Exploring location files
I’m not going to say a lot about this place other than I’ve been coming down here for years – not for the fun or adventure, but to get the fuck away from the world above and to read graffiti scrawled on some walls where only the chosen insane few will read a word of it.
Take a ride
Visit the New York Below
You get no sponsorship for putting on these shoes
Desa
Quik Xmas with RTW family
MinOne
F5
Utz
AZ TMB
Roy, Sane
Banging it out
Front Door
Train movements within the subway system used to be controlled by a series of small ‘interlocking towers’. (more…)
This is the story of a subway spot even less suitable for human life than most.
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On September 11, 2001, the tunnel used by the 1 train in lower manhattan was destroyed through the world trade center site. Debris and iron beams punched through the ceiling of the tunnel, partially caving in the Cortlandt street station and sections of tunnel between stations.
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There is one general rule about the climate of the subway system that remains almost uniformly true: When it’s hot outside, it is at least 10 degrees hotter underground.
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This abandoned NYC subway spur and station were intended to be the terminal of a subway branch line that was never built. (more…)
This is a very unique spot in the NYC subway system for a variety of reasons.
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For anyone that doesn’t know, Bergen Street station in Brooklyn has an abandoned lower level platform.
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Way back in the day (ok, pre 1997), the LIRR didn’t just run passenger trains. They had a freight division that handled all of the rail freight traffic on Long Island. Traffic had dwindled over the decades, and in the early 90’s the MTA (LIRR’s owners) were looking at means to either make it more profitable or to sell it off or close it down.
One attempted they made at making the freight business more profitable was to buy up a bunch of these obscure ‘bogie’ cars. These cars aren’t even train cars – they are little wells whereby a truck trailer can be placed in one with the trailer acting as the body of the rail car, connecting to another bogie at the other end. The LIRR did this because traditional ‘intermodal’ cars are all too tall to fit under the overpasses and bridges of Long Island. With the bogies, the trailers lay lower and could easily pass.
In any case, a few customers tried out the LIRR bogie concept, but in the end it didn’t last all that long, and the service was abandoned. The bogies were problematic and prone to derailment, while competing with truckers simply driving the trailers from NJ to Long Island proved impossible at the time.
A few years later, LIRR leased out the freight operations to the NY&A, who thus far has no use or desire to use these bogie cars. Thus they sit in a siding in LIC, rusting in the afternoon sun. While they’re not that interesting to photograph, their story is odd and compelling enough to warrant a post. At a time when freight traffic on Long Island was dwindling, the LIRR at least attempted to innovate and compete. They constitute just one more abandoned railroad relic to be found around NYC.
Check out my Abandoned Trains book series, which goes in depth on dozens of abandoned trains spread across the United States.
