Central Branch Freight

Today (1/19/19), we’ve noticed a bit of a strange occurrence on the Central Branch immediately west of where the old South Farmingdale Station used to be.

This morning around 11, a long freight train passed through. Then, while at my daughter’s dance class, we heard the train pass another two times.

Jump ahead to this afternoon and we see a long line of filled hoppers sitting unattached to engines. Then, two engines pull in from the east (#300 attached to an MP15) and sit there for a few moments. A few workers appeared to get off and onto the tracks to work on something (we couldn’t see through the thick brush). After a few more minutes, the engines began moving east again.

We then went shopping in Stop & Shop and when we came out, the two engines were in the process of coupling to the hoppers.

Anyone have any idea what’s happening? Derailment? Training exercises?

NY&A at work,they are the freight contractor on LIRR.
Might have better luck on the New York and Atlantic Thread.

NYAR was doing PTC testing on the central branch. Saw them around 2:30 west of the staples street crossing.

PTC test freight train. It is a joint effort of LIRR & NYA.
They done one like this on the Pt. Jeff about 3 years back. There is a Yoo Toob video documenting it.

Interesting. Thanks for the info Uncle Cheapo!

Nice, here's the link to the positive train control video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz6s6ORnRiY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Taken 2/14/2017

Were the gravel hoppers loaded or empty?

Loaded.

Makes me think that this is a ballast train being used here.

John Fusto was kind enough to send this video. It's 81Mb so be patient, approx 20+ seconds to load. I used Win Media Player to view in the cloud. South Farmingdale location on Central Branch: https://www.icloud.com/attachment/?u=ht ... z=80887539" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you’re on Instagram or Facebook, River Rail photo has some shots of this test train.