In today's post, we'll take a look at one of the most vital pieces of infrastructure on one of the LIRR's busiest lines- the Massapequa Pocket Track. Following the start of the Massapequa Station Rehabilitation project, the LIRR also began a project to build a 12-car "pocket track" just east of the Massapequa Station. In railroad terms, a pocket track is basically a storage track where trains can short-turn, so that they can more easily run trains that start mid-branch.
This project was one of the many projects the MTA misjudged how long it would take to complete, therefore, it came out 4 years late. But hey, in my opinion, for a "megaproject" like this that only required total of three switches, five signals, and 1,000 feet of track, 4 years late can't be too bad! It ended up taking 8 years and over $19.6 million to complete. The project was constantly disregarded as construction for ESA was prioritized, making it difficult to get it done.
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(Photo: The LIRR Today) |
Since the 1970s, the LIRR has operated "zone service" on the electrified portion of the South Shore. This broke the south shore up into four "zones".
- Babylon, Lindenhurst, Copiague and Amityville
- Massapequa Park, Massapequa, and Seaford
- Wantagh, Bellmore, and Merrick
- Freeport, Baldwin, and Rockville Centre.
Generally, during peak periods, express trains would make stops in one or two of these zones (ex. an express train making Babylon, Lindenhurst, Copiague, Amityville then stopping at Wantagh, Bellmore, and Merrick before going to Jamaica). And, during the peak of the peak where service is needed most frequently, many of these trains would run express after there intial zone (ex. the old #1013, which was the 7:11am out of Massapequa Park making Massapequa and Seaford only.)
Since all four of these station groups had similar ridership levels, it made it very easy to provide a reliable skip-stop service and this made it easy to provide reliable service to everyone while still providing an assortment of express runs to all customers along the different segments along the branch.
However, there was one problem that made it a pain to short-turn trains, no place to store them. Given that there was no "pocket track" on the line, and only a pair of crossovers just east of the terminal of the line plus an extra set between Rockville Centre and Baldwin, it made it a real pain to turn them, and unless they wanted to turn them on the Main tracks which is something they rarely did as it held up the entire line, this meant that they had to run all the Babylon zones trains all the way to Babylon Yard to turn them, and this meant for it being even more difficult to run trains during rush hours. Besides two trains (the old 1001 out of Massapequa Park and the old 1021 out of Wantagh), which both turned on crossovers along the branch. The only other exceptions to this were Freeport, which has a little yard, but under the current schedule, most trains don't start there anyway.
While it may not seam to bad to run an extra 10-15 minutes to the yard facility, during rush hours when equipment is constrained, that may make the difference between being able to make a second useful run back into the city or from the city or not, and either way, it is much better use of crew resources then to have them be paid an extra 20 minutes to deadhead to Babylon. In addition, during service disruptions that impact the line east of Wantagh, without the pocket track, rush hour operations as a whole would be jeopardized. By feeding the entire South Shore from one yard, it creates the potential for backups and congestion at the station, something that could impact revenue service as well as equipment trains.
However, with the elimination of zone service on the branch, this simplified service patterns to include two portions during rush hours:
- Rockville Centre, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick, Bellmore, and Wantagh
- Wantagh, Seaford, Massapequa Park, Massapequa, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst, and Babylon
And while this was good in some ways, and offered good load distribution during a good portion of the rush hour, I don't totally agree with zoning it this way for the entire rush hour, but that's a topic for another post.
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See how tracks are platform-length apart? |
While if I were running the railroad, I would've personally chose Wantagh as it's the actual startpoint of most of the trains that use the pocket track, I do see why the LIRR chose Massapequa instead given that the tracks were platform-width apart, making it easily the most convenient as they can basically just "stick" the new track in there. It also does allow the LIRR more flexibility in where it can start trains, and since ridership tends to build up west of this point, it is a great place to start some off-peak trains, like the ones seen headed towards/from Grand Central on weekends, and since the trip is only 6 minutes I think between the pocket track and Wantagh, it doesn't add too much time.
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Great photo of the pocket track by The LIRR Today |
You may think that pretty much every LIRR train that ends in Merrick, Wantagh, or Massapequa uses the pocket track, however that's actually not the case, as there's actually more than enough instances where this isn't the case. You'd be pretty surprised to hear that of the Babylon zone trains, in the morning, only 6 out of the 10 of them turn off the Massapequa Pocket Track, and things really aren't much better in the evening as only
As you can see, another disappointing aspect of these ESA timetables have been the lack of reverse-peak opportunities on the South Shore. One advantage of a pocket track is the reverse-peak potential. In Babylon, many of the trains there have been stored there overnight, therefore, they aren't running in the reverse-peak direction, but, since any train that turns on the pocket track must come from somewhere west, it adds the potential to provide steady reverse-peak service, allowing for improvements, especially earlier in the rush hour.
In my opinion, Massapequa is a perfect place to turn reverse-peak trains, as it ends the main portion of reverse-peak travel along the branch. It's really not that difficult, on a two track branch, to run a train that is already running anyway add a couple of stops to it. And, they don't even have to run it local; they can have it pick up a couple of stops with another train making a couple more to speed up it's travel time, and this could even allow some of the reverse-peak Babylon-bound trains to skip some of these stops, speeding up travel times for those going to the more eastern zone.
While the service plan did offer a modest increase overall in reverse-peak service, for the busiest line, there is still lot's of improvements that can be seen, and I think this pocket track has much more potential with reverse-peak service.
In conclusion, while I think the Massapequa Pocket Track offers a lot of benefits, the LIRR needs to step up and provide even more robust peak service and a better more reliable line of reverse-peak trains to serve the riders growing needs on the busiest portion of the busiest branch of North America's busiest commuter railroad the Long Island Rail Road.