In General
Getting Here
Map
Pictures
Sights
Signals
RAILFAN GUIDES HOME
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Location / Name:
Queens Borough of New York City, AKA, Queens County
What's Here:
Long Island RR Jamaica Station
Data:
GPS Coordinates: 40.69956, -73.80871 (center of station)
Access by train/transit:
Take your pick:
-- LIRR trains from/to Manhattan and out to Long Island
-- the IND E, and BMT J and Z Subway Lines
-- the Air Train system to/from JFK Airport
The Scoop:
If your interests lean towards the rapid transit and commuter rail aspect of railfanning, you have to come to Jamaica if you are in New York City. It is about a 30m minutes ride via the Long Island RR out of downtown Manhattan.
The LIRR commuter trains are almost endless, as almost everything in and out of Manhattan passes through here.
Add to that, the JFK Air Train is off to one side, and it is busy enough to keep you occupied taking pictures for hours.
For you subway fans, the station is accessible via three lines: the IND "E" line, and the BMT "J" and "Z" lines.
Acknowledgements:
Denver Todd
Google Maps
Bing Maps
Open Railway Map
Wikipedia
Websites and other additional information sources of interest for the area:
None for now.....
Getting here is pretty easy, thanks to the highway system of New York City and Long Island!
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At Sunnyside YardAt the east end of Sunnyside Yard, the LIRR parts ways with the Northeast Corridor. The two tracks for the Port Washington Branch are already aligned and you have six tracks heading southeast from Sunnyside.
At one time, the Long Island RR was a subsidiary of the Pennsy, so, the signals erected after semaphores were of the Pennsy PL style. The LIRR started replacing them with "tri-light" style colorlight signals, maybe in the early 2000's?
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Signal Bridge at Queens BlvdGPS Coordinates: 40.74005, -73.89661
Three outbound tracks are signaled, all six inbound tracks are signaled with the newer trilights.
These Google Streetviews are from 2018, so the outbound lights may be replaced by now.
Courtesy of the USGS, click here for their index page.
Disclaimers:
I love trains, and I love signals. I am not an expert. My webpages reflect what I find on the topic of the page. This is something I have fun with while trying to help others.
Please Note: Since the main focus of my two websites is railroad signals, the railfan guides are oriented towards the signal fan being able to locate them. For those of you into the modeling aspect of our hobby, my indexa page has a list of almost everything railroad oriented I can think of to provide you with at least a few pictures to help you detail your pike.
If this is a railfan page, every effort has been made to make sure that the information contained on this map and in this railfan guide is correct. Once in a while, an error may creep in :-)
My philosophy: Pictures and maps are worth a thousand words, especially for railfanning. Text descriptions only get you so far, especially if you get lost or disoriented. Take along good maps.... a GPS is OK to get somewhere, but maps are still better if you get lost! I belong to AAA, which allows you to get local maps for free when you visit the local branches. ADC puts out a nice series of county maps for the Washington DC area, but their state maps do not have the railroads on them. If you can find em, I like the National Geographic map book of the U.S..... good, clear, and concise graphics, and they do a really good job of showing you where tourist type attractions are, although they too lack the railroads. Other notes about specific areas will show up on that page if known.
Aerial shots were taken from either Google or Bing Maps as noted. Screen captures are made with Snagit, a Techsmith product... a great tool if you have never used it!
By the way, floobydust is a term I picked up 30-40 years ago from a National Semiconductor data book, and means miscellaneous and/or other stuff.
Pictures and additional information is always needed if anyone feels inclined to take 'em, send 'em, and share 'em, or if you have something to add or correct.... credit is always given! Please be NICE!!! Contact info is here
Beware: If used as a source, ANYTHING from Wikipedia must be treated as being possibly inaccurate, wrong, or not true.
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NEW 07/13/2016//08/13/2022
Last Modified 13-Aug-2022