The End of the LIRR Belmont Park Branch

hey everyone and welcome back to another video in today's video I will be discussing the Belmont Park branch on the Long Island Railroad which is now a part of Long Island Railroad history first let's go back to when this all started the date is May 4th 1905 and the Belmont Park station for the Belmont Park racetrack opens on October 2nd 1905 the line was fully electrified and electrified trains would run from Belmont Park to various stations in New York and along select lines in Long Island the station had eight tracks numbered one through eight one being on the Eastern side and Eight being on the western side and four Island platforms labeled a through d a being on the Eastern side and D being on the western side tracks three through eight are electrified while tracks one or two which are mainly used for Freight shipments like box cars for racetrack equipment and food for the horses when Revenue trains came there would be temporary platform razors as shown these would be put into service before train got to its assigned track the line would only run during events and races and would be rebuilt twice once in 1957 and another from 2010 to 2015. in 2010 the Long Island Railroad decided to get rid of the low-level platforms and replace them with the high-level platforms so the platform razors would not be used this project also seems very effective so that they can bring Ada accessibility to Belmont Park platforms B and D serving tracks three four and seven and eight respectively had their platforms raised platforms A and C with tracks one two six and five still being low-level platforms for Freight shipment trains ran from either Penn Station in Manhattan to Belmont Park stopping at Woodside in Jamaica along the way or Shuttle trains from Jamaica directly to Belmont Park trains from Jamaica would depart on any available track but it's in its last few trips they would use the new track 11 and track 12 which are now used for Atlantic terminal service on the day of the Belmont Stakes up to 18 trains would depart from Penn Station to Belmont Park between the hours of 10 a.m to 4 P.M trains going back to Penn Station departed Belmont Park at 4 pm and service ran around 15 minutes between 6 30 p.m and 9 pm now was the Belmont Park Branch a good thing or is the new Almont station better the answer is that Elmont is better although there could be some changes that can be made to the Belmont Park branch that would make the line less problematic trains would use the Hempstead Branch between Floral Park and Belmont Park to store trains which would mean that Hempstead trains had to single track in this area if there were too many trains on the Hempstead line Hempstead line trains would run from Hempstead to Floral Park and Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma trains would make stops at Floral Park and then run to nearby stations that the Hempstead Branch would use such as Queens Village Hollis and Hillside Support Facility the Bell row station in this matter would not have any customers now more about the end of Belmont Park Service in 2019 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that a new station called Elmont UBS Arena would be added to the Hempstead line between Queens Village and bellrose this station would give riders in the area full-time service and also a more frequent and direct service to Belmont Park in the new UBS Arena as riders coming from Long Island would have to get off at the belrose station or Queens Village or sometimes even Jamaica the Oman station would begin Construction in 2020 and construction would continue into the later years on November 20th 2021 the Elmont station's eastbound platform opened for the Islanders first game at the stadium that night being served by only Hempstead trains as the Long Island Railroad third track had not yet been finished on October 3rd 2022 the Long Island railroad's third track project was finished and Huntington and Ronkonkoma trains could now stop at the Elmont station later that week on October 6 2022 the westbound platform for Elmont was opened and Huntington Ronkonkoma and Hampstead trains in both directions were now serving the station now that there are no Belmont Park Shuttle trains running Elmont shuttle trains run between Elmont UBS Arena and Jamaica trains that are used for the shuttle train are usually stored at Belmont Park the nearby Hempstead yard on the Hempstead Branch or Hillside Support Facility yard these trains are designated as Hempstead trains during game days extra Port Jefferson wrong and Ronkonkoma trains stop at Elmont now was there a chance that the Belmont Park Branch could have survived in my opinion yes in all of its years I only managed to find one issue with the Belmont Park branch and it was when an operator was going too fast around the curve leaving Belmont Park the Train derailed but not because of the Curve based on the info that I gathered it seemed that the train had actually derailed at the switches near Queens Village as these switches are much sharper than the Curve the operator was said to be going around 25 to 35 miles per hour before he derailed closer to the Queens Village station and not near the Belmont Park switch curve now that the Belmont Park branch is no longer in service who knows when the next train will run maybe the M3 retirement run could see a train going Belmont Park maybe a train from Belmont Park to the Points East anyway since this seems like the Belmont Park Branch will be done for good I thought I would make a video about it however it's still on the map so who knows maybe it'll come back in the near future anyways that's it for me if you want to see more videos like this like subscribe and comment on what I should do next I want to give a shout out to the NYC Transit Adventurer for letting me use their Queen's Village video I would consider checking them out anyways I hope you have a great rest of your day and like always happy real offending everyone foreign

Channel: QQWERTY Railfan

Views: 12,065

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Id: e-vPfRbkq50

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023