I don’t know when or how I became a trainspotter. I just find myself walking through the older neighborhood to my south, Richmond Hill, to clear my head and wait for the odd train to pass by.
Richmond Hill was established in the late-19th century to be “country homes” for New York commuters. Eventually, the rest of the city grew out around the neighborhood, which simply became a part of New York City, although a distinctive part. The neighborhood has grand architecture, including its own Carnegie Library, a landmark RKO movie palace and lots of faded glory Victorian mansions. In the heart of the neighborhood is a dead train station.
The LIRR’s Montauk train line snakes through the neighborhood. It’s an overpass at Lefferts Blvd. that ducks under the elevated J train. It’s a dead end of many residential blocks. It’s two lonely non-electrified tracks that wind through a valley in Forest Park.
The train line’s western terminus is Hunter Point Avenue in Long Island City, where commuters ride ferries to Wall Street or Midtown. It’s not the most convenient commute. When the MTA closed the Richmond Hill station in 1998, only seven commuters rode it daily. Still, those seven people must have found it to be a quicker way to get to work than the Kew Gardens station eight blocks to the north, which zips passengers to Penn Station in under 20 minutes. Or else they just found it to be a more scenic route.
The official justification for the closing was that the behemoth double decker diesel trains that the MTA introduced that year were too high for the station’s antique platforms. The LIRR scaled back service on the line to just four trains every week day; two head towards Hunters Point Avenue in the morning rush, and two head back to Montauk in the pm.
The rarity of these trains is what makes them so interesting. Watching the train go by at a quarter after five is like being comforted by some ancient ritual. You don’t really know who rides that train or why, but you know that it will glide by again tomorrow at the same time. Sometimes I forget what time it is and I’m delighted to watch the train pass below me in the park, a modern marvel of a train chugging along on tracks that use centuries-old technology, zipping through a forest that’s been here longer than humanity.
A lot of people in the community want the whole train line shut down. They feel it’s too exposed, too dangerous for their kids. It is curious that the MTA would keep a train line in functional operation for just four commuter trains a day. Some people think they keep it running for the handful of factories and warehouses that still use the tracks to ship via freight. (I saw one such freight train today, and it was a special treat, coming, as it did, with no announced schedule.) Other people think they keep it around “just in case.”
Train infrastructure is expensive and difficult to set up; preservation of what’s already been set up just seems wise. Indeed, one of the many projects that the MTA has on its wish list is a new main line for the LIRR. Most trains that go to Penn Station pass through the same congested section of track in New York City (you know, the station stops that make Long Islanders grumble about slowing their commute: “…making stops at Woodside, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Jamaica; change at Jamaica for the train to…”). The congestion will just get worse when the LIRR finally begins service to the east side’s Grand Central Station.
That being the case, the old Montauk line makes a likely candidate for a new main line. One of the most expensive elements of creating a new train line is the cost of right of way, but here in the Montauk line the LIRR has miles and miles of scenic right of way, owned in full.
If modernized, electrified and expanded, the train tracks will lose some of their charm and I doubt I would remain a trainspotter for trains that zip through every 15 minutes. But faded glory is only interesting for imagining what was. I’d rather see rejuvenation through a return to full-service commuter transportation and new affordable housing and commercial development.