Culver viaduct rehab/F line/Church Ave. station

My morning commute just took a turn for the worse as the Manhattan bound side of the Ft. Hamilton Parkway and 15th St. Prospect Park stations on the F line will be shut down until May. I'll have to walk to Church Ave. and then transfer at 4th Ave/9th St. from a temporary platform to get to the R train. I've enjoyed watching the work on the Culver viaduct but now I have to pay the price.
All this brings up some questions I've had about this line. For instance, the tracks that bypass the two closed stops seems to go a lot deeper and straighter than the "local" track, or is that just my imagination. Geographically, it's a big ridge there so it might make sense to punch straight through. I understand there was express service on this track at some point but now it just gets used as a bypass when repair work goes on.
The Church Ave. station was a stub end terminal from the time this line was completed until it was tied into the Culver line at Ditmas Ave. in the 1950s. What was that station like back then? I've seen maps where there was a surface connection from this station to the South Brooklyn Railway/#50 trolley line but I can't imagine that was used for anything other than construction materials.
I'm a member of a community garden that's right above the F tunnel on E. 4th St. between Caton and Ft. Hamilton Parkway. Local lore has it that several row houses were torn down as a station site but it wasn't built there, so it stayed as a vacant lot until the 1970s when it became a garden. The whole garden shakes when the trains come through.
I hope they get the rehab work finished soon and while they're at it, restore express service on those spare tracks but with all the budget cuts I'm not holding my breath....John

While we're on the subject of the Culver line, I'll mention oone of my curiosities which is :Was there ever a connection between the Smith-Ninth Street Station and tracks in the street below? I have seen a wide area in the middle of that station that appears to provide for tracks going down to street level.

1. Yes, the express tracks do follow a more direct route. They cut under prospect park. (you can't see this on the map, but the local tracks have to detour aound the park)

2. Perhaps Transferring to the R at Jay Metrotech would be ideal for you?

3. Church was a relay terminal, using the tracks that the G currently uses to terminate trains. Depending on what year, A E and F all turned at Church. The culver connection was finished years before it was openned although only one track was in place for equipment moves.

4. Smith 9 never had a street-subway connection.

There were never any IND-street railway connections, as far as I know. BMT had some (since they operated both the elevated and street trackage).

I just purchased a book of old photos, Brooklyn's Windsor Terrace, Kensington and Parkville Communities by Merlis and Rosenzweig, and in addition to a lot of awesome trolley shots, there's two pictures of the F line under construction by my house on Ocean Parkway taken from the roof of a school in 1930. It's cut and cover construction with the roof mostly built up by then.
Then there's another shot dated 1941 showing completed steel work from the F reaching almost to the Culver line at Ditmas Ave. What took so long to make the connection? I could understand delays because of the war but why not til the early 50s?

Today, while taking the F train from Manhattan to Prospect Park, a discovered that the express tracks between Jay Street and Smith-9th are back in use. After Jay, after announcements about a stalled train at Carroll, we ran express from Jay to 4th Avenue, going through Bergen and Carroll on the infamous lower level. With the G train relay at Church, will there be a resumption of regular express service on the Culver line?

No, the local residents do not want to loose their one seat ride to Manhattan. Same reason it was removed in the first place.

EDIT

should also note the primary issue affecting the use of B3 and B4 were the fire at Bergen Tower, which required the switch machine to be replaced, the construction work on the viaduct that required a hard rail connection between the Local and express tracks, and the G terminating at Smith/9th and relaying via B3 at 4th ave.

My recollection from many years ago seems that i recall a center track on the viaduct between the two express tracks that seemed to dip downwards. Can someone else recall this and if so tell us where that track went?

Nowhere, it was just a storage pocket. It didn't dip down, the other tracks went up.