The Port Jefferson Branch has an interesting history. At one point, it was diesel territory for its entire length, everything but the first little bit was single-tracked, it went as far as Wading River, and service wasn't very frequent at all. But over the last several decades, the LIRR has slowly, and in many pieces, been making improvements to the Branch. In 1970, electrification was extended to Huntington, and in 1985, a second track was installed between AMOTT interlocking and Huntington.
But the branch is still unfinished. The very ultimate goal is double-tracking and electrification to Port Jefferson, but the money run out and you know how the rest of the story goes from there. What we have been left with is a branch that is half-finished. Electrification and double-tracking only got as far as Huntington, and Huntington was never properly built up as a terminal, because the end goal was to have everything in Port Jefferson.
What we have been left do deal with over the past couple decades is a half-build defacto terminal that can barely support itself. There isn't a yard like you can see at Babylon or Ronkonkoma, but there are two sidings. And those two sidings can't support all that much.
If you recall from the HUNT interlocking walkthrough, storage facilities at Huntington basically consist of the North Side Track which can hold one train and a diesel set, and the South Side Track which can hold maybe two trains and a smaller third one if you pack them in. All in all, you can't store all that many trains at Huntington, as it is set up more as a turning point and less as a terminal with a yard.
And while the lack of storage space at Huntington could be dealt with if you simply deadhead lots of trains to or from Huntington and turn them around there, doing that is made very difficult due to the dire capacity constrains on the Mainline west of Hicksville. As you may know, the Mainline is "throated" during the morning rush, and parts of the evening rush. During these times, both tracks are used to cram westbound trains into the line between Queens Village and Hicksville. During this time, the LIRR is unable to get trains to deadhead out to Huntington, so they have no choice but to use whatever is already there on the side tracks.
This results in a crippling capacity constraint out of Huntington. While the Mainline is throated, the LIRR has to limit the amount of trains it can start out of Huntington. 20,000 average weekday riders rely on the three stations in electric territory on the Port Jefferson Branch and they have to deal with some pretty large gaps in service during the rush hours. The yard empties remarkably quickly in the morning and fills up quite quickly in the afternoon, so that results in people who are trying to get from Huntington, Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington during the peak of the peak getting shortchanged.
It is also worth noting that operating trains out of Huntington in its current state is very expensive. Because there is no place for them to store trains at Huntington, all but a couple of the trains that originate or terminate at Huntington have to come from someplace else. That means trains have to scurry back and forth from places like Jamaica, Hillside, and West Side Yard to and from Huntington in order to make up those trains. This requires a lot of extra equipment and crew hours to get everything in place (as it takes longer to deadhead a train from Huntington back to Hillside than it does to just lay it up in a yard).
I am currently working on a project in my spare time that consists of writing a completely new set of schedules for the LIRR's various branches that fix many of the shortcomings of the current ones and include Grand Central for when East Side Access is open. As I go along, Huntington becomes more and more of a problem, as supporting decent service to two different terminals is going to be extraordinarily difficult. Huntington has to get most of its service at the very beginning and end of the peak periods where there is still room for trains to deadhead back, but during the peak of the peak when the Mainline is throated, the amount of trains that can be run to Huntington is still very limited. Furthermore, other parts of the railroad suffer because of this. For example, during the reverse peak periods, stations along the Ronkonkoma Branch suffer because whatever precious reverse slots exist need to be given to Huntington deadheads because the equipment is needed there. I had quite a few ideas that had to get tossed into the wastebasket because the equipment and storage space is needed for Huntington starts. Huntington's a vicious animal that just gobbles up sets.
But figuring out ways to get more trains to fit in and around Huntington is no easy task. Some improvements can be made at HUNT, but it boils down to the fact that there is simply no money (and even no will power) for them to get done. There isn't all that much space in and around Huntington for expansion, but something could be worked out. They could possibly extend the South Side Track and electrification to Lake Road to fit another set, and if they went all the way to Dunlap Road they could probably handle another two or three sets, which would really be nice.
Another alternative is simply extending electrification to someplace else on the branch and build a yard there. Electrification to Northport is kicked around every now and then, and that probably could help, but there is a perfectly good yard that can hold plenty of trains along the branch, and that's in Port Jefferson. In a perfect world they would get electrification all the way out to Port Jefferson and that would magically fix quite a few problems on the LIRR. The Side Tracks at Huntington could still be used to short turn trains like at Great Neck and Farmingdale, but the bulk of the trains would come from the large East and West Yards at Port Jefferson.
In all, the chance of any notable fix coming to the track capacity issue at HUNT before East Side Access comes around is pretty slim. Very few people know just how much of an issue Huntington actually is, and how much of an issue it's about to become in just a few short years, but the fact that the LIRR is using Huntington as a terminal when it wasn't designed as one will cause a lot of trouble, as basically what you see at Huntington now is what you will be able to get once East Side Access opens, and those limited amount of trains are going to have to support both terminals, and it won't be pretty.
Actually, while the electrification was to go to Port Jeff, primary Huntington service would have terminated at Northport, which would be about even east-west with Babylon, and a lay-up yard built southeast of the station at a dump site. NIMBY's killed that idea.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1950's, the railroad wanted the Larkfield Road grade-crossing eliminated by having the road go under the tracks, as in Huntington Station. Since some local businesses near the tracks would have to have been condemned, that idea was also nixed. I know this from my uncle who lived nearby from 1939 to 1991. He never understood why the passing track at Northport was actually cut back in the 1960's since it once encompassed Northport Station.
So we have a branch with well-spaced stations, long platforms, good parking, CTC, and passing sidings at or adjacent to most every station, including a semi-abandoned 2nd track and platform at Greenlwan, all ready for the electrification that will probably never happen since the railroad would rather do so to Medford and Yaphank.
Not only is the number of trains that can start out of HUNT limited, it's so bad that the number of cars is limited as well. The last AM rush hour train to leave HUNT, the 8:04am to Penn, is forced to run with only 10 cars because there simply isn't enough track space for two more CARS, let alone an entire train. This leads to a severe overcrowding situation, as that train is a local that really has 12 (full) cars worth of passengers on it. Unfortunately there is no real way out of this.
ReplyDeleteThere is no protect train at HUNT as far as I know. Every single inch of track is used to store trains at the height of the rush hour. Right before the AM rush starts and right after the PM rush ends, a massive parade of deadhead trains race down the Main Line, with headways far smaller than 15 minutes, as Huntington and Hicksville "yards" are emptied/filled. The added crew hours aren't just for moving the train, I'd imagine it also costs a lot to have the crew sit in the yard for most of the rush hour! Though triple tracking the Main Line would solve the operational problem by allowing deadheads, I can't imagine that it's cheaper to do that than build more sidings at HUNT. But the third track has other benefits too, and requires fewer property takings, so let's keep fighting for that.
They should make sure the 8:04am from Huntington an M-3 !
ReplyDeleteOr, a solution that can be made relatively easily now, is to replace some trains from Huntington that need deadhead equipment with DM train sets from port jeff, where there is ample storage. Have the trains originate in Port Jeff and run into penn. Or even just more service from Port Jeff to Jamaica, making all the electric train stops too. This way there is less dead head equipment needed, and all of the Port Jeff branch gets more service. And there is no need for expensive extensions on the current Huntington sidings.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good idea, but too bad the LIRR doesn't haven enough DM equipment to support that.
Delete134 C-3 cars can only do so much. I see no solution in sight except more Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma trains to handle the load west of Hicksville to take stress off Huntington trains.
DeleteThe LIRR had electrification money in hand to get as far as Smithtown or Stony Brook in the late 80's, built the Hillside Maintenance facility to handle a larger MU fleet for it than what they had, could have easily gotten the money to do the rest of the way given the momentum of the highly successful, in-house, on-time, on-budget Ronkonkoma electrification, but then switched gears and sold the public a pig-in-a-poke with bi-level trains, i.e' "more capacity" (while the coach roster shrank by 25% over the old fleet), and dual modes were "the same as electrification" (all 2 trains of them).
Farmingdale is not flush on storage either, which is another problem. Farmingdale runs dry even faster than Huntington does while the mainline is throated. Part of the goal of the Mid-Suffolk Electric Yard is to fix situations like this, but even that is still pretty far away and will probably not be ready in time for ESA's opening.
DeleteThe only way to fix Huntington is by electrifying to Port Jefferson, keeping Huntington as a Great Neck type of station because of the single tracking east of there. If the LIRR actually tries and gathers support through a PR campaign, they could easily get it done in time for East Side Access.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the thing I'm hoping for is the double tracking of the Port Jeff Branch (it's second to Ronkonkoma in terms of needing a second track), but that is not realistically happening for a long time because of NIMBYism.
Double tracking to Port Jefferson seems extremely unlikely to me, not merely because of NIMBYism, but also the massive earthmoving and other engineering that would be required: long stretches of cut and fill, plus replacement of the high trestles at Bread and Cheese Hollow, the Nissequogue River, and Stony Brook Road. Yes, some of this kind of thing was required when the double track was extended east of S/AMOTT and over Cold Spring Hill to HUNT in the 1980s, but imagine that X10! I could see double tracking to Northport/DUKE, but east of there is just a fantasy. It would not be simply a matter of linking up existing passing sidings as in the FARM-KO double track project.
ReplyDeleteIt's not all-or-nothing. Although I know little about this exact line, you can do partial double tracking and have rolling meets with single track sections. As long as none of the single track sections are very long, you can never have more than a few minutes of delay. That's the magic of CTC.
DeleteMaybe in the short run extend the Huntington siding farther east, and build a fence around it, to store more trains.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way LIRR get ever justify sending all the Huntington electrics out to Port Jeff. No market for all those trains. They have the same issue on the South Shore - there is little market need for the Speonk-terminating trains beyond Patchogue or Mastic, but Huntington - Port Jeff is a lot a farther.
They need to put the yard on the King Park hospital site. As for NIMBY's, have the statutory hearings, and then just do it, like a fare increase.
I just ran across this article today:
ReplyDeletehttp://huntington.patch.com/groups/business-news/p/lumberyard-owner-says-no-talks-going-on-with-mta
It appears that the MTA reached out to Nassau/Suffolk Lumber in regards to their 200 Broadway location
I'm actually glad to hear Nassau-Suffolk Lumber isn't selling. They're one of the last NY&A freight customers on the Port Jefferson Branch!
DeleteI'm not too familiar with this part of Long Island, so I don't know exactly what's where, but this open plot looks like a nice location for a couple tracks of a yard. It's long enough to support 12 car trains (I measured the plot to be long enough to support 25 car trains, and even after you add in funnel tracks, you still have plenty of room to spare.
DeleteThat property east of Lake Road appears to be what this 2003 MTA document refers to as Site No. 5, "determined infeasible/inappropriate by prior study":
Deletehttp://www.mta.info/mta/planning/portj/scope.pdf
(See Table 1 on page 6.) Why they would have rejected it isn't clear to me, but there you have it.
For what it's worth, the existing Port Jefferson yard was considered also but deemed too small: "...if the existing diesel yard at Port Jefferson Station were converted to an electric yard, it could not provide enough capacity to store the additional 16 electric train sets for which a new yard is being sought. Given the high cost of electrification as well as the lack of available space at Port Jefferson Yard, the study area for a new electric yard terminates at Smithtown Station."
It's worth noting that the Nassau-Suffolk Lumber property, described as Site No. 1, was also rejected back in 2003 as "fatally flawed because substantially occupied by active businesses that would be difficult to purchase or relocate".
DeleteHuntington was never intended to be a terminus for electric and transfer point to the Scoot, but it has been for 41 years. The above article reinforces that Kings Park is the way to go. Greenlawn, Northport and Kings Park certainly need electrification more than Medford and Yaphank. The LIRR could have solved this problem 20 years ago. But the capital planning people jumped on the dual-mode/bi-level gimmick, along with Super Steel junk engines to pacify Pataki, and the rest is history.
ReplyDeleteStuff like this is FASCINATING, and why I read this blog. It sounds like they need to electrify to Port Jeff, AND put the third track in. Although it's kind of inefficient, there is nothing inherently wrong with deadheading, or scheduling reverse trains at weird times to in effect deadhead equipment, but of course you need the capacity to do so. Deadheading would be a good solution for terminals that don't have the storage capacity needed, like at Port Washington. Here in Connecticut, a whole 13 miles and a world away from Long Island, all of our Shore Line East trains deadhead, as there is no storage in Old Saybrook or New London. It's not the most efficient thing, and it would never work for LIRR's whole fleet, but it can work just fine to add capacity as needed, especially if the system has the capacity for trains to "turn and burn".
ReplyDelete