Railroad Forums 

Discussion relating to the past and present operations of the NYC Subway, PATH, and Staten Island Railway (SIRT).

Moderator: GirlOnTheTrain

 #1438567  by trainbrain
 
So normally the Rockaway Park shuttle runs to Broad Channel, allowing connections to and from Far Rockaway A trains. I believe they usually have 2 to 3 sets running with 4 car trains. When the trains discharge at Broad Channel, they run onto a pocket track that is to the north of the two running tracks, wait for the A train after it to pass, and then cross the northbound track and re-enter service on the southbound platform. Broad channel is set up to be a terminal station for that shuttle, and the through trains don't run often enough that crossing the northbound track is an issue for scheduling.

When the shuttle runs to Rockaway Boulevard on summer weekends, they use 8 car trains and due to the route being longer, they need more sets. I believe they combine the sets normally assigned to the shuttle and then pull a few more A train sets from Pitkin Yard whenever this operates. What I'm not sure about is how they deal with turning the trains at Rockaway Boulevard. There is an express track in that location that is not used in revenue service, so that seems like it could be a place to turn the trains. However, there are no switches onto that track until just south of 80th Street. What that means is that the trains would need to run through 88th Street on the platform track in both directions to get to the location where they could turn. Not sure if that would be a problem for scheduling. The other option I see is to reverse the train from the northbound platform onto the express track on the Leffert's branch and then reverse it back into the station onto the southbound track. Problem here is that they would need to change ends multiple times to turn, and having to do two wrong rail moves could pose a problem for scheduling. However, it would not require trains to run pretty far out of their way to turn around.