A Look at What the Oyster Bay Branch Timetable Could Look Like

This post was published in 2014 and was a discussion on a series of concept timetables for East Side Access developed by The LIRR Today.  The LIRR published a proposed service plan and draft timetables in 2022.  Read about the proposed East Side Access service plan here. 

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In all of the branches we've taken a fresh look at so far, most of them haven't had too many really bad constraints.  Each and every one of the LIRR's branches has its own unique challenges and needs to be tackled differently, but other than the undoubletrackable stretch of the Port Washington Branch between Great Neck and Port Washington, there aren't that many severe capacity constraints on the branches we have covered so far.  Today's post will take a new look at the last of the LIRR's simple branches, the Oyster Bay Branch.  After this branch, we're tossed into the thick of LIRR operations with the busy Montauk Branch and Mainline requiring a massive amount of trains to squeeze into comparatively limited infrastructure. 

The Oyster Bay Branch serves as a nice bridge between the two.  It's service patterns are simple, and it receives comparatively limited service for its comparatively small ridership.  However, Oyster Bay trains have to be integrated into the Mainline and all of that traffic, and that can be believably difficult. 

The Oyster Bay Branch, which snakes its way up from Mineola, runs through some of the more sparsely-populated North Shore towns.  The area isn't nearly as dense as central and southern Long Island, but it does provide one of the only public transportation links between those communities and the rest of the island.

Throughout its history, the Oyster Bay Branch has always suffered from being very slow.  The Maximum Allowed Speed on most of  the Branch from East Williston up to Locust Valley is 60 miles per hour.  The line is pretty straight as far as Roslyn, but once you get east of that, it curves this way and that, and with those many curves come lots of curve-related speed restriction.  Except for a brief stretch after Glen Head, you spend most of the time until Sea Cliff chasing 40mph speed restrictions.  And after Sea Cliff, it gets worse.  After that, you jog between 30mph speed restrictions littered on the curves for the remainder of the branch.  (You can check out all the different speed restrictions on the speed limit map).

Add slowly accelerating dual modes into the mix on the branch, and travel times east of Mineola are not all that quick.  There has been talk about changing the way the Oyster Bay Branch is run.  Some plans call for the railroad to get a bunch of DMU's and having them run back and forth between Mineola and Oyster Bay.  While DMU's might allow for some faster accelerating and decelerating after station stops, purchasing DMU's will not straighten out all the curves on the branch.  There will still be all those speed restrictions, and when you do the math, chances are running trains with DMU's and the like will only be a couple of minutes faster, and all that travel time you save will vanish quickly once you make the passengers from the branch stand out on the platform in Mineola waiting for their connecting train.  I wrote in July more on how I thought the whole DMU's to Mineola plan for the Oyster Bay Branch was a recipe for disaster, and you can read about the whole plot in that post.

With that in mind, let's jump on to the sample timetable for the Oyster Bay Branch.  It doesn't involve DMU's or transfers at Mineola (because if they were to do anything with DMU's, there would need to be talk of procuring them now so they are here in time for these changes, and quite honestly, if that's what they really want to do, it would probably just be best to skip the trouble of purchasing the fleet and watching ridership plummet and just abandon the branch altogether).

Key Assumptions

• The branch's infrastructure will remain similar to what it is today (including electrification to East Williston).

Service Guidelines

• In the morning rush hour, I tried to keep trains spaced 40-50 minutes apart.  The branch has six trains over the course of the morning rush hour, the same amount it currently as now.  The first train out of Oyster Bay in the morning will leave about 25 minutes earlier than it does today (and the train will not require the customers to transfer at Mineola).  Most trains operate to either Hunterspoint Avenue or Long Island City, with one dual mode train departing Oyster Bay for New York Penn at 6:26am.
• In the evening, six trains are also provided up the branch.
• The Belmont Park trains will bear the load of intra-city travelers, making all local stops West of Jamaica when possible (trains to Hunterspoint Avenue traditionally do not make local stops on the Mainline due to the way they are usually routed in HAROLD interlocking). Four originate in Long Island City, one in Jamaica, and one dual mode from New York Penn.
• East Williston is utilized more as an electric terminal for several trains during rush hours, however, those trains will be included in the Mainline timetable, which will show all service at East Williston and Minola.
• During off-peak times and all-day weekends, trains operate once every 90 minutes to and from Long Island City.
• The new timetables feature more reverse-peak service for those traveling from points west to destinations on the Oyster Bay Branch.  The first train up the branch now leaves Jamaica at 6:41am, almost an hour and a half earlier that today's first daytime train.  This both increases usability of the branch by promoting more reverse-peak travel and decreases the amount of diesel equipment required to facilitate rush hour service on the branch.
• Late night service is not provided on the Oyster Bay Branch.

Link to Oyster Bay Branch Timetable

Threading the Oyster Bay Branch trains onto the busy Mainline during rush hours proved to be pretty difficult due to the fact that Mainline is very definitely at capacity as well as the fact that eastbound trains have to crossover the westbound track at NASSAU interlocking, and those moves have to be coordinated accordingly.  The Oyster Bay Branch got the scraps of track slots leftover on the Mainline, however, I was able to keep the trains somewhat evenly spaced.

In the morning, all trains operate through to a western terminal, and the passengers on the first train don't have to deal with the unorthodox transfer at Mineola for westbound service when train 501 terminates there.  The first train in the morning leaves 25 minutes earlier than it does under the current schedules at 4:49am.  The morning dual mode also runs more at the center of the rush hour, when most people are traveling.  When it came time to bring the dual mode service into Penn Station for diesel branch riders, the station was at capacity during the height of the rush hour, when most of the people are traveling.  This led to the dual modes being inserted either at the very beginning or the very end of the rush hours where they could fit in.  This results in the Oyster Bay Branch's lone dual mode arriving in New York at 7:06am.  With a clean slate, the dual modes on all of the diesel branches could be worked into more popular time-slots, as those riders usually only get one or two of the dual modes into Penn Station.  The sample timetable included shows the Oyster Bay Branch's dual mode departing just before 6:30am and arriving New York at 7:41am--not at the exact middle of the rush hour, but closer than today's currently is.

And now that we've stumbled onto the topic of dual modes for the first time in this series of sample timetables, it is worth noting that the LIRR will only be able to provide Dual Mode service from the diesel branches direct to New York Penn not Grand Central.  The DM's and C3's are too tall to make it through the 63rd Street Tunnels, which were designed to fit to the profile of an M1 and little else.  As a result, there can't be any dual modes from diesel territory into Grand Central.  And it is very unlikely that we will ever be able to get dual modes into Grand Central, because fitting all of the equipment currently on a dual mode into something smaller than the size of an M7 will be very difficult for locomotive manufactures to do, so it's unlikely the LIRR will ever be able to get dual modes into Grand Central.

In the PM peak, I originally only had five trains scheduled to go up the Oyster Bay Branch.  I was able to squeak in a sixth train that would start out of Jamaica to match the current six trains the Oyster Bay Branch gets during the PM rush hour.  The evening dual mode leaves New York at 5:51pm and service is more centered towards the middle of the rush hour, when the most people are traveling.

During off-peak times, service is improved from bi-hourly to trains every 90 minutes.  The current schedule essentially requires two sets to be used to provide the two-hourly headways, so it wouldn't require any additional equipment or crews to improve to 90-minute headways.  The "last train of the night" now leaves close to 1:00am, and that train now also operates on Saturday and Sunday mornings, giving late-night revelers another hour and a half or so before running off to catch the last train home.

In the morning, the first train up the branch now leaves Jamaica at 6:41am (instead of 8:06am today), and reverse-peak service is maintained at consistent headways in the evenings.  By a quirk of the scheduling on the Mainline and in order to squeak that additional Jamaica-Oyster Bay train in the peak direction in, train 527 will originate in Locust Valley (running to Locust Valley from Oyster Bay following train 516's arrival in Oyster Bay (using the siding at Oyster Bay to runaround train 516 while it's at the platform.)

This covers the majority of what's to say about the Oyster Bay Branch.  Going on from here, everything will become crazier and we'll say goodbye to solid blocks of times with all local service and consistent stopping patterns, but we'll see just how we can shove 56 trains down both the Mainline and the Babylon Branch in just a couple hours pretty soon.  In the meantime, feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, suggestions, corrections, etc.  on this branch's timetable or service patterns.  Any and all comments are appreciated the link to leave a comment is right below, or you can e-mail me at mail@thelirrtoday.com.

View an index of all of the other sample timetables, the posts about those timetables, and revision history, right here.