Landia station, where was it?

[Paul]

Not to snicker about LIRR's mountain division but right up the road from where I sit is Cajon Pass. Try climbing or worse, dropping from sea level to 3000 ft in 14 miles or so. I believe there is one section of 3.4% and that is the down hill side. There was one wreck (Duffy Street) when a potash train was plugged at 12mph and was well over 100 mph when it all piled up into a bunch of houses at the bottom of the hill. Over behind my house is the San Georgiano Pass and we use helpers on the down hill side as well. Snicker Snicker.

[alcoc420]

The math on 3000ft in 14 miles works out to a 4.05% grade.

I suspect that NS, CP, and similar engineers snicker at the LIRR's small hills has more to do with the tonnage they drag and the fact that some of their mountain grades are sustained for many miles (verses the steepness). I remember seeing an engineer near Attica leave his seat to get some coffee while the train labored at about 10MPH. The LIRR has only about 4 "sustained" grades of over 1.2%. Each is only a mile or so.

On the other hand, engineers for the big railroads might not find the LIRR so easy. The difficulty of the LIRR may be under-rated. Mainline RR's don't have so many small radius curves as the OB or PJ branches. Also, these branches have many crest and sag curves short distances apart. The PJ branch looks like a roller coaster east of Nicolls Road. Moreover, the LIRR has many grade crossings; this keeps engineers busy sounding horns. Lastly, protecting schedules is rather hard here: station stops every 5 to 7 minutes with not a lot of slack.

[John 61]

Landia was just east of the Robbins Lane crossing. I believe it was closed when the LIRR electrified the branch to Huntington in 1970. It is still listed in the May 25, 1970 Timetable #6.

[Dave Keller]

My employee timetable of May, 1970 lists Landia as a stop and my employee timetable of October, 1972 no longer lists the stop.

I don't have an employee timetable from 1971, so I would have to assume the stop could have survived until October, 1972 unless someone has a 1971 employee timetable to verify that it was discontinued at that time.

Dave Keller