Queens Village and schedule

Does anyone know what times, How often and when The NY&A passes through Queens Village?

There are no set times, trains run as needed.

When will people finally grasp the fact that modern freight doesn't run on a "schedule".

While they don't have a specific schedule, they do seem to tend to run in consistant time brackets...usually. The crews have regular report times for the most part, and the block operators try to give them specific slots where they have time to do their thing without delaying a passenger train. I remmeber a few years ago, I used to go to Mineola to watch for the freights, and I could go to Mineola as early as 8, and stick around until about 10:15PM and see NYAR 9 out of 10 times. But occasionally I wouldn't see a westbound or an eastbound at all within that time frame. The westbounds seemed to follow a more regular pattern of following the westbound train from Oyster Bay that would stop at Mineola shortly after 10PM. They'd get stopped at bridge 4 until the passenger train came down from the bay, and then accelerate from there.

The one train that I know of is on Tuesday night, it always follows the 8:50pm to KO and always goes to the facility at the PW wye.

lirr415-Peter

Saw the NYA switching Belmont Park the other day. Passed by below on the Cross Island Parkway. Looked like they were switching out an empty BNSF boxcar with a loaded one. Power was a GP38-2 and an MP-15ac. I think they had a Procor tankcar with them.

What products does the race track get by rail? Food for the concession stands? Supplies for the stables?

Hay...

Belmont Park receives BNSF boxcars, usually one at a time, of feed for the resident horses at the Park. When the service first began they were getting pairs of non-descript boxcars that appeared to be smooth-sided 60-footers, but since then it's been waffle-sided BNSF 50-footers. They get spotted at the end of the eastern-most spur in the terminal and are unloaded with a forklift.

Roughly how often do they get swapped out?

The BNSF boxcar was picked up today and not replaced with a loaded one. I guess it's whenever a load comes in that the Park gets serviced.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far away, you could see an occasional race horse being shipped in to Belmont via a special Pennsylvania Railroad car behind LIRR power. I recall this from as late as the mid-50's. It's all over the road vans now; only the hay movements left.

This morning, at about 1130,a very decrepit-looking 261 was sitting on the trestle over the Cross Island Parkway facing west with a covered hopper and a mix of red former FEC and off-white aggregate hoppers. I don't if there was more to this train, or where it was going. Anybody else see this movement or know about it? Also, tonight around 6:40, there was an MP-15ac and possibly another unit facing west with a train on the siding in Pine-Aire, seen from the N/B Sagtikos Pkwy., I guess waiting for tonight or tomorrow???

The RS41 picked up the BNSF feed car from Belmont this afternoon. The pix are not as good as Blockhead's from Queens tower but they are the best that I could do from the vantage points available. 159 was on point with 271 bringing up the rear.

John

Nice picture of the Cross Island Parkway; my old stomping grounds.

Both pictures are great! I like the 1st one in particular, as I enjoy getting to see the folks actually working. Here we can see (I assume) the conductor taking down car numbers to turn in on his report before he does the brake test and pulls them out.