It’s been a while since we’ve moved onto the next branch in this series of sample timetables, but today we are finally moving on, this time to the Ronkonkoma Branch. Be aware, as we move deeper and deeper into areas of the Main Line, things get even more complicated.
Anyways, ridership along the Main Line (particular the Ronkonkoma Branch) is huge. You may even n know that Ronkonkoma is actually the second busiest station on the entire railroad that’s not in New York City, after Hicksville. It’s important to note that the Main Line refers to the entire portion of the Ronkonkoma Branch between Greenport and LIC, however neither I nor the railroad referred to it as that and I like to say the Main Line runs as far as Hicksville when referring to it here. After the railroad electrified to Ronkonkoma, this resulted in a ridership boom along the branch. Since the opening of the third track, a lot of the major capacity constraints along the Main Line specifically got eliminated, however, there are still some capacity constraints along the Ronkonkoma Branch itself.
Still, when trying to manage sustainable levels of service using only 3 tracks when your trying to balance local and express trains from the Ronkonkoma and Port Jefferson Branches along with trains from Speonk, Port Jeff, and Oyster Bay coupled with the occasional local west of Hicksville can prove to be a rather difficult task.
For the purpose of these timetables, I gave the Ronkonkoma Branch the most track space of all the branches on the Main Line. I did this because ridership clearly reflects that, and as I mentioned in Mid-Suffolk Electric Yard, it also has the most storage space. However, so far, I’ve been successful at giving Huntington great service too!
Included in the linked PDF file below is the Full Sample Weekday & Weekend Ronkonkoma Branch Timetable. Peak, off-peak, extra, and special event trains are all included. Note that this is a new and improved timetable design.
The timetables have yet to include the deadhead/non-revenue moves, which will be planned out along with crew and equipment rotations as well using AI 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 much as possible, since it’s essentially wasted time, crew, and equipment hours, but in some cases it was unavoidable to make the most out of the resources available.
Key Assumptions
- My only real assumption is that with these timetables would the LIRR attempt to improve service east out to Yaphank, Riverhead, and Greenport. Turns out this post is well timed as recently the LIRR announced they’d be Yaphank station and I assume that with that they’ll at least make some effort to improve service out there, especially since they could provide better reverse-peak options for those going to the lab.
- During the morning rush hour, a hodgepodge of local and express trains depart Ronkonkoma throughout the peak. I’d say there’s no real consistency as to how service is run, and that is just how it is given the difference in service needed throughout the peak. Service generally emulates current service however additional trains have been added to provide better service to all terminals along with added express service. Additional trains have been ran from Central Islip, Brentwood, Wyandanch, and Farmingdale to complement this new service. I tried to avoid awkward gaps, but especially towards the start and end of the peak, there were some cases where that was unavoidable due to capacity restrictions. For the first time since East Side Access, I’ve provided valid peak service to Atlantic Terminal.
- During the evening rush hour, service is also quite scattered, however, more trains make all stops along the branch and express service has been reduced.
- I truly believe I provided adequate service during rush hours. It was no easy task considering the limited capacity, specifically on the branch itself, however, I think ai did a good job thanks to a combination of things including East Side Access, the Third Track and Mid-Suffolk Electric Yard.
- I tried to concentrate service on this branch toward the height of the rush hour, in order to better complement Huntington trains. You’ll notice that service on this branch trails off slightly earlier then on many of the other branches due to its location being eastern and due to the yard running out of equipment.
- During the busiest travel periods, service has been upgraded to every 20 minutes to reflect ridership.
- In an effort to give even more additional peak service, I set up a system of Hicksville-Ronkonkoma scoots, similar to what the LIRR used to do when the branch was diesel. Equipment was badly needed in Huntington most, so having the few reverse-peak trains there’s room for go there, you can give everyone the most opportunities to get to their destination. In this approach, you only need one Main Line slot west of Jamaica, therefore eliminating the need for one more train to further clog up Jamaica.
- I’ve yet to include service east of Ronkonkoma. It will get added in a future post about the North Fork.
- My main goal with this branch was to provide a fast, frequent, and reliable service for these customers into Manhattan, and I think I did that despite the challenges I faced.