Literally seconds after the diesel train begins to pull out of the station the electric connection leaves the South Side Track to the east of the station (again, see yesterday's interlocking walkthorugh for further geographical clarification).  Now I'm not talking after the diesel connection clears a sufficient safe operating distance away the signal system allows the train to move forward, I mean the electric train is right behind that diesel train. 

If you've never experienced a transfer at Huntington it's kinda hard to describe.  You may think all these modern signal systems and automatic train control nonsense would never allow two trains to operate literally within 20 feet of one another.  Nonetheless, it seems to happen here.

Often times, when words fail, a couple minutes of Google searching often turns up the answer.  Here's a video uploaded by YouTube user NJCoastExp showing this operation in real time.  The video taker is at the very end of the platform, so the gap between the two trains is larger than it would be if observed at the middle of the platform:

I can spend a couple hours explaining how the signal system actually allows this to happen, but TL;DR: there's a "restricting" aspect that allows trains to operate at 15 m.p.h. past a signal where the next block is occupied.  For those who have no clue what that last sentence said, don't worry about it--it's not worth the trouble.  Just giggle slightly like the guy in the video and it'll all be cool.

This process is all reversed a couple minutes after.  An electric train arrives, dumps, sweeps, then pulls off into the South Side Track then the diesel connection pulls off the North Track and follows uncomfortably close behind the electric train that is hi-tailing it out of the way.  Everyone crams onto the connection, the doors close, and off they go.

There are exceptions to this process, however.  There is the occasional connection that happens "over the platform."  When this happens (usually when track slots to the west of here are very tight and force an electric train to turn right in the station and not go to the South Side Track) the electric train would arrive on one platform and the diesel connection would be on the other side. 

The only way for the passengers to get from one train to the other would be to crossover to the other platform using one of the stations few overpasses.  The general consensus is that these types of transfers stink because often times there are too many people and not enough overpasses, so there is a long mob at the foot of the staircases of people waiting to crossover.

All in all, these types of transfers, especially the over the platform ones, take longer than the simple across the platform.  The typical across the platform transfer at Babylon or Ronkonkoma can be accomplished in roughly 4-5 minutes.  Most Huntington transfers are budgeted for 8-10 minutes in the timetable (there are some that are scheduled to do it faster and some slower, but most are 8-10 minutes).  So not having an island platform virtually doubles the time it takes to transfer trains.

It's tough to find a solution to this.  It would be an awful waste of time and money to completely reconfigure Huntington station and HUNT interlocking to allow for an island platform here, so we're sort of stuck with this.  The LIRR could move a few more transfers to Hicksville on the weekends (where across the platform transfers are possible) but then you have redundant service that increases the amount of train sets required to maintain service and that isn't really worth the money either.

Huntington wasn't envisioned as a transfer point.  It wasn't all that long ago that Huntington was a low-platform stop in single-tracked, diesel territory.  But with time and lots and lots of expansion around the area, the electrification was extended this far and no further, and we are stuck with this layout we have today.