LIRR And MNRR Random Thoughts Thread

[B35 via Church 9,497]

19 hours ago, QM1to6Ave said:

How's volume normally on the WH line? Pre-pandemic, was it a busy line?

Abysmal... Pre-crisis.

Let's just say the West Hempstead line makes the Far Rockaway line resemble Times Square.

[QM1to6Ave 1,723]

1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:

Abysmal... Pre-crisis.

Let's just say the West Hempstead line makes the Far Rockaway line resemble Times Square.

That's so funny...I know a few folks who live in WH and commute to the city (or at least they did before covid), so i assumed their trains were full of working professionals 

[Lex 894]

1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:

Abysmal... Pre-crisis.

Let's just say the West Hempstead line makes the Far Rockaway line resemble Times Square.

At this point, I'm not entirely sure what needs to be done to salvage it, short of addressing how everything connects and whether or not it serves Manhattan (which I'd like to use the Atlantic Branch for, though that would require significant investment).

[checkmatechamp13 2,290]

1 hour ago, QM1to6Ave said:

That's so funny...I know a few folks who live in WH and commute to the city (or at least they did before covid), so i assumed their trains were full of working professionals 

The question is did they actually take the WH branch or did they drive over to the more frequent service on the Main Line, Babylon Branch or Hempstead Branch?

The same thing with Oyster Bay. Based on the areas it serves (Glen Cove is technically a city, Oyster Bay is a fairly dense village), it should have higher ridership, but people drive over to the Main Line or Port Washington Branch for the higher frequency and direct service to Penn Station. 

Edited March 24 by checkmatechamp13

[QM1to6Ave 1,723]

1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

The question is did they actually take the WH branch or did they drive over to the more frequent service on the Main Line, Babylon Branch or Hempstead Branch?

The same thing with Oyster Bay. Based on the areas it serves (Glen Cove is technically a city, Oyster Bay is a fairly dense village), it should have higher ridership, but people drive over to the Main Line or Port Washington Branch for the higher frequency and direct service to Penn Station. 

Ahh, excellent question. I'm going to ask them and find out lol

[paulrivera 1,175]

I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

[Trainmaster5 3,806]

24 minutes ago, paulrivera said:

I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

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.

[bobtehpanda 5,919]

11 hours ago, paulrivera said:

I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

 

10 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

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.

The branch runs every two hours M-F, of course no one uses it.

IIRC the only useful proposal I've seen for it is that the RPA wants to sever it from the LIRR, and knit it with the Oyster Bay Branch via street running tracks to create a sort of cross-island light rail line from Green Acres to Oyster Bay.

Edited March 25 by bobtehpanda

[Lex 894]

3 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

 

The branch runs every two hours M-F, of course no one uses it.

IIRC the only useful proposal I've seen for it is that the RPA wants to sever it from the LIRR, and knit it with the Oyster Bay Branch via street running tracks to create a sort of cross-island light rail line from Green Acres to Oyster Bay.

Now I know they're not serious about that. If they were, they'd be trying to avoid this as much as possible, especially in Mineola and the Village of Hempstead.

Hell, the way they describe the quality of existing services is misleading. Sure, they're infrequent, but there's no deeper dive into why. Worse, they somehow manage to imply that heavy rail is noisy because it's heavy, as opposed to the use of steel rails and wheels (which the proposal won't change) or the fact that the Oyster Bay Branch almost never uses electric trains due to a lack of electrification past East Williston.

That's not to say that the idea is absolutely meritless, but they don't do a particularly good job of selling it with bad use of terminology, being really cheap, and failing to look into what elements are hampering existing service (the West Hempstead Branch in particular isn't only being hampered by the short reach or piss-poor frequency, though they certainly don't help).

[bobtehpanda 5,919]

17 hours ago, Lex said:

Now I know they're not serious about that. If they were, they'd be trying to avoid this as much as possible, especially in Mineola and the Village of Hempstead.

Hell, the way they describe the quality of existing services is misleading. Sure, they're infrequent, but there's no deeper dive into why. Worse, they somehow manage to imply that heavy rail is noisy because it's heavy, as opposed to the use of steel rails and wheels (which the proposal won't change) or the fact that the Oyster Bay Branch almost never uses electric trains due to a lack of electrification past East Williston.

That's not to say that the idea is absolutely meritless, but they don't do a particularly good job of selling it with bad use of terminology, being really cheap, and failing to look into what elements are hampering existing service (the West Hempstead Branch in particular isn't only being hampered by the short reach or piss-poor frequency, though they certainly don't help).

Disclaimer: not a Long Islander

Heavy rail to light rail is not the worst idea in the world. We even have our own examples around the area like HBLR or the River Line. It generally solves the problem of "legacy heavy rail often doesn't go where people go", and Long Island's commercial and office hubs pretty much fit that description to a T.

[Lex 894]

6 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Disclaimer: not a Long Islander

Heavy rail to light rail is not the worst idea in the world. We even have our own examples around the area like HBLR or the River Line. It generally solves the problem of "legacy heavy rail often doesn't go where people go", and Long Island's commercial and office hubs pretty much fit that description to a T.

I'm not saying that the conversion is an inherently bad idea. I'm saying that they're not doing a good job of selling the concept, particularly where constraints are concerned. As far as I'm concerned, if they were serious about it, they'd release a more detailed plan, such as what to do about single-tracking and keeping trains moving.

For the record, I'm not from Nassau, either, but having seen things either in videos or up close, I can't simply approve of it, particularly since we're talking about one of the RPA's proposals.

[bobtehpanda 5,919]

14 hours ago, Lex said:

I'm not saying that the conversion is an inherently bad idea. I'm saying that they're not doing a good job of selling the concept, particularly where constraints are concerned. As far as I'm concerned, if they were serious about it, they'd release a more detailed plan, such as what to do about single-tracking and keeping trains moving.

For the record, I'm not from Nassau, either, but having seen things either in videos or up close, I can't simply approve of it, particularly since we're talking about one of the RPA's proposals.

Yeah the RPA honestly produces a lot of pretty presentations but once you look behind the curtains it all seems a bit thin.

A better selling point would be to compare it with something that actually exists. The RiverLine is in Trenton and runs along mostly old rail right of way but on downtown streets where it would be advantageous to get closer to destinations like residents and jobs. And even with single tracking they've built strategic overtaking points so that service runs every 15 minutes, which would be way more useful than anything either Oyster Bay or West Hempstead is running right now. In this case it might even be an easier sell than the River Line, since I don't think there are freight customers along either Oyster Bay or WH.

I don't know that you'd want to run it as one line through Hempstead though. You'd probably get more value running them as separate lines hooking Hempstead and NCC and RFM.

[XcelsiorBoii4888 1,250]

You can now search up M7, M9, and C3/DM/DE fleets on the LIRR TrainTime app. They thought about the railfanners, haha. 

 

[trainfan22 1,786]

Today for the first time ever I seen an MU bound for penn depart on track 1 at Jamaica, usually the diesels terminating at Jamaica use track 1 with the penn trains using track 2.