On my last trip to New York, I took a tour with the New York Transit Museum that included a subway ride through the Jamaica Maintenance Shop yard and the tunnels through it. Even cooler, the train conductor kept the door open to the train control room, so we could go in and take a few pictures out the front window of the train. Normally when on a subway train, you can only see stuff go flying by out a side window, so being able to see the tunnels through the front, allowed a much better view. In some places they were working in the tunnels, so there were a lot of lights lit, which allowed even better viewing.
Subway tunnel surfacing to ground level
Jamaica Maintenance Shop yard
Jamaica Maintenance Shop yard
Subway car wash
Subway car wash
Subway tunnel
Subway tunnel
Subway tunnel
Subway tunnel spliting
Subway tunnel right before station
Subway tunnel entering station
Hello “GGE” – this will be a short email. I started a reply to you twice, had written a nice long email, and then some kind of damn glitch, threw me out of this page – twice!
So let me just say I have enjoyed your site very much. I came to visit it as an NYC railfan, transit enthusiast. Enjoyed your essays, written and pictorial about the system. If you go back up to the 240th yard area, there is a very good diner beneath the elevated, between the yard lead, and the previous station. It is on the south side of Broadway. Check it out!
Very interesting photos of the Jamaica yard, yard lead approach tracks, in the incredibly spacious tunnel area beneath the main line (I have track diagrams of this). Non MTA employee railfans usually don’t get to see or ride through this area, so your photos provided a kind of visit!
I hope they told you on this tour, that these tracks were also used in passenger service, for a special route to the 1939-1940 NY World’s Fair. Trains took the two northernmost tracks through the yard, then veered north for a mile or so to the World’s Fair terminal.
There is a book (out of print) titled “Subway to the World’s Fair” with pictures of this route. There is also a page at http://www.nycsubway.org about this IND World’s Fair Spur. Here is the link: http://nycsubway.org/wiki/IND_1939_Worlds_Fair_Line
At the bottom of the article page, there is a small photo selection. It includes two rare pictures of this IND line in service (it was completely dismantled after the fair, and this section is now the site fo the Van Wyck Expressway) – one is in black and white, link: http://nycsubway.org/perl/show?132319 and the other, probably rarer, is in color. Link: http://nycsubway.org/perl/show?71098.
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Also read your articles about Women in Science. As a guy who is a complete supporter of all Feminist goals, have been for many years, found these to be articles of quality. Hope you can publish these and other Feminist articles of yours in magazines, such as Ms. or the newer ones published for younger audiences.
Google, Vivian Gornick – she is a feminist writer who has done a youtube clip interviewing college age women who are going into the science field. It is very good.
Once again, enjoyed your site. Best and take care. Keep on Truckin’
Respectfully,
Ed
Thank you for your comment and sorry you got kicked out. I will have to check all those links out! The trip to Jamaica Yard was part of a walking tour of the World’s Fair site, so they talked about how people got there. It was quite fascinating.