Ветвь Long Island Rail Road – Фар-Рокавей

Long Island Rail Road branch
the Long Island Rail Road line

The Far Rockaway Branch is an electrified rail line and service owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road in the U. S. state of New York. The branch begins at Valley Interlocking, just east of Valley Stream station. From Valley Stream, the line heads south and southwest through southwestern Nassau County, ending at Far Rockaway in Queens, thus reentering New York City. LIRR maps and schedules indicate that the Far Rockaway Branch service continues west along the Atlantic Branch to Jamaica. This two track branch provides all day service in both directions to Grand Central Madison and Penn Station, both in Midtown Manhattan.

The South Side Railroad (SSRLI) built the branch in 1869 under a subsidiary called the Far Rockaway Branch Railroad. While constructing it in summer 1869, the company installed about 700 feet (200 m) of tracks across William B. McManus's farmland near Lawrence. However, the transaction had not been completed, and McManus and some friends tore up the track the next night; after a legal battle, the company paid McManus. The same year, the South Side established a subsidiary named the Hempstead and Rockaway Railroad (H&R) designed to connect the line to the up and coming Southern Hempstead Branch. The H&R was dissolved in 1871.

Due to the success of the branch, the South Side built the 200 foot (60 m) South Side Pavilion, a restaurant on the beach at what is today Beach 30th Street. With an additional subsidiary known as the Rockaway Railway (1871 1872; Not to be confused with the Rockaway Village Railroad), the line was extended west to the Seaside House (Beach 103rd Street) in 1872 and Neptune House (Beach 116th Street) in 1875. In 1908, the line between Cedarhurst and Far Rockaway was triple tracked. During the early 1940s, the right of way was relocated from a ground level routing to a concrete trestle. The ROW crossed Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway and returned to ground level, passing over Nameoke Street, continuing to Gibson Station and ascending back on a trestle to Valley Stream.

Until 1950 trains from Penn Station could leave the Main Line at Whitepot Junction and head south past the Atlantic Branch connection at Woodhaven Junction to the Hammels Wye at , turning right there to Rockaway Park or left to Valley Stream and Jamaica and maybe on to Penn Station. Frequent fires and maintenance problems, notably a May 23, 1950 fire between Broad Channel and The Raunt, led the LIRR to abandon the Queens portion of the route on October 3, 1955, which was acquired by the city to become the IND Rockaway Line, with service provided by the A train. Most Queens stations along the former Far Rockaway and Rockaway Beach Branches reopened as subway stations on June 28, 1956, the exception being Far Rockaway–Mott Avenue station, which was split between the NYCTA and LIRR on January 16, 1958.

Between the late 1960s and 1990s, various stations along the Far Rockaway Branch were given high level platforms in order to accommodate modern M1, M3, and M7 railcars. The Far Rockaway Branch has the distinction of containing the oldest surviving railroad station on Long Island, and the only existing building constructed by an LIRR predecessor, specifically Hewlett. In 2003, the LIRR closed that station replacing it with a new one diagonally across the railroad crossing on Franklin Avenue; however, the original SSRLI Depot has remained intact.