Boland's Landing

If you were asked to name every LIRR station, the one you’d probably be most likely to leave out is Boland’s Landing. To be honest, I wouldn’t even be surprised if you haven’t heard of it in the first place. Anyways, Boland's Landing is one of the two lesser-known, and lesser-served employee stops, with it's eastern partner, Hillside, serving the much larger Hillside Maintenance Complex, and therefore, seeing more riders and many more trains then it's eastern partner.

Boland's Landing, which exists with the purpose of serving the Morris Park diesel shops, is one of the oddest, and most obscure of stations on the LIRR. Firstoff, unlike any of the other stations on the railroad, including, Hillside, it doesn't have an actual concrete platform, as instead, it has a wood platform, similarly to Hollis. This station is very lowly-used and since all of the people using it are employees anyway, it's not the end of the world that it's still just a wooden slab. Secondly, It's also the only station on the railroad to only see service on weekdays (I guess excluding Hunterspoint Avenue and Long Island City). 

Thirdly, if you go onto TrainTime and try to buy a ticket/plan a trip to Boland's Landing, you can't do so. This is unusual and this is only seen at this station as even at Hillside where you can't buy tickets, you can still plan a trip there. Therefore, the only way to even see what trains stop there would be to go onto the timetable pdf itself.

Fourthly, Boland's Landing is the one and only flag stop on the railroad. Since so few trains are actually scheduled to bother stopping there, it's a general rule of thumb that an engineer will watch and if he or she sees someone on the platform they'll stop the train and pick them up. This isn't the case at Boland's sister station, Hillside, where trains must stop there, and this is a big NO-NO anywhere else in the system, and, this is a unique trait to Boland's Landing. By the way, you'll be surprised to know that that photo is the only known photograph taken directly on the platform.

And last but not least, fifthly, Boland's Landing doesn't properly appear on the M7's ASI system as when the annoucement "Boland's Landing" is said, it actually appears as Bolands-Employees, and that's an interesting little quirk about the ASI system. Boland's Landing is a 2-car platform, making it the shortest platform (in electric territory from what I know) and the doors typically only get keyed open in the first car anyway, so it's really, really short too!

The LIRR does however publish the schedule for this station and for the other employee stop, Hillside and while passengers aren't allowed to board/detrain here, it's a great tool to pick a train that may actually stop here so you can check it out. Just note that this timetable is updated to when this post was written.

I believe there may be talks to reopen the Woodhaven station which is located undergound near this location, and that may spell the end to this station, I'm just theorizing here, but if that were to be the case that would spell the end of flag stops on the Long Island Railroad. 

Whatever happened to DM30AC #503?

In a post earlier this week, I wrote about DM30AC #507, and while that was an interesting story, this is the more well known one and the LIRR got lucky with their already limited fleet for this to be the only of the DE/DM's to actually have been fully retired so far.

The LIRR's fleet have all stayed in service, and with the only other exception being #507 which as I wrote in Friday's post, got renumbered to #423 and is now a DE30AC, DM30AC #503 is the only of the LIRR's locomotives to be retired early. The story goes as told. On a normal October 22, 2003, Engine #503 was on a typical dual-mode run on train #658 (the old 4:19pm from Penn to Port Jeff) when the lead engine struck a hobo's shopping cart in Huntington. The cart left on the tracks caught the third rail and the metal engine shell causing a 750-volt short to ignite, igniting a fire underneath the engines, and as some railfans describe it "turned the cab into a thunderstorm." The engineer was able to get the train safely to the station and all passengers were evacuated before the FD came and put out the fire. 

The engine then sat in Morris Park for a while (um, actually 13 years), stripped of all useful parts, before the LIRR decided it was un-salvageable and then it was subsequently scrapped. It's unfortunate to see an engine that was only a couple months old meet it's end so quickly, and it's even more unfortunate that very few photos exist of this engine in it's original form. From what I know, it seams the engine is no longer in Morris Park, but if anyone knows for sure I'd love to know.

Taken in 2009.

#503 in 2011

503's cab after the incident.

Also taken in 2009.

In conclusion, #503's retirement from service brought the already struggling diesel fleet down one more locomotive, especially a much-needed dual-mode, thats literally the worst part of the disaster, however in the grand scheme of things, we've survived 22 years without it and I think we'll be able to survive another 10 more. I hope you enjoyed!

Whatever happened to DM30AC #507? The Strange Case of DE30AC #423

If you’ve been railfanning the rails for years now (unlike yours truly who can only say “est.
2022”), you may remember DM30AC #507. DM30AC #507 started out as a normal engine in passenger service, with no problems, however, in the late 2000s, #507 suffered an electrical cabinet failure and was deemed unfit for service and was removed from service with all dual-mode parts being stripped.

The engine than sat in Morris Park for a while and unlike unlucky #503, was later renamed to #423 and returned to service as a DE30AC. From what I’ve found, #507 rentered service as #423 on October 10, 2013, however the exact dating could not be verified. One of my favorite railfans, Avasic1995 had gotten video of it while railfanning at his favorite spot, New Hyde Park on 10/25.

This story is a textbook example of the saying “Half the loaf is better than none” as it’s better to have a DE30AC in service then it is to have a DM30AC sitting in Morris Park. I mean hey, #423 is very useful, I see it all the time on those crowded Friday party trains in the summer (#656 and #76, I’m directly talking about you)

To end off this post, let’s take a look at some nice photos of #423 (and of #507 before it died):

If you guessed this was taken in the cab then pat yourself on the back as your correct.

Take a look at the fuel tank. Notice how it’s different than a normal DE30AC?