NEW York City’s largest train yard, Sunnyside Yard, is indeed vast. When I took the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan every day, I rode the tracks going south of it and if you’re a train buff you can see all genres and varieties of train cars parked and serviced there, such as Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains. In late 2022, LIRR trains will enter into tunnels in the Yards en route to Park Avenue to Grand Central Terminal. Sometime before 2030, a new passenger service will take Metro North trains in revenue service by the Sunnyside Yards for the first time, employing the Hell Gate Bridge en route to the eastern Bronx and Westchester County. The Yards were built in the 19-aughts in preparation for the new Penn Station that opened in 1910. However, Metro North and LIRR trains cannot share trackage due to incompatibility.
Today, I want to mention the relatively few north-south auto/ped/bike crossings spanning the Yards. There are six: 21st Street, Thomson Avenue, Queens Boulevard, Honeywell Street, 39th Street and 42nd Place. Until 2000 or so, Honeywell and 39th Streets were indeed unusual in that the original iron bridges were still in use though whatever agency was responsible for them deferred maintenance, and the roadbeds became pitted like the surface of the moon and incandescent lampposts from the 1910s still illuminated them. Around 2000 each were replaced by aggressively boring modern spans.
That leaves 42nd Place, shown here, as the most unusual of the bunch as it is east of the majority of the Sunnyside Yards trackage. It crosses the LIRR Main Line, which engineers chose to bridge over the roadway, and it makes an odd curve with 42nd Place becoming 43rd Street.
I snapped this photo because the Department of Transportation still stubbornly posts a railroad crossing sign, even though the Yards tracks that cross the street on a grade were pulled up long ago.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
12/30/21