Interlocking Walkthrough: NASSAU

In today's interlocking walkthrough we're going to take a look at NASSAU Interlocking located in Mineola. It stretches east from Merllion Avenue to half way to Carle Place, and the Oyster Bay Branch splits off in the middle of this. It includes a fair bit for an interlocking of this length. 

Switches

Anyways, now lets take a look at the actual interlocking itself. Like many of the other recent interlockings covered, it's broken into 3 parts, NASSAU 3, NASSAU 2, and NASSAU 1. Let's start on the eastern side with NASSAU 3. 

NASSAU 3 starts a bit east of Mineola station, with a crossover from track 3 (the westbound track) to track 2 (the middle track), then another one from track 1 (the eastbound track) to track 2, then there's yet another crossover, from track 2 to track 1, followed by the final one from track 2 to track 3. Then, there's a very small siding that merges onto track 3. 

The North Side Track is a short rarely used freight siding that can hold four to five freight cars at its very best.

Now, we enter NASSAU 2, and come into the fun part, as we come into Mineola station, the Oyster Bay Branch merges into track 3. Now here's the interesting part. Originally, when there were 2 tracks Oyster Bay trains would merge onto the track that was in their direction (track 1 for westbound, track 2 for eastbound), but since the third track, all eastbound Oyster Bay trains must also leave for the Oyster Bay Branch on track 3, which is an irritating problem. This means that if an eastbound Oyster Bay train is late its gonna further cause delays then if it was merging from the eastbound track. 

As we leave Mineola station, we enter NASSAU 1. Our first crossover is a couple hundred feet west of the station platform, where there's a crossover from track 3 to track 2 (this is what allows Oyster  Bay trains to come to/from the middle track, followed by a crossover from track 1 to track 2, and another one from track 2 to track 1 and another from track 2 to track 3. And that marks the end of NASSAU Interlocking.

Signals

NASSAU Interlocking now uses the color light signals.

Towers

Originally, there was a NASSAU tower right there in Mineola, but, it was demolished in 2020 and operations were moved to Jamaica Control Center (JCC).

Anyway, that should about do it for one of my more favorite interlockings, NASSAU Interlocking.