Trainmaster5

I’ve made late night/ overnight trips in the mid eighties on the . Transit police officer boarded at 241 St and rode the train to Times Square. Next officer would board there and ride the train to the terminal station at New Lots or , later on , Flatbush. I recall an incident after the merger with the NYPD when some officers rushed up the stairs at Van Siclen with their weapons drawn looking for some perp. After scaring the people getting off the train a radio clarification identified the proper location as Van Siclen on the which is about a mile away although it’s the same 75th Pct. I knew people on all three forces, NYPD, Housing, and the Transit Bureau, and not one really supported the merger. It’s my personal opinion that there are still enough people available to patrol the system if they are properly deployed. Heck I come from the era when we had a Vandals Squad deployed in the layup area between Morris Park and Pelham Parkway besides the officers assigned to the train. I think the failure is solely on the City and the NYPD. My take. YMMV. Carry on.

The NYCTA is the successor to the city’s Board of Transportation. Even today look at the conflict between the City and the State with regards to the Home Rule issue. Gotta remember that anything regarding transit in the downstate area is always mired in legalese. Think PATH, Airtrains, LIRR, MNRR, MABSTOA, and the Dyre line. I did discover that the northern part of the RBB was part of the line purchase ( I stand corrected) but the LIRR operated the trains under lease from the city through the NYCTA. When I was a kid my family always used Atlantic Avenue as the route between our Brooklyn and Queens relatives which is why I always saw LIRR trains leaving the Woodhaven station crossing the street toward the Ozone Park Station. I mentioned the Dyre line because technically it came about after the city took over the BMT and the IRT. making it an IND line legally. Lots of legalese involved when it involves transit in NYC. If I missed something please correct me. Carry on.

I'm still of the opinion that the City, and not NYCT, owned the entire RBB. NYCT utilizes the southern portion of the branch obviously but I was under the impression that the City, not NYCT, controlled the branch from Liberty Junction northward. IIRC it was the local politicians who were against the reactivation of the northern part of the RBB. I'm willing to bet that the NYCT is not responsible for the section north of Liberty Junction and has never had any of it's equipment traverse the trackage up there. Remember that the southern part got subway service to the Rockaways while the LIRR still ran down to the Ozone Park station on the northern section until 1962. Ultimately what I'm getting at is that the City of New York has jurisdiction over the property now in that area but the NYCT has no legal rights up there. The issue is with the local politicians, the residents, and the City government. Hope I stated my opinion clearly this time. Carry on.

Are you sure that the City of New York purchased the whole Rockaway Beach Branch or just the portion south of Liberty Junction/ Rockaway Blvd station ? If the city purchased the whole RBB the northern section would end up being an elongated Franklin Shuttle ending at Whitepot junction with the LIRR mainline. If the LIRR thought the RBB was a financial loser wouldn't the same apply to the NYCTA ? The City purchased the present line from the Westchester County border southward AFAIK because they had no legal authority to purchase the northern section beyond the city limits. Just my thoughts. Carry on.

CBTC is a foreign concept to us prehistoric IRT folks. I'm sure that there's someone on the forums that can answer that question for you. Carry on

Some of us pointed this out in the forums over a decade ago. Word filtered down to some of our RTO folks that the MTA looked at the rising payroll and benefits costs as unsustainable and cuts had to be made somewhere. A two man RTO crew can carry 1000+ people on a rush hour train. Our railroad counterparts can top that, albeit with a larger crew and major union backing. That leaves Cleaners, Station Agents, and Bus Operators in the cross hairs. The pom pom wavers in some Surface threads on SBS, especially the B44 variant, missed or ignored the obvious end game. This pandemic has been a gift to the bean counters at the agency. Not enough cleaners to fully sanitize everything? Hire some outside contractors to do the job. Not enough Operators to cover the scheduled runs? Drop them because there's not enough personnel to cover the missing runs. I'm not trying to minimize the health risks of the Bus Operators and their families. I am saying that these missing runs coupled with the pandemic WFH is going to be the rationale for making major reductions in local bus service across the board. Even if they start hiring from the existing lists I'm betting that not all retirees will be replaced and the previous scheduled service will be reduced . Just my opinion. Carry on.

Let me try to sort out your complaints somewhat. Some of us were promoted from the Conductor title back in the prehistoric days. On the older SMEE equipment the Conductor was told to ride outside of the cab in passenger view between the station stops. On a northbound or leaving Brooklyn Bridge the consist makes a series of curves before reaching Union Square itself. We actually had "C" signs affixed to the pillars advising the M/M to coast from about Spring St, through Bleecker, to south of Astor Place. If your Conductor couldn't stay balanced because of the operator's " excessive" speed in the middle of the train as it lurched from side to side just imagine how the passengers and the Motor Instructor riding incognito in the last car were treated. That, by itself, was called "reckless running" or improper operation. I noticed that you stated that all signals are/were green entering Astor Place. I can assure you that all signals could be green but at the north end of Astor Place there's an interlocking signal that be changed to RED/ Danger while the preceding approach signal was green when you passed it. Hit that RED interlocking signal and one could be looking at platform duty, time in the street, or demotion. It depends on one's disciplinary record and what message supervision wants to send to the rest of the field. I know of one Train Operator who was taken out of service at Grand Central, n/b because of his actions between Brooklyn Bridge and entering Grand Central. The reason given was " unsafe" operation. The s/b example you gave basically boils down to the same thing operation-wise. As the train turns toward Chambers St there's timer and approach signals before the interlocking north of the switches between the local and express tracks. A s/b express can barrel around the curve at Houston and stop taking power in the dip between Canal and Franklin and have the train under control before the turn toward Chambers St. I've been crossed from express to local north of Chambers St. many times while operating in service on the . I've also made that move on my re-routed while heading down to South Ferry-Bowling Green for n/b service. I think most of us learned at so-called " Refresher Courses" given by school car instructors very early on. Speeding up to a signal where you have to then start braking is a rookie move. Unless one is intentionally trying to build up one's biceps by excessive power and braking movements that type of operation is considered a "rookie" move and frowned upon. When a group of Conductors all criticize a Train Operator's operation in a Crew Room that's a red flag to all supervision. Seen a T/O get cold-cocked in the parking lot at East 180th St for throwing his C/R and some passengers from side to side on that stretch below Astor Place. At least one supervisor and a Property Protection Agent witnessed the whole thing and no one said a word. One Motor Instructor actually told a group of us that if excessive speed was your thing NYCT wasn't your thing. He said try Nascar or the Cyclone at Coney Island. Just my thoughts. YMMV. Times have changed, obviously. Carry on.

Thanks for the response. My nephew said that he saw the info come back about the same time as your post. I actually tried Trip Planner earlier as the website advised and the shuttle was not an option displayed which is why I asked the question. Three bus options and a notification of elevators out of service at Franklin Avenue and Fulton Street. I’ve seen subway outages and associated re-routes on the site yet they still display subway arrival times for stations being bypassed on the same page. Makes me wonder if anybody proofreads the info. That’s my rant. Carry on.

Question from left field. Been looking at the website for the last couple of hours and I'm confused. Is the Franklin Avenue shuttle running or not ? Prospect Park shows and trains and nothing else. I see nothing under planned work or delays. What gives ? Thanks in advance.

It’s a generational thing, relax. I can assure you that my generation of Brooklynites know that the Battle of Long Island was fought in Brooklyn. That was taught to us before Junior High. Most people don’t know about the Long Island Rail Road company and it’s history either. My older buddies and I used to enjoy betting the younger people and the transplants and taking their money. Carry on.

Just a slight nitpick with your last sentence. Those of us who happened to be born in Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties are Long Islanders, or isn't that taught in school any more ? BTW I understand your point about the bridge across the Sound but that's North Shore politics in my book. Carry on.

I’m figuring this was done by the railroad connections at New Lots on the Canarsie line and the Unionport railroad connection adjacent to the IRT at East 180th St. I know that cars that were delivered to the original Dyre line came through Unionport and scrap cars left that way before the connection was severed up there. Just my take. Carry on.

From what I’ve told you about the Montague tunnel just continue southbound past Dekalb to the Fourth Avenue or Brighton lines. Change ends at the first opportunity and proceed northbound via the IND to Concourse Yard or 207th St Yard and connect with the IRT there..

Not sure if I understand your question. I’ve personally made a transfer from Corona Yard to ENY Yard. Corona to Vernon-Jackson s/b. Take the switch back north to Beebe on the Astoria. Take the switch and proceed south on the BMT through the Montague tunnel to Court St. . Head back north and take the Nassau loop lineup to the Willy B and proceed to Eastern Parkway. Cake baked. Same procedure can be done today. Carry on.

Happened to run into a fellow retiree while we were waiting for the Covid-19 shot recently. We kicked it about the latest scuttlebutt in RTO . Seems that someone caught wind of my complaint on the forums about " flexibility" when it comes to subways and operations. He loved the R142/ R142A NTT equipment while I tolerated it, for want of a better word. The NTT trains were definitely more comfortable to operate because the full cabs had room that the older SMEE cars lacked. I fully understand the cost savings by ordering 4 and 5 car consists rather than the single or married pair units purchased in the past. When I told him that my personal favorite was a single car, the R62A we had on the when they were new he couldn't figure out why. I explained to him that I was a transfer guy who took single cars from the IRT, picked up single R10 cars for both ends of my transfer at Concourse Yard and headed down to Ave X Yard to supply the horses for the AM crew to bring the 62 equipment up to the IRT. Always single cars. When I picked a road job I went to the line while they were transitioning to the overhauled married pairs. One morning I was working OT on a trip from New Lots to East 180th St. Same train I laid up the night before coming down from Dyre. Get to Borough Hall ( Lex) n/b and the train failed to take power. That day I became the poster " boy" for what we called other than head end operation. Motor Instructor from Nevins showed up and after discharging we took that train from Brooklyn to 59th St Lexington spur on the . I was up front reading the signals while he was in the 3rd car taking power and watching the air gauge to see if I was braking. We operated buzzer and bypass into the spur and changed ends. After the rush I got the lineup to proceed s/b , dropped the Motor instructor off at Brooklyn Bridge, looped the train and headed up to East 180 Yard to A lead. There was a G.O. working there and I changed ends and waited, ....and waited. Got a clear signal and waited some more. The tower operator caught on but I wonder how many of my fellow posters see the problem. The Yard Dispatcher finally caught on after 20 minutes and sent some help. I was due at East 180th St at 9:02 am but when I got to the dispatcher's office and called Command Center it was 11;53. The Desk Supt paid me my OT, asked me to relay a train (on paper) so he could pay me from 6;30 am to my starting time of 2 pm. What I did that day, and another time when my train died at Newkirk Avenue n/b and I repeated my other than head end operation to Nevins spur, with an RCI, out to New Lots Yard, switching the dead cars to the south end, and up to East 180th Yard. When I left East 180th that night with 10 good cars I was already on OT. Got to Livonia Yard and when I called the Desk Supt he told me that he authorized me to move the train from Newkirk sans TSS because he was aware of my record. My coworker had heard about my exploits in school car but he never knew who I was until Thursday afternoon. The young lady who was his school car instructor, and my friend, never mentioned any names. She did tell them that what I did could not be done with link barred NTT. The rule back then was that you needed X amount of operable equipment to compensate for the "dead" cars. An 8 or 10 car NTT in link bar would only be considered one dead (car) and one live car, hence you would need 5 more NTT cars added up in order to move the dead train. The Brother told me that a NTT had died in the Joralemon tube after I retired and it was hell trying to move it. 15 car mainline transfers were unheard of in my time. My experiences. Carry on.

IIRC the West Hempstead line is the remaining part of an original LIRR route. Line ran from Jamaica to Mineola, turning south to Country Life on the Hempstead branch and ran south to Valley Stream and back north to Jamaica. I have a friend who lives in Malverne and has never used the line in 20+ years. He either drives to Lynbrook or the Hempstead branch because many Babylon trains bypass Valley Stream completely. Said that the Franklin Shuttle puts the West Hempstead branch to shame. I know that the line is always on the LIRR chopping block and is basically a shuttle service itself most of the time. I’ve never been on the line but if the local residents don’t think much of it it’s future isn’t too bright, IMO. Of course if it’s closure is mentioned the residents and politicians will protest. That’s guaranteed. My take. Carry on.

Gotta agree with you 100% . The best supervisors I have ever worked with took advice from all perspectives when making decisions. We all had our input considered.

It's been fascinating to read the comments on the last few pages but let this Boomer offer my personal opinion. I come from a family of civil servants and professionals who grew up during the Depression and WW2. They were pretty well educated and, for the most part, liked what they did for a living. I was the oldest grandchild, a Male, on both sides of my family and they had plans for my future. No one asked me if I agreed with the plans but that's what many people in my generation went through back then. Think of 1960-1966 and perhaps you can understand my thoughts. School came easy to me. Tell me what we were expected to learn each year from junior high to high school graduation and I'd read the relevant books the summer before I took the classes. The magic word was/is " memory ". When I graduated from high school I was sixteen years old and I dreaded the prospect of college. I went because it was expected of me but my grandmother, the Matriarch of the family, told everyone to let me explore my options first. I had Lionel trains since grade school, watched the Lexington Avenue El run and be demolished, and lived by the Canarsie line and the BMT Atlantic Avenue, Broadway Junction, Fulton El complex. Got a provisional job at Transit while in school and my mind was made up. Worked for private companies and civil service agencies but came back to NYCT as a C/R. My instructors were from all walks of life but there were a group of them that took me and two classmates under their wings. For those who understand we got the talk. Same one our elders gave us. As long as we did right our keisters were covered by them. They introduced me to a trainmaster and he looked out for me. There were a few a...hole supervisors who tried to screw over train crews but they were well known to us and they didn't park on the property after they were identified. Property Protection wouldn't help them either. To me what changed job wise was the retirement of the old guard and the emergence of the know it all class of supervisors. I include the bean counters in this group. It seemed that there was a group of supervisory personnel that were hired to discipline train crews exclusively. When I came up that level of confrontation was a rarity with discipline meted out in steps rather than demotion or termination. Someone asked a group of my mentors how come, if I was so smart, why didn't I become a supervisor like the questioner. They told him that I was taught by them making me automatically smarter than him. Sometimes I wonder if I could have made it to retirement working under the new Jack's of today. My thoughts. Carry on.

Just out of curiosity where is the single track section on the KO branch overnights?

You’re telling your age 😀😀😀.. I wonder how many posters even know those folks.

Does anyone out there know the production order for Kawasaki rail cars ? Some of us LIRR riders wonder if the R211 cars will become the subway version of the Unicorn . The Unicorn aka the M9 rail cars are a rarity on the LIRR which seem to be in a production delay at Kawasaki. I believe that there was a variant for Metro North proposed , too. I personally think that these timelines are extremely optimistic but I can be wrong. How many separate production lines are in operation ? Just curious. Carry on.

Thanks for raising me to exalted status. When do I pick up my lifetime achievement trophy? I find it hard to believe that you can take someone's personal experience and opinion and try to belittle it because it doesn't jibe with your own. I don't have a problem with the gangway idea one way or another. My concern is/was operational flexibility. Same thing with single cars, married pairs, and four or five car linked units. Because of my personal experience I'm more interested in how many single cars will remain in the system for transfers, especially interdivision. I have no idea how the gangway cars are going to be constructed. My only concern is flexibility. Look at the situation with the B1 and B2 division and train lengths. Now do you understand what I'm driving at ? I don't need anyone putting words in my mouth or misconstruing my concerns. Thank you. Carry on.

Point #1 is dead on the money 💰. I’m not sure if I described bastard married pairs correctly to everyone. GojiMet86 and anyone else who is interested. Bastard married pairs were single cars with couplers on BOTH ends. For example car # 8805 could be coupled with # 8802 instead of # 8804 but to make that pair one car or both would have to be operated other than head end to connect them. Neither cab had a motorman’s operating position. In other words one conductor position to another with the operation being done from one to nine cars away. I’ve personally made moves in 239th Street yard where I was 17 cars away from my partner on the other end. I’m guessing that you remember consists where 7921 was mated with 7864. Most people only remember the married pairs being numbered consecutively but that was a rarity early in my career. The bastard term came about because of the numerology and that they were a bastard when making yard moves. Hard work but easier to remove and replace bad equipment. The other way to look at it was it requires less yard crews per shift moving 5 car units rather than one or two car units. Of course when things go wrong the yard dispatcher at 239 or 180 might be lucky enough to steal a train coming from the car wash to make full rush hour service on the or . Save $$$ . Probably not because the car wash crew deadheaded back to Lenox or Livonia to avoid getting paid overtime but some other crew would have to come back after the rush and take the train back to it’s home. Plus night differential. Just a little background from my perspective. Carry on.

Maybe my perspective is different than your take. You brought up the case of married pairs vs. 5 car units. I’ll take it even further. One car units aka “bastard married pairs “ which were coupled together. No link bars. Broken glass or non-working lights or AC ? We switched out that car instead of sidelining 4 perfectly good cars along with the the bad one. That’s the point I’m talking about. One bad order car takes out four good cars. Remember when someone was destroying cars on the a while ago ? You would need a spare of five or six cars laying around in sufficient numbers or be forced to limit your consists to run replacement service. Unlike the railroads under the we didn’t normally cut or add cars during the day. Last time I operated a short consist was Thanksgiving Day, 1988 when we ran 6 cars on the line. I remember stopping at the 10 car marker at my first two stops and my conductor came up to me and whispered “ 6 “ cars. I admit that my experience with gangway cars are Triplexes on the BMT and the somewhat similar ( to me ) connected M3 and M7 LIRR equipment. My take. YMMV. Carry on.

The " so-called" railfans are rather ignorant when it comes to certain things. Would this new concept be an improvement over the rolling stock now in use ? I don't pretend to know the answer. I do see the concept as limiting the option of running trainsets of differing lengths where full length trains aren't needed. Just my opinion. Carry on.