Trainmaster5

1 hour ago, R32 3838 said:

The / works. The / didn't work because it skipped the most important stops and didn't help. The / skip stop makes more sense because it gets people to the city faster and it actually helps since I rode both lines daily for 29 years.

Thank you 👍🏾. Most people who equate one scenario to the other have no experience with the two services. The BMT service predates the letter designation of today’s  /  by a generation or two . The IRT service was a loser because of its different demographics, IMO. Carry on.

2 hours ago, Kingsbridgeviewer382 said:

Even if the  uses the middle track after 145th, they would still be stuck behind a  whenever the  catches up to it when switching back to the local track or running in Upper Manhattan. It seems that people that made the proposal severely underestimate how many people use stations below 242nd: 231st for the connections to Riverdale routes, 225th for Metro North, and 207th to connect to the 12 +Select. In the PM rush, a lot of  trains empty out at 231st not 242nd. Same in the AM when passenger loads pick up at 231st. This would just lead to empty  trains that don’t stop a critical transfer points in Upper Manhattan and crushed  trains because of the inevitable reduction of  train service as a result of these changes.

You seem to understand the concept clearly. Quite frankly most posters don’t understand the reasoning or are too young to know the past routing of the  line. There were 3 northern destination signs on the SMEE equipment. VC, Dyckman, and 137 St. . Gradually the Dyckman terminal was phased out because too many people were coming from VC heading downtown so they sent those trains up to VCP to take on those people. In my opinion the best service on the  came with the alternate runs from VCP and 137th Street. The  and  trains were not a viable alternative IMO. There were folks who touted it as comparable to the Jamaica BMT skip-stop service but my rabbi had me sit in on a meeting and had me explain the difference. The main one, IMO, was that trains that left 168th Street in Queens were either A or B.and they made separate stops except for Sutphin and Woodhaven (off the top of my head) and ran express to Broad Street. That was later labeled as the #15. The local train service started at Rockaway Parkway-Canarsie, Crescent St or Atlantic Avenue and was labeled as the #14 to Canal joined by the Myrtle-Chambers line. I didn’t remember any backups and I pointed out that the  ,  was a daily fiasco that was heard over the radio by train crews. People who had seniority wouldn’t even pick jobs on the line. To me they should have reinstated the 137 service but that was above my pay grade 😁. As for the labeling the OP pointed out I suggest anyone interested should read about the Broadway-Seventh Avenue Express service and the Broadway-Seventh Avenue local service and see why 96th Street, north and southbound aren’t the answer. Just an oldtimer’s remembrance. Carry on.

1 hour ago, Lawrence St said:

 

Except this time it isn’t skip-stop,

take a look (image from FB)

The two most obvious reasons to vote NO on this idea IMO.

1- The section between VC  and Dyckman ignores a significant portion of ridership uptown. It also creates congestion between 157 St down to 103rd while screwing over another high ridership base.

2- From 96th Street southbound  the only option is to run behind another local. There’s no way anyone in O&P would even consider crossing over the train to the express track just to cross it back down at Chambers Street.My opinion. Carry on.

7 hours ago, CenSin said:

One vocal side basically says “jail time/death sentence for anything!” The other side says “clear everything out of the jails!” Where is representation for the happy medium where we can take the weed dealers’ bunks in Rikers and give them to the fare beaters instead?

I’m definitely old school.. Where I come from all crime is punishable. Wasn’t it Singapore or somewhere nearby where an American youth sprayed something on a fence and was sentenced to caning for the crime ? Americans protested the punishment IIRC. I don’t remember the exact punishment but the responses were eye opening to my elder family members. Welts and cowhide were the only acceptable choices to them. No excuses. Just my thoughts. Carry on.

2 hours ago, Wallyhorse said:

That '90s style crime crackdown would likely now lead to massive lawsuits against the city by advocates for minorities and so forth.  What Giuliani did when he was mayor from 1993-2001 would never fly today because of that.  

I'm sure that I'm older than you and most posters but we had the Transit Police riding the system overnight before Rudy G was elected. NYTP rode trains, especially in the IRT from the Bronx to Brooklyn nightly. We also had a Vandals Squad that concentrated on the train yards that dealt with the " no talent artists ". I'm personally offended by your insinuation that minority leaders actually support these criminals. My opinion. Carry on.

4 hours ago, Reptile said:

Following the lines built by the BMT and IRT for the Dual Contracts, the BMT had plans for lines along 8th Avenue and a Brooklyn-Queens Crosstown (which the IND used in their plan and built). But did the IRT have anything planned after their lines were built?

I don't recall any specific IRT proposals being laid out. Remember that the Bronx and Manhattan had the Metropolitan ( IRT ) stranglehold on EL service before the IRT subways came along up that way. Likewise the BRT (BMT) ruled Brooklyn , along with the Long Island Rail Road company and the myriad bus companies back then. As far as I'm concerned the IRT only got the Eastern Parkway line back then in Brooklyn. Look at a transportation map from that era the BMT/LIRR companies ran Brooklyn to Queens and Coney Island from Sands St to the South and East. Those two ran parallel services along Fulton St and Atlantic Avenue eastward that many posters overlook even now. The LIRR made many of the same stops as the BRT/BMT did until WWII when the railroad gave up the mass transit service along Atlantic Avenue to Jamaica. After the Dual Contracts time the IRT basically focused on the Manhattan/ Bronx El services and the connections to the Broadway- Seventh Ave lines and the Lexington Avenue lines. There was also the joint Astoria and Flushing Lines in Queens but nothing specific to the IRT. Even when the City purchased today's Dyre Avenue Line in the Bronx it was an IND line because the private lines were taken over by the City of New York before that date. Just my recollection though. I may have overlooked something along the way. Carry on.

2 hours ago, Bill from Maspeth said:

They are sabotaging the B39 right now.  One bus on the road, 30 minute SCHEDULED headway which can't be maintained due to always being traffic on the WIllyB and Delancey St.  Scheduled trips are regularly missed.  

There should be at least 3 buses assigned to the route during daylight hours and 2 buses for the overnight trips. My opinion. Carry on.

4 hours ago, Kamen Rider said:

Yeah... I think I can count on one hand how many times I've used my sign changer since I left School Car. It might have something less to do with how many conductors there are and more to do with only the 62s and 68s still need them. When it comes to Astoria, it's just quicker to not change them, wait for an R46 and change that. takes less than a minute and no physical effort. R68 Novembers stay Novembers, while Whiskeys stay Whiskeys unless it is absolutely necessary. Now once the R46s are gone and the Broadway line has more R68s... well... i guess we'll jump off that bridge when we get to it. 

It does seem to more be coming from the armchair Line Superintendents... but to a certain extent it makes sense. When someone suggests the idea of moving the R back to Astoria is usually when this argument comes up the most. Going with your 3 example, you had Lenox on the 3's route... The R would have nothing on route, and all put ins and lay ups would require deadheading, which they see as unnecessary and or wasteful. If an R train needed to be added or removed from service, say needed to be Shopped on Arrival... "on paper" it feels easier to do that at Forest Hills and roll her down into Jamacia Yard vs having to run light up to (depending on circumstances) 36th or 59th and then lite down the west end or Sea Beach.. for every put in or lay up

I certainly understand the reasoning behind the  at Jamaica yard but isn’t that yard already overcrowded ? Are they still laying up trains between stations? Me and my crew are waiting for someone to suggest building a storage facility under Prospect or Central Park. Justifying it by “ fleet expansion “. I’m not running the system but I always thought that the  and the  should swap assignments at Astoria making an  pairing. Just an idea. Thanks for answering our questions. Be safe. Carry on.

I’ve been kicking around some questions with my fellow retirees and we figured that we’d ask you fellow posters for your opinions.

First off we are guessing that the complaints about the signage problems in Astoria are due to the conductor shortage. We changed signs on alternate ten car  trains at Flatbush Avenue daily with 2 extra conductors. The upper sign from Dyre to 241 st. The lower signs were changed from Lexington Avenue Express to Bronx Thru Express 

The next question concerns the  train and some ideas about “ yard access”. problems. We’re not sure why this keeps coming up on the forums but it seems to reappear every few years. Six of us are A division folks and two have spent time in both divisions in motors. We all attended school car at PS 248 next to C.I. Yard.  trains were on the yard leads, especially from the West End side, daily. Sometimes I’d spend the night at my grandmother’s apartment in the Marlboro houses. I personally worked transfer jobs between divisions and there were  trains moving around the place nightly. We’re figuring that this is longstanding misconception. Think about this sometimes. I worked transfer jobs early in my career in motors. I worked on the  for years. Heck, we had yard access at Lenox. Problem was that our maintenance facilities were at 240th, 239th, and Westchester and the money trains were serviced at East 180th Street. The yard access complaint is somewhat bogus to us. 

We are entertained by many of the posts, especially the route changes, where the “ Little Lionel’s” , as an old poster labeled them propose some of these things. Of course there is a person who seems to be fixated on Ninth Avenue, Bay Ridge and the Nassau loop. One person in our circle now lives in Alabama but he is still entertained by the people on the forums. For that reason we all thank you posters.

Be careful out there. Carry on.

3 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Nostrand/Church isn't Flatbush, like Brighton Beach/Coney Island av's isn't Manhattan Beach.... You got the analogy, it just isn't in tune with your claim.

Actually BrooklynBus was taught the same thing I was told back in the day. The east side of New York Avenue was the border between East Flatbush and Flatbush. That was also the borderline for our high schools. Erasmus Hall was the west side of New York Avenue and Wingate was the east side back then. Kings County Hospital and Downstate were both East Flatbush. A generational thing . I think that I mentioned that my first apartment was on East 98th St and Livonia, the west side. The fire house was directly across the street from me. It was in Brownsville and my apartment was in East Flatbush. That was according to the FDNY, NYPD and the post office and my mailman. Like I said it’s all generational. BTW what he mentioned about the three streets that dead end at New York Avenue was also what we learned in our neighborhood. Difference is that Parkside Avenue was known as Robinson Street by the real old timers in the neighborhood. Parkside ended at Flatbush Avenue way before I was born. The exit at the Winthrop Street station on the s/b platform was tiled Robinson Street until about 2000 or so. My memories. Carry on.

23 minutes ago, Kamen Rider said:

… I give them one day… ONE DAY… and what do I get? 
 

Surfers!

So, I am currently on paid leave for Grand Jury Duty. Yesterday, I had to go in to work since the courts were closed and per contract, when you’re not going in to court, you have to come into work.

they gave me a job, I do it, they ask if I want to do one extra trip…

Pull into a station, I see a bunch of kids standing around at the far end of the platform…

We start to leave and two of them leap onto the side of my train.

they ran when I pulled the brake.

 

this grand jury gig is four weeks. I give them 1 day and this is what I come back to.

I’m listening to “Bad Luck “ by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes and then I read your post. Priceless. Be safe out there. 

8 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

Ah, so you also grew up in the 40's... Interesting... I wonder what part of E. Flatbush @JAzumah hails from..... Anyway. growing up, I used to think East Flatbush on that end, ended at Meyer Levin itself.... Once you crossed Ralph, it always felt like its own separate neighborhood.... But yeah, I won't really trip if someone refers to that area as E. Flatbush.... Now when people start calling areas south of Av. D as being in East Flatbush, I'ma be like yeeeaahh, you goin have to go somewhere else with that noise... Lol....

You know I gotta ask you this as a fellow neighborhood patron..... The Glenwood houses, what neighborhood you got it in? East Flatbush, Canarsie, or Flatlands? Another one of those little debates that pops up. is the western border of this neighborhood (Rogers or Nostrand)....

I look at the boundaries they got this neighborhood as being in on the google map & I cringe every single time.

I think it’s a generational thing with the neighborhood names. Ask BrooklynBus where we went to school . PS 268 and Winthrop JHS were considered East Flatbush although the Post Office was Rugby. Wingate High School was in East Flatbush although it was also called “Pigtown” as a derogatory name. I lived in Flatbush , now called Prospect-Lefferts by the later residents. Our borders were the west side of New York Avenue to Flatbush Avenue and also included the east side of Ocean Avenue across from Prospect Park and Empire Boulevard down past Erasmus Hall and included 2 post offices, Lefferts on Empire and Nostrand and Flatbush station on Church and Bedford. Kings County and Downstate were considered Flatbush in my day. Your Glenwood Houses comment illustrated the problem directly. Zip code (post office) or what ? We also need something else that makes sense. My aunt lived on Marion Street at Rockaway Avenue, I lived on Vermont and Flatlands, and my supervisor lived in Starrett when it was new. We all had the same post office back then, 11207, East New York station at Pennsylvania and Atlantic. Damn sure wasn’t the same neighborhood as the post office name. On that end we used the Canarsie office on Flatlands. I had relatives in Queens back then and their neighborhood names were just as mysterious as my Brooklyn ones. Try Google Maps, Apple Maps or Bing on a lark and compare the results. Just my experience. Carry on.

2 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

When it was extended to Brookdale (whenever that was) I believe service to E 83 Street was discontinued. I don’t remember any branch. 

There was no branch. The Brooklyn Terminal Market was the only terminus at the time. As you pointed out it was moved from the market to Brookdale .

Let me get my two cents into the  QBL conversation. Just how many people are traveling eastward from the Crosstown line to the Forest Hills area ? How many people are doing this trip in reverse ? Meanwhile there are people complaining about the  service on both ends. My simple solution is to run the  between Astoria and Bay Ridge. Send the  from Whitehall to Forest Hills from 6 am til 9 or 10 pm daily. Run the  local when the  and the  don’t run. Back in the ancient times we were taught to isolate the problems and adding the  is not the solution, IMO. I bet it would help the  problems elsewhere . K. I.S.S should be the motto for RTO scheduling. No problem with anyone who has a different opinion. Carry on.

6 hours ago, BaconFoamz said:

As nice as that would be, unfortunately the MTA has taken over in terms of public transportation as the person above me said. However, not all hope is lost. If you really want to start a transit company, you could perhaps look for some remote town maybe upstate with no form of pubic transport.

pubic transport ??? 😂

2 hours ago, RTOMan said:

What Makes me shake my head at some of these folks who are whining about lack of  service or how messed up   service is at tikes is this..

What about the Employees who lives are affected by these service changes?

They pick Jobs for six months because they have lives they have families..

Now they are subject to get sent or put anywhere in the system where the service is needed if their Jobs are eliminated which is happening.

So now they have to find a babysitter or make other adjustments on the fly in their lives due to this..

While some of those folks have to do is take another train and be mildly inconvenienced or Us employees don't matter?

Oh i forgot it don't matter really dose it?

Oh and for those "They know what they signed up for folks" i don't see any of you folks down here moving these trains...

Lets put it in perspective here.

I’m convinced that some of these people have never worked in their lives. A wise motor instructor told us years ago that people were getting dumber, not smarter, by his observations as a USMC drill instructor and then a transit instructor. If I picked a good job for my circumstances and then, through no fault of mine, was told to shift my work hours, location and possibly my days off on a whim because some titled a**hole’s screwed up I’d be pissed off. Top it off with some outsiders basically saying tough luck “ but could you please change the schedule “ so I can get some more service for me “ ? Nobody wants to screw the riders if possible but the attitude I see in the other direction reeks of self-entitlement and screw the folks who provide the service you want. My take. YMMV. Carry on.

3 hours ago, Reptile said:

At the Nevins St station there is a lower level with a provision to a line that would have run along Lafayette Av. Are there any IRT documents or proposals that show where this Lafayette avenue line would have terminated, maybe in Willamsburg like the or LIC like the , or would it have run straight to northeast Queens?

I think that was a proposal to get their feet in the door in Brooklyn, nothing more. What company in their right mind would propose a new line running up Lafayette Avenue from downtown Brooklyn ? That was BMT territory back then. Look at a map of that area and time and it’s obvious, at least to me. From Sands Street there was the Myrtle and Fifth Avenue line branching off of it before Navy Street. At the same time the Fulton Street Elevated was at Flatbush. Further along the Myrtle the Lexington Avenue line branched off at Grand Avenue to Lexington and headed to Broadway. Where was the ridership base supposed to come from along Lafayette ? Remember the IRT wanted the Fourth Avenue line before the BMT was awarded the contract. I’m guessing they were bluffing. Look no further than the Eastern Parkway line leaving Utica Avenue heading to Brownsville. The tracks line up with Pitkin Avenue (as do the address numbers) before the tracks turn to Sutter-Rutland and on to Livonia Avenue. The IRT would’ve been blocked by the BMT Canarsie line. This is what some of us learned about in NYCT school car. Sounded reasonable to us back then. Carry on.
 

18 minutes ago, Lex said:

I get the impression that the cross-platform thing is (Brooklyn) terminus-bound, as opposed to Manhattan-bound.

That’s correct.

4 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Overnight subway service is a disaster.

I can’t recall how many times I’ve been traveling from 14th St-Union Sq to 225th St-WPR and have been met with missed trains, slow downs, etc that a 1 hour 10 minute trip turns into 1 hour 55 minutes. The connections between the  and the  are NEVER timed properly and I end up missing the  by 2-3 minutes.

My experience with the  and  lines as a conductor goes back decades. Unless things have really changed a conductor on a n/b or s/b  has no idea of the location of a  train at the 149th Concourse station. I’m not sure if there’s a train dispatcher on duty there at all times these days. I do remember that there were connections made between the trains at the Brooklyn end at Nevins Street. A cross platform connection with a dispatcher on duty. Before my retirement the dispatcher job was eliminated and just tower operators were on the scene. I’m guessing that the connection was controlled by the RCC and not locally. I will say that any train arriving at the terminal 5 minutes or later better have a damn good excuse for doing so and a connection not authorized by supervision ain’t no excuse. Without additional running time added to a run you are on your own. Just my thoughts. Carry on.

3 hours ago, Bill from Maspeth said:

When I hear comments like this I ask, "Are they complaining that they have to let a bus pass by because they can't fit on it or are they complaining they have to stand".  Just like the subways, you are paying for a ride and not necessarily a seat!

Thanks for your post. Many people are of the mistaken belief that paying a fare means that you are paying for a seat. Paying the fare means that you are entitled to a ride. That’s it. IIRC boarding a train from Penn Station to Trenton on Amtrak entitles you to a seat but if you ride NJT you are on your own. I believe that also applies to riding from New Haven to NYC. Amtrak =seat while MN doesn’t guarantee a seat. I think Poughkeepsie to NYC is also carrier dependent. If I’m wrong I hope someone would correct me. Carry on.

Didn’t the Governor and the  announce and produce a map showing Penn Station access from the Hudson line with stops at  West 125th St and somewhere in the West Seventies a while back ? Just asking. Carry on .

5 hours ago, trainfan22 said:

They used to layup trains at that yard in the mid 2000s, so at least some tracks are electrified.

 

https://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?32392

Thing is that they only had a few tracks that were electrified back then. Guess things have changed since then. Carry on.

13 minutes ago, CenSin said:

What article? It’s a Reddit thread, same as any other chain of posts here on NYC Transit Forums.

 . In case you haven’t noticed we have a new jack poster on the forums now. Seems to be all over the place but I can’t tell if he’s clueless or trolling everyone. Utica extension is unfeasible because of water, lakes, etc. ? Meanwhile travel farther east from Kings Plaza along the Belt Parkway and lo and behold there’s a housing development at Rockaway Parkway and Starrett City at Pennsylvania Avenue all equidistant from the same waterline. Maybe I missed the stories about these places sinking into the ground ? Just asking. Carry on.

11 hours ago, Nitro said:

38th Street should be primarily used for the  because it is close to its proximity to the yard. This way the could get extra trains and boosted frequencies.

I haven’t been in that yard since the mid eighties. Have they electrified that yard yet ? That was for work trains and M.O.W equipment back in the day. Just asking. Carry on. BTW I normally try to avoid necroposted threads. Excuse me.

35 minutes ago, Kamen Rider said:

Okay, first of all, you had a bit of an “obnoxious tone” first, the whole “I’ve been riding the subway for almost 45 years…” and then when given a reason by me, that the CBTC computers aren’t built for it, you ignore it, to the point I had to repeat myself.

I’m only about 10 years behind you on riding the subway… and the knowledge I have today vs that of a little over a year ago is vastly different. My point of all that is that rider based knowledge… buff knowledge, has a limit. And that working down here shatters that limit. The reasoning for decisions that didn’t make sense to me a few years ago now is as common sense to me as breathing.

You don’t see or hear everything we have to do every day. You are only exposed to a tiny fraction of the work it takes to make the system run, just from our perspective as train crews. 

as an example. I mentioned “106 Ball”, that is the home signal at the bottom of the Williamsburg Bridge, just outside Essex street. All trains coming down off the bridge have to announce themselves over the radio to Essex to tower for our proper lineups to be given when we are about to pass that signal.

”Essex Tower approaching 106 ball you have the 1234 Juliet-Parsons to Broad”

did you know we had to do that, at various locations?  Most people don’t.

I didn’t. Until I started working here. Same probably from Comrade. 

 

Okay now that you both have got your points across let’s be civilized here. I appreciate both of your opinions because they sometimes open my eyes to things that I’ve overlooked or never thought about before. As I’ve said in the past I had some excellent teachers in school car and the last Trainmaster who taught me how to look at things through the eyes of others. I’m including regular riders and rail fans. I’m glad that Kamen Rider has joined the RTO team and RTOMan is satisfying my curiosity about CBTC. Bill from Maspeth has also reminded me of things that I never really paid attention to. Before I end my post let me point out what I learned from those in the know 20+ years ago. CBTC and the overlay (ATS) won’t be ready for the IRT and the whole B Division for 30 years or more. The chief proponents were forced out or sidelined by those who weren’t pom pom wavers. Fifteen years ago when I joined the forums there were folks who tried to explain how scheduling works, especially in locations like the Brooklyn IRT. Most of them gave up and moved away when they realized that they were not getting through to the gung ho rail fans. Why are we sitting here at President St or maybe Gold St, Myrtle in the BMT ? If you arrive at a location 2,3, minutes or earlier to that point the system or the local supervision is supposed to hold you to your scheduled time. Simple concept, IMO. I got a warning from the Command Center when I was a new Conductor because we were 8 minutes early at 145th Street and Lenox on a 59 minute run from Flatbush to Lenox on a Sunday night. My M/M was a senior guy who had to head home to Staten Island from Harlem. As Kamen Rider knows now the Desk Trainmaster said that the Conductor is in charge of the train . The other overlooked concept is that the token, MetroCard, OMNY whatever only entitles you to a ride on the train. Not a seat. That always fascinated me because I had a free bus/train pass since I was in the sixth grade and friendly bus operators would remind me to get up and give my seat to a paying customer. Just a few things I had to pass along. Be safe out there. Carry on.