Jamaica Station and Interlocking Improvements Study on the Long Island Rail Road
Owner: LIRR Planning, Capital Planning, Engineering and Transportation Departments
In-house Study: Scoping of Generational Change Project
Goal: Consolidate Various Branches and Access New Penn Station Terminal
By Gus DaSilva, M.S., P.E., Dir. of LIRR Long Range Planning and Forecasting (Retired)
This is Part I of a four-part series regarding the background of historic Jamaica Station and its recent modernization. The intended articles will include:
Part I – 1913 Reconfiguration by the Pennsylvania Rail Road
Part II – 2000s Microprocessor Signaling System
Part III – 2009 Reconfiguration and Subsequent Studies
Part IV– 2019 High-Speed Reconfiguration
In fairness, many engineers too numerous to mention, smarter and more knowledgeable than myself, have been involved in the Jamaica improvements over the “centuries.” First and foremost to be recognized are engineers of the Pennsylvania Rail Road that planned the most radical Jamaica 1913 reconfiguration, whose names are forever buried in history. This reconfiguration has remained essentially unchanged until today! Although many enhancements were made to the original 150 main line switches in the Jamaica complex in the 1950s, 1960s and more recently, no major ”track-and-switch civil engineering” reconfiguration to the original 150 main line switches has taken pace since the 1913 layout. These were carried out by many in-house engineers and planners of the last three decades.
Lastly, there are many engineers and planners from the private sector that provided their expertise as part of consulting engagements with the LIRR.
Background
Prior to building of the Jamaica complex, completed in 1913, there were two rail stations in Jamaica a few blocks apart, one served by trains on the Main Line, the original LIRR, and one served by the Southern Rail Road. As a point of information, the South Side Railroad of Long Island was chartered in 1860 and first opened in 1867 as a competitor to the Long Island Rail Road. Reorganized in 1874 as the Southern Railroad of Long Island and leased in 1876 to the LIRR it again reorganized as the Brooklyn and Montauk Railroad in 1879 till its merger with the LIRR in 1889. The tracks of the Southern Rail Road between Jamaica and Valley Stream are known today as the Atlantic Branch. These stations were at-grade with numerous street crossings
Figure I-a Shows Two Stations Previously Existing in the Jamaica Area
Figure I-a shows the location of the two stations previously existing in the Jamaica area. As the figure indicates, the new Jamaica Station was to be built to the west (i.e. to the left of the stations to be decommissioned.)
Figure I-b1 shows the Southern Rail Road station on at Beaver St.
Figure I-b2 shows two views of the station on the Main Line at Church Street
Project Objectives in 1913
In the late 1900 decade, the Pennsylvania Rail Road had just acquired the Long Island Rail Road with ambitious objective to offer a one-seat ride from Long Island to the newly built Pennsylvania Station New York (PSNY) at 8th Avenue and 33 Street. As the East River Tunnels were constructed, a new four-track connector was built from Harold Interlocking to the new Jamaica Complex.
The new Jamaica Complex itself was finished in late 1913 and included the various interlocking and the new station and platforms that would become the headquarters of the LIRR. It also included:
- Grade separation of the track from the roadways at Van Wyck Boulevard, 143rd Street, Sutphin Boulevard, 150th Street, (as they are known today) and other cross streets in the segment of track comprising nearly two (2) miles in length.
- Constructions of numerous support yards and tracks to provide for layup of locomotives, service type changes at Jamaica between electric and steam locomotives; maintenance shops and – often forgotten – freight car facilities.
- Command and control infrastructure to route trains between incoming tracks, the platforms, and outgoing tracks.
In the early 1900s, most of the LIRR ridership was destined to the Long Island City ferry terminal and Brooklyn waterfront and Flatbush Avenue Terminal. The Pennsylvania Rail Road planners – by inference – used a post reconfiguration ridership split of 50-50 between PSNY and the other terminals. However, their constructed layout west of Jamaica consisted of four (4) tracks to Brooklyn then reducing to two (2) and four (4) tracks on the Main Line to Harold Interlocking and East River Tunnels (ERTs). There were also two (2) tracks serving Long Island City and Montauk, known as the Montauk branch. At the time, the service and train capacity goals was that PSNY would be served with new timetable additions without reducing existing service.
Figure I-c shows schematic representation of Jamaica Complex between 1913 and modern times is largely unchanged.
The schematic is oriented north (top) to south (bottom). It shows the arrangement of the main tracks to the east (right side) and to the west (left side) of the Jamaica station platforms and switches. These are the tracks that connect the island to the city:
- ML represents the four tracks from/to Ronkonkoma/Greenport and Penn Station (PSNY);
- MTK represents two tracks on the south shore line from/to Montauk which terminate in Jamaica, as there is no longer service to Long Island City by way of Glendale/Fresh Pond, i.e. the Lower Montauk;
- ATL represents two tracks on the line from/to Far Rockaway and Long Beach and Flatbush Avenue (Atlantic Terminal Brooklyn) which were constructed by the Southern Railroad of L.I..
Within the box of Figure I-c, representing the station platforms and Jay and Hall interlockings, there are more than 150 railroad switches connecting main tracks (i.e. not including minor switches in train storage yards.)
Figure I-d shows a zoom in view at track level showing the density of switches in the vicinity of the platforms.
Innovative Design Methods
The 1913 reconfiguration was “hard-wired” by “state-of the-art” electromechanical switch machines constructed in Hall and Jay towers. These were custom design machines by Union Switch and Signal company, a leader in the field at that time. Jay tower is just west of the platforms and housed such a machine in use for almost a century while Hall tower is just east of the platforms with its own custom machine. This hardwiring was accomplished by interconnected levers providing for a safe control of switches to prevent unintended crashes between trains. The Penn Rail Road used this innovation and state-of-the-art technology throughout its interstate system. However, after many decades, this rigid control machine, for which there were no replacement parts, made it impossible to change the switch configuration in the field until the whole complex was converted to modern Microprocessor Control, in the early 2000s. There was one machine in Jay tower and one in Hall tower.
Figure I-d
The grade elimination also included track separation using under and over jumps to reduce train-to-train operational conflicts. The designers took advantage of merging three (3) lines from the far reaches of eastern Long Island into a true hub. Service to the new PSNY was to be by electrified trains that could safely operate in the East River Tunnels, necessitating transfers to/from Long Island trains pulled by steam locomotives.
Besides the grade elimination and track engineering, the project also included a new station building, designed by Kenneth M. Murchison, a renowned architect of the time. The building served as headquarters, ticket sales, and connector to five (5) passenger platforms serving eight (8) station tracks. This crowned the station as the place to change trains – Change at Jamaica.
Part I Summary
The grade elimination in the Jamaica area was an enormous undertaking which leveraged the LIRR and know-how by the expanding Penn Rail Road system into the huge destination market that was Manhattan. As the decades and eventually one century went by, what was new became old, maintenance became more difficult, reliability suffered and while consist sizes increased to meet growing demand and platforms became too short.
Lastly, with increased emphasis on safety, speeds were reduced over the original switches to 15 miles per hour. Towards the end of the millennium, the Jamaica complex became a much loved station for its operational flexibility and yet a much hated element of the LIRR system for its slow speed – The Jamaica Crawl was born.
From the author: Hi everyone, it is my humble pleasure to highlight the evolution of the Long Island Rail Road Jamaica Complex for the readers of the Postboy, the Railroad Museum of Long Island. My name is Gus DaSilva and, after 30 years in management, I retired from the LIRR in 2021. Since 1991 I was a planner/engineer at the LIRR and interacted with LIRR staff at all levels as well as the MTA administration on many planning and design projects. During this period, I was involved on-and-off at various levels in the planning and conceptual engineering of improvements to Jamaica Station and nearby interlockings – i.e. the Jamaica Complex – which includes Hall East, Hall, Jay, Dunton, and Metropolitan. The articles in the Postboy draw largely from my project work experience and recollections of internal memoranda at the LIRR.