In October of 1977 a train of Cosmopolitans loads from the middle track at Larchmont.
Thanks for the picture. I have seen those walkways sitting around the yard at several passenger stations and always wondered what they were for. Well now I know.
FYI: They still do that (with the same equipment, I beleive!) on that line, although the bridge plates seem wider nowdays. I have no idea how they line 'em up, I can picture an express train sending them flying![:-,]
…Good photo. Presented something I’ve never have seen before.
well that was a first for me as well Learn something every day Larry
A former executive who was with the LIRR back in the days when it was still private told me that they occasionally lined up two trains side by side at a station so the doors were even with each other. Some people just changed trains, others were walking from the platform through the near train to the far train. There must have been tight clearance between the trains.
As I was reading this you struck a memory. I saw them do that. I can’t remember where it was, but it had to be somewhere with more than two tracks, so maybe it was Jamaica. I remember two sets of those converted MUs (pulled by diesels by then) pulling up next to each other, and then the announcement being made to cross through one train to board the other. When the train that was being boarded pulled out, the other train, the one that had been used as a platform, just sat there.
Thank you for bringing back a nearly forgotten memory.
Just saw that your photo was Top of Yesterday on rrpictures.net. Congrats, there is some stiff competition on that site.
Call me chicken but crossing over a mainline track on such a contraption during commuter rush time would make me very nervous.
Thanks Emmar… although I must admit it was probably more due to the fact that you couldn’t really tell what was happening in the thumbnail than anything else. A lot of top pictures of the day over there aren’t the best picture, but the one that people click on because the thumbnail doesn’t reveal the entire shot.
And to eolafan… I couldn’t agree more. I know they shut the track down when they put those things up, but man, talk about frightening.
Larchmont, New York is on the New Haven line. Normally the Amtrak trains use the inner tracks and the commuter trains use the outer ones. Whenever Metro-North has to work on the outer tracks (which has been pretty frequent in the past decade) they route the commuter trains on one of the inner tracks, hence the bridges. Not only have the outer tracks been out of service frequently, when Metro-North does work on them they’ve been out of service for months at a time. Of course, they pretty much have to do this for every station along the line. Also they can’t do just one door, as it seems in the picture – this is a heavily used line – they have to do every door for 12 or so cars. Of course the express commuter and Amtrak trains must slow down when passing a station with bridges.
The bridges are stable enough, but the effect of stepping off the platform onto the narrow bridge is somewhat disconcerting. A careless step to the left or right and you fall on the tracks. During rush hours loading and unloading is much slower because of the narrowness of the bridges.
Is it just me or are they wider nowadays? The one in the photo looks to be barely 2’ wide, while the modern ones are about 4’ wide. How do they position these things to clear trains but not leave a huge gap?
How do they deal with ADA requirements?
Wow! Didnt think would be allowed due to saftey risk or something!
That’s probobly why they’re wider now.
Funny, although I’ve walked on these bridges many times, I’ve hardly given it a thought. The doors must be at least 5’ wide so the bridges must be at least 6’ wide, perhaps even wider to allow a margin of safety. I don’t recall a bridge as narrow as in the picture. Perhaps it’s a really temporary (for a few days?) one. The trainmen are that skilled at stopping so the doors align with the bridges. A couple of times I’ve been on a train where they had to back up or pull forward a few feet. The bridges come at a cost in time.
I suspect that nowadays there’s possibly a fold-down portion that would completely bridge the gap for wheelchair-bound commuters.
The spotting at precise locations is sometimes necessary on routes with low-level platforms as well–in Lombard, one door has to be spotted right at the pedestrian crosswalk if the train is on the center track (at virtually every other stop on this stretch, they spot it at an adjacent grade crossing, but Lombard has none).
Three-way connections, with the middle train serving as a bridge between the two high-level platforms, is standard procedure at Jamaica. When I was on vacation in 1982, the norm seemed to be MU trains, one from Penn Station and one from Flatbush Ave, and a diesel train originating at Jamaica would swap passengers with each other.
The beauty of this picture is in the details, and there’s plenty of details in this photo. Seriously, you should put together a book of the photos in your collection. Something like railroading in the 1970s that captures not just the trains, but the way things (people, buildings, railroad infrastructure, etc.) looked thirty plus years ago.