This week’s interlocking walkthrough takes us through Garden City- located deep into the heart of Nassau County. GARDEN interlocking, which is located 18.7 miles away from Long Island City, hosts both the Hempstead Branch and the Garden City- Mitchell Field Secondary, which the ladder merges off of. Here’s a bird eye view of the location:
GARDEN interlocking is just east of Garden City station, so basically, once the train leaves the station, it soon after encounters GARDEN interlocking, before entering single-track territory the rest of the way east to Hempstead.
Switches
After leaving the station on its way east, track 2 of the Hempstead Branch merges into Hempstead branch track 1.
A couple hundred feet later, there is another switch that splits the Hempstead Branch from the Central Branch, allowing it to head east towards Country Life Press and Hempstead.
Going off to the right, the interlocking ends right before entering Country Life Press. Note that there’s a grade crossing just east of the switch, while going onto the secondary, the interlocking ends just before the third rail does. I plan to make a post on the Garden City-Mitchell Field secondary in the future, outlining its current role in the thick of LIRR operations along with my proposed role for it, so stay tuned for that but for today, I’ll tell you that the secondary goes back to two tracks shortly after Washington Avenue.
Also located in the general area is no other than the former Hempstead crossing, the former Hempstead branch crossing. While there’s no tracks anymore, many years back, the West Hempstead Branch used to continue north from its current terminal in West Hempstead, up the relatively short distance through Garden City into Mineola, where it would rejoin the mainline basically forming a loop. If you take a look on Google Earth, you can see where the tracks used to be.
Signals
GARDEN Interlocking has the standard old Pensy style position-light signals.
Neighbors
GARDEN is neighbored by QUEENS interlocking to the west, and is the easternmost interlocking on the Hempstead Branch.
As for the speed limit, it’s 70 mph west of here, however it’s restricted to 30 mph east of here before the 15 mph restriction on the curve at Country Life Press and the even lower 10 mph restriction coming into Hempstead.