The Long Island Rail Road has recently abandoned a number of stations In Queens and Nassau. Many of these stations are along the Montauk Branch between Jamaica and Long Island City. These unelectrified tracks are stilll used for freight and for express Jamaica-LIC service for a few runs during the week.
LIRR buff Robert Anderson has an excellent website about abandoned LIRR routes, which can be reached here.
The old Fresh Pond station was reached by an unmarked path at Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road which lead to a stairway which led to a clearing along the tracks, as well as a small tin shack. The Montauk branch is not electrified, so there’s no third-rail danger.
Fresh Pond Station was/is accessed by a meandering, garbage-strewn dirt/concrete path in back of a used car place. The sign announcing the station closure has been there since 1998, just in case. Till then, the station served about 5-10 passengers daily. This is pretty much the condition it was in when this station was actually open.
Staircase descended to “platform” for Long Island City-bound customers…while an overpass carried Jamaica-bound passengers over the tracks. The LIRR did provide Jamaica-bound customers with a small concession: a tin shack to shelter from the rain.
Glendale, along with Fresh Pond (above) were among stations along the Montauk Branch the LIRR closed rather than convert the platforms to accommodate new cars which started arriving in 1998.
(LEFT) Railroad sign on 73rd Street south of Edsall Avenue. Two passenger trains and a handful of freights traverse the tracks on a typical weekday in 2005.
Glendale Station, looking south, October 3, 1906. The street crossing the RR is McComb Place, now known as 73rd St.
Christina Wilkinson: “Philip Knack’s florist shop is the building on the left. The building in the center is George Gundolff’s saloon and hotel. The building on the right was originally Christian Kirschmann’s saloon.”
Saloons, roadhouses and bars would cluster around railroad stations in the old days; today, there are 3 or 4 in Penn Station.
Glendale Station, 1982. You can see things are pretty much the same. The buildings have lost some ornamentation, and the crossing gates are now electronic. Photo: courtesy Christina.
Glendale Station, March 13, 2005, looking north
This sign of considerable age warns people about the dead end that is actually an entrance to All Faiths-Lutheran Cemetery.
Typical LIRR consist, MP15ac loco pulling P72 2900 series passenger cars constructed in the 1950s, at Glendale in the 1980s.
Till 1998 when the station closed, passengers waited at a clearing on the side of the tracks.
Till the early 2000s, this warehouse was all that remained of the old LIRR Bushwick Terminal, at Bushwick Place and Montrose Avenue. The building has been much altered since passenger service was discontinued in 1924.
The LIRR line to Bushwick diverges from the Montauk Branch at Bushwick Junction, near the old Fresh Pond station, and proceeds, through rubble-strewn railroad cuts and barbed-wire protected lots, to this point.
A few freight hauls are presently made on the line.
A nearby sign, long in disrepair, indicates that Bushwick is indeed a Long Island Railroad terminal.
Ancient, deteriorating staircase along the Bushwick Branch at Scott Avenue in Maspeth. Passenger service on this branch was discontinued way back in 1924.
View of Manhattan from the Scott Avenue overpass.
The tall building on the right is Citicorp’s 48-story building on Jackson Avenue in Long Island City.
Note that the walkway features so-called crescent moon light fixtures which haven’t worked for many years. [They were replaced in the late 2000s]
The walkway dates to 1952.
The so-called Evergreen Branch linked the LIRR with trackage just west of Wyckoff Avenue with the Bushwick branch in the vicinity of Varick Avenue. Most of these tracks have been pulled up, but traces remain, most notably tracks across Decatur Street, as well as this incongruous RR Crossing sign on Hancock Street. The sign still dutifully informs motorists that trains may be coming…although they haven’t come for decades.
Photo by Robert Andersen.
2005: they’ve finally caught up with the sign…it’s gone.
The East New York station, here at Van Sinderen and Atlantic Avenues, is the only passenger station still extant from the old Bay Ridge LIRR branch. Passenger service was cancelled here in 1924; the line ran at grade until 1914, so this cut only benefitted LIRR riders for 10 years. The line is currently used by the New York & Atlantic RR for strictly freight service.
2000 LIRR fantrip through East New York station in oldnyc.com
Before the Woodside station was renovated from 1995-1998 it boasted a selection of very old signs.
Ancient sign at Auburndale. This may be an oroginal sign installed when the Auburndale station was elevated in 1929 (indicated by the date pressed in the concrete above it).
The Port Washington Branch, on which the Auburndale station is located, operated at grade until, beginning in 1913, stations were either depressed or elevated with the exception of the Little Neck station.
Summer 2001: sign has been removed.
Although the MTA relentlessly updates its signage in the quest for uniformity, this old plaque remains at the Broadway (Northern Blvd.) station on the Port Washington Branch. It has a twin brother at the other staircase.
The Broadway and Murray Hill stations bear the dates 1913, indicating that they were removed from grade in those years.
Written 10/15/98