TRAIN BLOG (WSAU) You don’t know how long Long Island is.
I moved to the Hamptons for a radio job in 1994. It was late summer when I moved into my new townhouse. It was a very expensive place to live. My home was on the less-expensive North Fork of Long Island. I lived in Greenport, an old fishing village. My just-tripled rent was bleeding me dry.
Greenport was also the end of the line for the Long Island Rail Road. My house was four blocks away from where the tracks ended at the tiny Greenport station. About a football field’s length away from the bumper posts were the waters of Peconic Bay. You could take a small 6-car ferry to Shelter Island from there.
The Long Island Rail Road that I knew as a kid was a huge commuter operation, with dozens of trains packed each morning with workers from the suburbs arriving at Penn Station or Flatbush Terminal. On the main line through Nassau County trains would rumble by every three or four minutes. When taking commuters home each afternoon, most trains ran only as far as Ronkonkoma or Babylon about an hour outside of New York City. That’s where the electrified tracks ended. Trains to the east end needed diesel engines and old coaches that dated back to the Pennsylvania Railroad of the 1940s.
Very few people took the train all the way to Greenport. You’d start by taking the electric train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma. If you were lucky, you’d get a train that ran express down the main line to Hicksville. The local stops to Ronkonkoma were stations built in the middle of nowhere, not much more than large parking lots near the exits of the Long Island Expressway. Commuters would drop their cars off in lots surrounded by marsh grass, catch the train, and head to work. There was a large train yard just beyond the Ronkonkoma train station. A single, non-electrified track extended beyond the yard to Greenport. There were only two trains a day that roamed beyond there to the east end.
Greenport trains rattled, as old cars trundled down poorly maintained tracks. An small switcher engine usually pulled the train, since speeds wouldn’t get above its 35-mile-per-hour gearing. An old FA engine would be on the other end of the train, serving as the engineer’s cab for the return trip. Usually all the passengers on the Greenport shuttle could fit in a single coach.
An hour beyond Ronkonkoma was Riverhead. It was the last town with a big train station on the east end. Riverhead also had a train yard. Years ago where there were four trains instead of two, half the runs ended here. Beyond town the train tracks run through potato fields and vineyards. Stations were little more than small shacks with a ticket booth. Cutchogue station looked like a storage shed in someone’s backyard. Blink and you could miss Southold station. Then a few trees. A short trestle over the marsh past the marina. Dirt roads became paved streets as the water came into view. My home was on 8th Street. From the train you could see my second-floor kitchen window. The old train would slow to a crawl as the sea came into view, stopping at the old 4th Street depot.
The train would arrive in Greenport each night around 7:30. I’d hear the bells from the crossing gate. Some nights I’d walk down to the station. Eight or nine passengers would get off as the crew tied up the train for the night. A few would head for the ferry. Others would get in their cars and drive home.
I’d always thought of trains as romantic… a throwback to the past. Sometimes things that are old become farce. This was a train that crossed that line. Here was an old, slow train to nowhere that no one rode. Time had passed it by, but I still liked to hear the whistle.
Chris Conley
Operations Manager, Midwest Communications-Wausau
8.28.10
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