New and Eliminated Routing Possibilities After Culver Trackwork

[CenSin]

Continuing this:

Riding the / recently, I’ve also noticed an additional switch added north of Kings Highway connecting northbound trains on the local track to the express track. The switch is nearly ½ of the way from Kings Highway to Avenue P. With this in place, the infrastructure is set to provide express service along Culver in either directions during rush hours when they terminate trains at a Kings Highway.
Going southbound, the switch that lets local trains cross over to the express track has been removed. What was once a scissor crossover is now a regular crossover taking express trains local into 18 Avenue. This means any track work done on the southbound local track between Church Avenue and 18 Avenue necessitates running trains express from Smith–9 Streets all the way to Kings Highway just as it is now with northbound service.

Between Ditmas Avenue and Church Avenue, there’s no functional change, but believe now the switches connecting the local and express tracks are shaped to facilitate faster switching to/from the express tracks.

[CenSin]

On 10/10/2021 at 3:01 PM, CenSin said:

This means any track work done on the southbound local track between Church Avenue and 18 Avenue necessitates running trains express from Smith–9 Streets all the way to Kings Highway just as it is now with northbound service.

True to my words, I took a Coney Island-bound yesterday and it ran express from Smith–9 Streets to Kings Highway. At Ditmas Avenue was a single work train.

[Missabassie]

Funny, I was on the  on Saturday as well, and noticed most of these things mentioned. Interesting changes....

[Lawrence St]

Maybe it's because I'm not familiar with how this is, but why would they remove a switch?

[darkstar8983]

4 hours ago, Lawrence St said:

Maybe it's because I'm not familiar with how this is, but why would they remove a switch?

Maybe it is maintenance-related. Cost cutting and just maintaining main interlockings

[CenSin]

On 10/21/2021 at 6:10 PM, darkstar8983 said:

Maybe it is maintenance-related. Cost cutting and just maintaining main interlockings

IMO, if they wanted to do that, it’d probably be more cost-effective to take all the switches out around 18 Avenue and make those new switches south of Church Avenue full scissor crossovers. It consolidates the switches into fewer places and affords the nice ability to isolate reroutes to smaller segments of the line.

• Work between Smith 9–Streets and Bergen Street? Run express only there.
• Work between Church Avenue and 4 Avenue–9 Streets? Run express only there.
• Work between Ditmas Avenue and Kings Highway? Run express only there.

Right now, it’s “work at Ditmas Avenue? Run express from Smith 9–Streets all the way to Kings Highway.” I’m not complaining since I don’t use any of the local stations, but the arrangement does seem quite short-sighted given how often Ditmas Avenue has work being done on it.

[Lawrence St]

2 hours ago, CenSin said:

IMO, if they wanted to do that, it’d probably be more cost-effective to take all the switches out around 18 Avenue and make those new switches south of Church Avenue full scissor crossovers. It consolidates the switches into fewer places and affords the nice ability to isolate reroutes to smaller segments of the line.

• Work between Smith 9–Streets and Bergen Street? Run express only there.
• Work between Church Avenue and 4 Avenue–9 Streets? Run express only there.
• Work between Ditmas Avenue and Kings Highway? Run express only there.

Right now, it’s “work at Ditmas Avenue? Run express from Smith 9–Streets all the way to Kings Highway.” I’m not complaining since I don’t use any of the local stations, but the arrangement does seem quite short-sighted given how often Ditmas Avenue has work being done on it.

Exactly the point I was trying to make. Removing switches makes no sense, since it reduces the ability to rerouted trains.

For example, there was an issue at Jackson Hts a few weeks ago and the and had no where to turn around since they removed the switch at Northern Blvd.