From the West Hempstead Branch's eastern terminal of West Hempstead, we must hop a couple of blocks down Fulton Street to the east and north a little bit to get to the eastern terminal of another (much more favored) branch, the Hempstead Branch. The branch's eastern terminal of Hempstead is right across the street from Hempstead Transit Center, which is one of NICE's main bus terminals. Quite a few people, upon arrival into Hempstead Transit Center will not cross the street and hop on the LIRR but instead will change to another bus to Jamaica and hop on the subway!
Those lucky enough to make the choice to hop on the train, will take a trip up through Garden City, and stop at no less than 3 stations in Garden City, before pulling through Stewart Manor before meeting the LIRR's Mainline at Floral Park.
From Garden City through Floral Park, the Hempstead Branch runs pretty darn closer to the Mainline. Crazy enough, Nassau Blvd is only a mile south of Merllion Avenue and New Hyde Park is even closer only being a half a mile south of Stewart Manor. In both cases, the Hempstead Branch stations are not even 2 minutes apart on New Hyde Park Road. The tracks that branch off going perfectly eastbound at Garden City are actually the remnants of the old Central Railroad of Long Island and this could become the route many Ronkonkoma Branch trains could take if the LIRR were to reactivate this portion.
The LIRR could work to use the relatively close spacing of stations to their advantage. Both New Hyde Park and Merllion Avenue lie on the busy Mainline, and due to this, they both have capacity constraints. A lot of people who would use the Hempstead Branch stations actually just end p driving to stations along the Mainline due to crowding or because service can get very lazy on this branch at times. A family friend of mine who use to commute into New York who lives very close to both Nassau Blvd and Merllion Avenue stations (slightly closer to the latter) would just go to Merllion Avenue since he said the station was quieter.
My hope is by increasing service on the Hempstead Branch, along with the Far Rockaway and Long Beach branches, service will begin to even a tad bit out more. I personally think the Hempstead Branch definitely has some growing to do, and the LIRR just needs to help it grow.
To get onto the actual timetable, the linked .pdf file includes the full set of weekday and weekend Hempstead Branch timetables. Peak, off-peak, reverse-peak, and special-event trains trains have all been included within the timetables.
The timetables only show revenue trains, not deadhead or equipment moves, which will be planned out using AI to align with crew and equipment moves and will be written down on paper. They’ll be included on a separate page in the attached PDF. I tried to mostly minimize deadheading as it’s essentially wasted time, crew, and equipment hours but in some cases it’s unavoidable to make the most out of the resources available.
Like was said on the Introduction Page, before we can begin talking about the actual schedule “Key Assumptions” and “Service Guidelines” needs to be taken care of and mentioned before this project can become totally feasible since I’ve built the timetables off of it. I’ve tried my best to make these schedules able to be done with these projects completed or not, but in some cases that isn’t possible.
Just like the other timetable posts, here are some "Key Assumptions" and "Service Guidelines" which I built the timetables on:
Key Assumptions
- The current infrastructure on the branch will remain the same or similar to what it is now.
Service Guidelines
- During peak hours, service is provided on 20 minutes headways as a minimum throughout the course of the rush hour. Train service is provided to Penn Station, Grand Central, and Atlantic Terminal hourly.
- I’ve decided to cut-back a bit on service to Queens Village and Hollis stations during rush and reverse-peak hours however they will continue to get off-peak service. The Belmont Park trains will now be the main flag carriers for the branch, and they will now get 30-minute headways during off-peak hours.
- During off-peak hours, service is provided hourly on the branch and these trains continue to operate to/from Grand Central w/ a couple of exceptions during late-nights.
- During the weekday reverse-peak period, additional trains are run in the reverse-peak direction from Penn Station to help provide 30-minute headways. My hope is that by providing additional reverse-peak service, especially earlier in the rush hour, this will continue my effort of minimizing deadheading/empty equipment moves. These trains are targeted at people holding jobs in western Nassau County, and others may take the train to Hempstead to connect with NICE bus.