by jaystreetcrr
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
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