Down Go the Trees

The long and windy single tracked stretch of the Oyster Bay Branch between Locust Valley can be one of the more interesting segments of track on the Long Island Rail Road. Plenty of curves, crossings, good views, and lots of trees can be seen out the windows in the 11 minute trip between the penultimate and ultimate stations along this branch.

Today this segment floats briefly into the news because of today's weather. At the timing of this posting, two separate trees have fallen across the Oyster Bay Branch track east of Locust Valley today alone. The first one happened earlier today, and judging by the timing of the alerts, the crews who came all the way out to clean up the first downed tree probably got all the way back to where they came from when they got the second call.

This section of track caused a good bit of trouble following Hurricane Sandy due to the number of downed trees that fell along the tracks. The below picture is a photo of this segment of track following Hurricane Sandy (not from today). You can see the number of trees that could possibly come tumbling over when the weather gets rough.

(Photo credit: MTA Flickr)

(Photo credit: MTA Flickr)

Things like these happen every so often when the weather gets rough. Thank goodness the LIRR doesn't have overhead wires strung all over the place to make a tree situation like this even worse!

It's also funny how the last single-tracked miles of LIRR branches are always the most susceptible to downed trees, trespasser strikes, power problems, or just about any other sort of trouble Mother Nature and human kind can throw at them. Even though they're some of the most under-used portions of the system, when these final terminals (and sometimes even their yards) are cutoff from the rest of the branch, it does make things quite uncomfortable for everyone else along the line!