Greenlawn's unused platform

High-level platforms are (or rather should) be a highly sought-after commodity.  Level boarding allows for better accessibility and it dramatically reduces dwell time at stations, as riders can easily step on and off trains, instead of having to deal with traps and steps to board and alight on low-level platforms.  High-level platforms can save anywhere from 30 seconds to as much as 60 seconds per stop in dwell time alone.  While the LIRR had the foresight to build high-level platforms systemwide in the latter part of the last century (and Metro-North has covered most of their system as well), many railroads in the northeast have unfortunately few stations with level boarding.

Most of the LIRR's stations received high-level platforms in the late 1960's and early 1970's, coinciding with the arrival of the M-1 cars, which did not have traps and therefore necessitated 100% level boarding (it was one of the many different ways the M-1 cars were truly transformational for the LIRR in its first years of public ownership).  A similar exercise occurred again in the late 1990's with the arrival of the current diesel fleet, which also lacked traps and therefore required upgrading stations to 100% level boarding (though this time around, the railroad cut some corners by closing several stations and building only very short platforms at many others—this continues to cause headaches and frustration to this day).

Despite the rather scarce resources for building high-level platforms, the LIRR actually built a high-level platform back in the 1980's that has been used very rarely—if ever.

At Greenlawn in the Town of Huntington, the station looks perfectly normal, like any other two-track, side-platform station.  There are two high-level platforms, both with signs, advertisements, full-length lighting, yellow edge striping, shelters, watch the gap decals, and even the red plastic rubbing strips installed at most stations to shrink the gap a couple of inches.

All trains depart from platform A (on the right) at Greenlawn (Photo: The LIRR Today)

(Photo: The LIRR Today)

But platform B—the south platform—is never used.  At Greenlawn, all trains are scheduled to arrive and depart from platform A, the north platform adjacent to the station house.  No passenger train is scheduled to use the south platform, and as far as I'm aware, no train has ever received passengers at platform B since it was built in 1985...  While platform B at Greenlawn is fully set up to receive passenger trains (the only thing it doesn't have is AVPS displays and speakers), it has only been used for laying up work trains on rare occasions.  Most of the time, it functions as a very fancy and overbuilt sidewalk for people to access the south parking lot.

The south track through Greenlawn isn't actually considered a passenger track, the railroad refers to it as the Greenlawn DEF siding (DEF = double-ended freight, a common appellative for freight sidings that can be switched at both ends).  According to the NYS DOT, this track is maintained to class 2 standards (the main track through here and all the way to the eastern limits of DUKE 2 are shown as class 4 track, and then the branch is shown as class 3 track the rest of the way)

The diesel portion of the Port Jefferson Branch is very overbuilt by the standards of how the railroad treats its diesel branches today.  Students of LIRR history will recall that the LIRR had big plans for the Port Jefferson Branch in the late 1980's...after it wrapped up the Ronkonkoma Branch electrification project, the plan was to next continue expanding electrification to Kings Park or Smithtown, and then onward to Port Jefferson.

Much of the infrastructure built along the Port Jefferson during that time was designed in anticipation of electric service coming shortly after.  Pretty much every platform along the length of the branch was built 12 cars long (only Port Jefferson is 10 cars, and this unused platform B at Greenlawn is just 8 cars) in anticipation of electric MU service.  While the LIRR did operate one or two 12- or 13-car rush hour trains on the Port Jefferson Branch prior to the Ronkonkoma electrification, since then and to this day most trains don't come close to 12 cars.  Today, 12-car trains either never happen or are extreemly rare.  Most of the diesel trains are just four to six cars long (there used to be pair of 7-car LIC trains during rush hour, but not anymore).  Only the two DM round-trips run with 8 cars today, and they almost never run longer than that. 

The overpass is wide enough for a second track, and you
can see the tiny chunk of platform at the far left
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

You can also see places where accommodations where made for a future second track that has also yet to come.  At Northport, the overpass was built wide enough to fit a second track and a second platform, and there is even a tiny chunk of a landing at platform level, which technically makes it the shortest platform on the railroad.

Most of the Port Jefferson Branch stations were also upgraded with two full-length platforms through the station.  All of the other diesel territory stations on the railroad with passing sidings were built with just a single high-level platform.

But in the early 1990's, the LIRR caught dual mode fever and backed away from its plans to upgrade the Port Jefferson Branch—even though it had the funding lined up to go forward with electrification—leaving all of these artifacts (what's a word for the opposite of "vestigial"?) as elements built for expansion projects that never came to be.  The railroad inflated the cost of electrification (fluffing up the pricetag by 156% in less than three years) and then claimed it could no longer afford to do the project (sound familiar??).  The charade prompted this million-dollar quote from a former congressman from Centerport: ''either the planners are incompetent or it is clear they have been fudging the figures... If they're suggesting the money isn't there, either they're incompetent or they're liars.  All they have to do is apply for it."  History certainly seems to repeat itself!

The platform B at Greenlawn is an even larger-scale example of building for a second track that never came (as the platform essentially serves no purpose otherwise).  When the LIRR expanded signalization and remote-controlled interlockings east to Smithtown in the 1960's, it skipped over Greenlawn, instead only interlocking switches at Northport, Kings Park, and Smithtown.  To this day, the switches at the Greenlawn siding are only hand-operated, which means that it is practically never used for passing meets. 

Remnants of an old pedestrian crossing from prior to 1985
are still visible on the siding track (Photo: The LIRR Today)

That means that if an eastbound train is late, the railroad will hold a train in the siding at DUKE Interlocking east of Northport until it can clear through, as it does not have the flexibility to shift the meet to Greenlawn to minimize the delay.  The siding track today looks in very poor shape—many of the ties are rotted, and it looks like nothing has been done to it since the platform was built in the 1980's (you can still see a bit of asphalt from what was probably a mid-station pedestrian crossing from its low-level platform days).  As mentioned before, it's formally classified as a freight siding, meaning it would be exceptionally rare for it to be used by passenger trains.

Upgrading the siding track and interlocking the switches to it west and east of the station would allow for passenger trains to use platform B at Greenlawn—this could be a relatively cheap and easy way to add some extra flexibility to the branch, as it would breakup a roughly 5 mile stretch of single-track territory, allow for slightly more reliable operations and potentially some additional reverse-peak service during rush hours.

But absent a large-scale upgrade plan for the Port Jefferson Branch (along the lines of what was planned in the late 1980's), which even if started now wouldn't be done for years, both of the platforms at Greenlawn are likely going to require replacement before any improvements to support passenger service are finished, meaning the railroad would have built and demolished a platform that roughly zero passenger trains ever used.