The North Fork once boasted a collection of LIRR train stations, spaced about three miles apart, for the convenience of passengers. This distance made it easy to travel between hamlets and move freight to and from the main hub in Riverhead. Taking the train was much faster than walking or taking a horse and buggy to the next village.

“If you walk normally, you can go about three miles in an hour. So if you have a station every three miles or so, the most somebody’s going to have to walk is a mile and a half to get to the station,” said George Walsh, trustee and archivist for the Railroad Museum of Long Island.

“People used to take the train to go from Greenport to Mattituck to visit friends and family,” said museum president Don Fisher.

One of the destinations along the route to Greenport was the Methodist camp in Jamesport, located between South Jamesport and Washington avenues.

“People could literally step off the train with their bags, and you didn’t even have to come pick them up with a horse and wagon, they could walk there … and families would take a cottage for a week,” said Mr. Fisher. “The houses are still there, people live in them, and there’s a road, a circle, that comes in, and in the center, where they used to have like a common area with grass. Now the trees have grown up in there, but the road still goes in and circles around.”

Besides moving people along, the railroad also served to transport all manner of things to and from the North Fork. One of the most prominent products was ducks. At first, the birds were taken live from the farms in stock cars and dispatched when they reached the city.

“That was not an optimal way to deal with the ducks. Too many ducks died. You would lose your product on the two-hour, three-hour trip. It’s very stressful for the animals. So, that didn’t last for very long,” said Mr. Fisher.

Instead of shipping live, the farmers began processing the birds locally and placing them in barrels of brine. Once flash freezing became widespread, the birds were frozen and sent in refrigerated cars.

“The feathers we used for down, for bedding, pillows, clothing, and the ducks were used, consumed altogether,” said Mr. Fisher. “Now everything’s [shipped] on a truck.”

Possibly even more important to Long Island’s duck farming was the feed, which came via freight cars. Crates of feed came from suppliers like Purina to merchants, who then sold it to the farmers. Crescent Duck Farm had its own miniature industrial railroad to move the feed around the farm. This tiny train is now at the Railroad Museum facility in Riverhead.

Another important way the train served local farms was by transporting fertilizer components. These components were transported to fertilizer plants, which were built near the train yards. They had a crane house where each component was mixed as it traveled down a conveyor to the waiting farmer. “They could put it in bags, or they could run a truck right underneath this thing, and the various components would come down the chute into the back of the truck,” said Mr. Fisher.

Another key function of the railroad was to haul mail to postmasters to then distribute to residents. According to the classic Long Island Rail Road photo book, “Steel Rails to the Sunrise” by Ron Ziel, there was a rule stating that within a certain distance, measured door to door, the post office was responsible for carrying the mail from the train. Otherwise, the station master had to move the mail.

“When they built [the station in Laurel], the door was on the south side of the station, facing the tracks. And the post office manager said, ‘You guys are responsible for bringing the mail to us.’ And the Long Island Railroad station master called up what they called buildings and bridges, the B&B department, and said, ‘Come out here, we need a door on the north side of the building.’ So the railroad sent the carpenters out,” said Mr. Fisher. “And now the station agent called up the postmaster at Laurel post office, and said, ‘Get your tape out and come down and measure to the door again.’ So out comes the postmaster with his wheel, he measured the footage, and they were inside the line.”

After the Pennsylvania Railroad bought the Long Island Rail Road, many of the large, beautiful station buildings were removed or downsized to shelters. Some stations, like Aquebogue, Jamesport, Peconic and Laurel, were shuttered. After the LIRR was taken over by the MTA, the cuts deepened.

“Once we got past World War II, and we got into the ’50s, people were making money and the economy was good. Everybody wanted a car,” Mr. Fisher said.

“And the automobile industry, the bus industry, were instrumental in getting rid of trolleys and also tearing down railroads. We built the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System … They didn’t need the train anymore,” he continued.

This downsizing continued, until service was actually discontinued for a time in the 1960s, and the LIRR ran buses for two decades, from 1962 to 1982.

“When you got a bus here, you went to Huntington, because the bus went up Sound Avenue after it left Riverhead, it stayed on 25A into Huntington. You got off the bus in Huntington, and you got on a train in Huntington that took you the rest of the way to Jamaica and to Penn Station,” said Mr. Fisher.

Service resumed, and though there are more riders on the weekends than at other times, passengers are still rolling into North Fork train stations.

“We’ve had that problem, that challenge, of getting people to ride,” said Mr. Fisher. “We’ve got more trains running today than I can remember since I was a little boy. We actually have four round-trips to Greenport, and we have an additional, fifth round-trip here to Riverhead.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

Riverhead Station

The post Keeping track of history: When trains ruled the North Fork appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Local traffic will have access, but motorists are encouraged to use alternate routes: Shade Tree Lane to Hubbard Avenue, or Washington Avenue to Peconic Bay Boulevard/Meeting House Creek Road.

Drivers should plan ahead and allow extra time for their commute, Riverhead Town Police Chief Edward Frost said.

Separately, as part of MTA’s ongoing infrastructure improvements, the agency will upgrade the railroad crossing located on River Road in Calverton on Dec. 4.

The work will shut down the crossing and nearby roadways from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Both projects are part of ongoing MTA infrastructure improvements in the area. For more information on MTA projects, visit mta.info.

The post Traffic advisory: Edgar Avenue crossing closes Dec. 4 for final paving appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

That was in 1844, when the Long Island Rail Road extended its line to Riverhead.

The new spur turned the East End from an isolated agricultural outpost into the bread-and-veggie-basket of New York. In addition to its geographical centrality, Riverhead had been Suffolk County’s seat of government since 1727, making it the natural choice for a rail center.

“We were an agricultural economy, we were a seafaring economy,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island. “Riverhead became the center and was physically, geographically, and certainly population-wise, the center of our county, and became the hub for our government. Everybody moved everything by boat before the railroad got here.”

Populations on the East End at that time were concentrated along the shorelines. The farmers who did begin to cultivate the Forks had good soil for growing all kinds of crops, including the potatoes and cauliflower the region was known for. And before the experimental farms, farmers didn’t believe that they could go into the Pine Barrens. 

Because of the railroad, the Forks could now supply the rest of Long Island, which at that time included Brooklyn, and Manhattan with fresh produce. Farmers could take their products and put them on a train into cold cars, and have them reach population centers often within a day or two after harvest. 

Farm produce coming into Riverhead went through the auction houses, where it was bought by brokers and then put on the railroad cars to be transported out of the area. These brokers sold to supermarkets and others — usually within two days of the vegetables being dug up.

“That stimulated everything in farming out here, because farmers now weren’t just growing for themselves and Suffolk County,” Mr. Fisher said. “They had a way, with the railroad, to be able to ship more and more produce, putting more and more acreage into production.”

The system proved remarkably efficient for its time.

“We had this thing licked. We had it down, farm to table,” he said. “The tables were in New York City. 
The tables were the people living in the tenements along the East River, the people living in Brooklyn.”

The LIRR used special cars lined with ice, known as reefers. These cars were filled from above via a hopper at the ice plant. There were vents at either end to circulate air, and melted ice and condensation would run out onto the track. 

Riverhead yard also had a special engine called a hostler to move cars through a complicated network of sidings. Each siding had an assigned purpose, and a crew could kick three boxcars off so they went into Brooklyn. 

“The actual work of moving all of this produce was time sensitive, laborious and it required resources from the railroad to make it work,” Mr. Fisher said. “One of those resources, we got our own locomotive.”

At first, the LIRR extension did not result in a population boom on the East End. Because the land was so productive, the properties proved more valuable for farming. Keeping those fields open for cultivation produced more wealth than dividing them for houses.

“The railroad coming here, creating a better economy for the farmers, limited the amount of people that were going to come out here at the time and build houses and live here, because the property was so valuable for farming,” Mr. Fisher said.

It wasn’t until after World War II that the railroad, combined with the highways, helped supercharge Long Island’s population growth as developments like Levittown blossomed. 
Before the war, bulk produce dominated traffic heading west from the East End.

It wasn’t only produce leaving the East End headed west that made use of Riverhead Station. Freight was also shipped east. Anything big, bulky or heavy was easier to ship via rail.

LILCO, the predecessor to LIPA, had two sidings in Riverhead because their poles and transformers came out on the train. Farm equipment was often shipped on flatcars. There were also smaller items that came via post cars and baggage cars on the railroad. Mail order items from catalogs would be left in the freight house for someone to pick up in their wagon and take home.

“We think about things that come to us today on UPS, FedEx, Postal Service — those things came out in special cars, baggage cars, railroad post office cars, and they went to the train station or to the little freight house,” said Mr. Fisher.

Because Riverhead is the county seat, the railroad also made it easier for politicians to attend meetings. Instead of taking a week to trek out to Riverhead for monthly business, it was a matter of days by train. 

Before Suffolk County had a Legislature, it was controlled by supervisors of the 10 towns and they would meet in Riverhead once a month. With the railroad, they could get on the train at 6 in the morning and be there by 9 a.m. They could meet all day, stay overnight and be home the next day.

“Not only was this great for the people that were doing the work, but it saved government money,” Mr. Fisher explained.

Instead of putting politicians up for four or five nights in Riverhead, they only had to stay one night.

“We were saving taxpayers’ dollars,” he said.

Today, the LIRR still has a stop at Riverhead, but the old railway center serves as the home of the Railroad Museum of Long Island.

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping track of history: How Riverhead’s station fed New York appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Austin Corbin, who became president of the Long Island Rail Road in 1881, was an ambitious but difficult man. He is credited with consolidating the many small railroads that crisscrossed Long Island into a single, profitable entity. He also expanded the southern rail line all the way to Montauk by strong arming the Montaukett Indigenous out of nearly 10,000 acres of land. 

For a time, Mr. Corbin’s nephew, Fredrick Dunton, was in business with him at the LIRR as a physical engineer. There was even a station in Queens named for him. At some point, the two had a falling out, and Mr. Dunton left to begin his own venture: The Boynton Electric Bicycle Railroad. 

This experimental railroad was based on a diesel-powered bicycle train that Eben Boynton had run for two years from Brooklyn to Coney Island. These double-decker cars were able to accommodate 200 passengers per trip. The Long Island version was much smaller, with a single level, trolley-shaped car that only carried 24 people at a time. Construction of the first two miles was completed in 1894.

George Walsh, Trustee and archivist for Railroad Museum of Long Island, has been researching the Boynton Electric Bicycle train since he was 17 years old.

“The Boynton Electric Bicycle Railroad was a railroad that was supposed to run from the Bellport area to Rocky Point. And they constructed a car that was used on an experimental track in East Patchogue. That car was two-wheeled car, so that’s where you get the bicycle idea. Two wheels, and it ran on a single track. It could go 60 miles an hour, it had an overhead structure with wheels that kept it balanced, and it used a steam-powered electric generator,” said Mr. Walsh.

A man named George Hagerman, of Rocky Point, became a prominent investor. He owned the land that became Wardenclyffe, Pinelawn cemetery, and large tracts of land around Patchogue, among others. Mr. Hagerman was impressed with the original Boynton Train in Brooklyn, so when he found out about the electric version, he offered some of his land. He sold plots of land for $25 each to the railroad laborers, who were mostly Italian immigrants. 

“The game plan was to bridge the Great South Bay and put a hotel on Fire Island at Long Cove. And they were going to have ferries to go to Connecticut. The idea being to bring people from New England out to Fire Island,” said Mr. Walls.

Mr. Corbin, peeved that his nephew had left his business to go out on his own, refused to allow the Bicycle Railroad a right of way over his track. But rather than leaving it there, he wanted to make sure the monorail would not be successful, so he extended what was known as the Port Jefferson branch to Wading River and renamed it the Wading River Branch. He also did this with mostly immigrant labor imported from New York City.

“There was no reason to build a railroad out to Wading River. There was nobody living there. Mr. Corbin, in spite, said, ‘We’re going from Port Jefferson; We’re going to go to Wading River,’” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island. “This was a good idea, really. Mr. Corbin wasn’t a stupid man. He was a vindictive man, possibly. He was going to make sure that his nephew and cohorts weren’t going to get up there. But he was also looking at continuing from Wading River into Riverhead. So then for the main line, which was built in 1844 to Greenport, there would be an escape route.”

Just as the construction of Manorville station and the spur to Eastport allowed for an escape route from the main line to the southern line, extending the northern track to Wading River and then eventually on to Riverhead would provide an additional route for trains to avoid trouble on the main line.

Not only was Mr. Corbin looking at cutting off the monorail’s north-south vacation route, but he was also thinking of the problems a more nimble electric monorail posed to his empire.

“Corbin realized that this thing was a threat to steam trains. The invention itself. The electric monorail. Ultimately, they could outperform the steam trains. Think of the Long Island Expressway, and think if in the center median, you have monorails,” said Mr. Fisher. “They would want to take the train, so this thing could go 60 miles an hour then, and that’s only because the track they had wasn’t long enough to go faster.”

Another quirk of fate related to the Wading River Station is Nikola Tesla and the building of Wardenclyffe. All of the material for the construction of Tesla’s tower came to the property via the Wading River branch. There was even a siding constructed on-site to drop off loads of timber. The railroad museum has letters from the LIRR asking Tesla to settle his $3,000 shipping bill, the equivalent of more than $100,000 today.

The Wading River Branch lasted until 1938, when the station and engine house were dismantled. The timber from the engine house was reused to build what is now the Village Beverage store. At that time, it reverted back to the Port Jefferson Branch.

“If it was here today, certainly because of the population centers that have grown up along the North Shore through that area, you would have people that would be using it to go to work, just as they leave Port Jefferson now … It would be used for that travel, [and] certainly would be used as they were promoting it back in the 1800s and the early 1900s,” said Mr. Fisher. “It would be a vacation line. Just as people now take the train to Greenport to go to Shelter Island, East Marion, Orient [and] Southold on the weekends, they would be using it to come out to their summer homes all along the Sound. If we were there today, I would almost bet my right arm, the Long Island Railroad in the engineers would have completed the line out to Riverhead.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Calverton Station

Manorville Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping Track of History: Wading River Station appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

LIRR union leaders on Monday, Sept. 15, asked the feds to intervene ahead of their threatened work stoppage, which was set to begin Thursday, Sept. 18.

Union leaders called on President Trump to create an emergency board of mediators, LIRR labor officials said at a hastily-arranged press conference. On Tuesday, Trump agreed to establish the board.

The move delays the possibility of a strike, which would have impacted nearly 300,000 daily riders until next spring.

“This action does not mean a strike won’t happen,” said Gil Lang, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, at the news conference. “But it does mean it won’t happen now.”

BLET represents roughly 51,500 locomotive engineers, conductors, firemen, switchmen, hostlers and other train service employees.

The unions are pushing for pay raises of 16% over the next four years, far higher than the 9.5% increase over three years that most other MTA workers already accepted.

“There is a fair offer on the table, and I have directed the MTA to be ready to negotiate anytime, anywhere. Unfortunately, five unions have refused to come to the table in good faith and rejected binding arbitration, putting riders at risk of an unnecessary strike,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

Union officials said Monday they accepted the three-year, 9.5% deal but wanted a fourth year at 6.5%, according to Newsday.

MTA officials slammed union leaders for attempting an end run by turning to the Trump administration for help.

“After months of radio silence, these outlier unions have finally admitted that they weren’t serious about negotiating. They never had a plan to resolve this at the bargaining table,” John McCarthy, MTA chief for policy and external relations, said in a statement. “This cynical delay serves no one.” 

The post LIRR strike averted — for now — after union leaders ask President Trump to step in appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

This is the first in a series on the history of train services on the East End, and the numerous changes the industry brought to Riverhead and the North Fork.

“It took them 10 years to go from the foot of the East River in Brooklyn to Greenport,” said Don Fisher, president of the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead.

The Manorville Station stop was originally called St. George’s Manor and opened in 1844. Local history holds that the first station agent, Seth Raynor, was a patriot from the revolutionary war. The story goes that he painted over the “St. George’s” because it reminded him of the king, leaving just “Manor.”

The stop was little more than a refueling station, since there was no town to speak of at that time. Woodcutters would cut timber and stock it next to the tracks, as these trains ran on wood and not coal. There was also a water tower to replenish the steam engine’s supply.

“It was important stop for them to pick up water and wood on their way to make steam to propel trains out to Greenport. Though it was a fueling depot … it also became an important station,” said Mr. Fisher. “Manorville was really just a clearing in the woods where the train would stop, take on water. The local people would sell them firewood.”

In 1869, Manorville station became the western end of the Sag Harbor branch, a line that was extended through Eastport to the south shore. This was to outmaneuver the South Side Railroad, which ran from Brooklyn to Patchogue and had planned to extend out the South Fork. 

“The Long Island Rail Road said, ‘Hey, we got to make a right hand turn here. We’ve got to get in front of the South Side Railroad so that they can’t proceed from Patchogue out to Sag Harbor.’ And that’s what they did,” said Mr. Fisher. The track ran through the South Fork towns and ended in Sag Harbor.

Manorville also featured a special feature of railroad engineering called a wye. It consists of a triangle of tracks with a switch at each corner, where an engineer can navigate around the triangle to reverse direction. 

“You can imagine a train coming along, going up the right-side angle to the top point,”said Mr. Fisher. “He stops his train, he backs on down to the left-hand point, which is going Greenport. Now the train is facing New York City. And you can go across the base of the triangle with your train and go all the way back to Ronkonkoma … [to] get back into the city. If you’ve got the acreages, the land, that’s very inexpensive to make those three tracks and build a wye.”

This feature allowed the railroad to operate what was known as the “Greenport Scoot,” a train that ran from Greenport to Manorville and then all the way to Sag Harbor.

“Manorville, at this point, was very important as a communications loop for people to go from the shipping and the whale industry out of Greenport to the shipping and whale industry down in Sag Harbor. You [could] go back and forth and you didn’t have to take a boat,” said Mr. Fisher. “That opened up all kinds of opportunities for families to move back and forth.”

The mail was carried by horse or stagecoach until 1908, when the Manorville Post Office opened near the train stop. Around this time, the station name officially changed to Manorville. 

The station building was torn down and replaced with a shelter in 1941, and by 1949 the branch was abandoned. In 1968 the stop was officially discontinued.

“It was very lightly used by the 1940s. Railroading is a business, and any place that they can save money and pare off maintenance costs, they’re gonna do it.” Mr. Fisher said. “I think today, in hindsight, they wish they had it.”

Other stories in the Keeping Track of History series:

Wading River Station

Calverton Station

Riverhead Station

North Fork stations

The post Keeping Track of History: Manorville Station appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

Commuters who normally board eastbound or westbound trains at the Medford, Yaphank, Riverhead, Mattituck, Southold and Greenport stations or eastbound trains at Ronkonkoma Station, will now ride by bus on weekdays. Trains will continue to run between Ronkonkoma and Greenport on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. Customers can continue to purchase daily, weekly and monthly tickets for these rides and ticket prices will remain the same.

The switch to buses, which an Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesperson reached via email explained is due to required track maintenance, is expected to last through May 19, when the MTA will issue a new timetable.

The large, diesel-locomotive powered trains that pass through North Fork stations have counted an average of roughly 200 daily riders over the past few years, according to MTA data. They remain one of few public transportation options for a region with just one major thoroughfare. According to an MTA spokesperson, riders heading to or passing through the eastern Ronkonkoma branch stations “can expect up to 30 minutes additional travel time” during the track work period.

“It’s going to be an inconvenience, but the tracks have to get work done on them,” said Michael Hughes of Huntington, one of a handful of customers who exited an eastbound train at Riverhead Station Tuesday morning. For the past few years, Mr. Hughes, who works as a staff attorney at Suffolk County Family Court in Riverhead, has driven to and boarded a train at the Huntington station, transferred at Hicksville from the Port Jefferson branch to the Ronkonkoma line, then arrived at Riverhead. Starting March 4, he will hop off his second train at Ronkonkoma, to board an eastbound bus to Riverhead. 

“I go to the gym in the morning, so [a longer commute] may interfere with my morning, but I guess I’ll just deal with it,” he said. “What are my options?”

In addition to notes on the March 4 timetables, an MTA spokesperson said the authority has already begun informing riders of the changes through posters, platform announcements, the TrainTime app and on the MTA website, new.mta.info. Still, some commuters remain in the dark, including Rosemary Gutwillig, who learned of the upcoming changes when a reporter from The Suffolk Times discussed them with her while she sat aboard the 9:30 a.m. train departing Greenport Station Tuesday morning. She was one of two passengers on that train.

Each Tuesday, Ms. Gutwillig, who splits her time between Greenport and New York City, hops aboard a train heading west from Greenport and transfers to a citybound train at Ronkonkoma, which departs at 10:59 a.m. She returns to her East End home in a similar fashion on Thursdays. Beginning on Tuesday, March 5, she will board a bus at 9:37 and catch a 11:22 train out of Ronkonkoma. She said that if her commute has to take longer, she would rather her journey start earlier rather than end later.

“Of all the choices, wouldn’t it be better for [a bus] to come half an hour earlier [in Greenport] and arrive in New York at the usual time?” she proposed. “It would be much more convenient for people.”

The post Buses to fill in for trains east of Ronkonkoma appeared first on Riverhead News Review.

This is one of the many messages the Metropolitan Transit Authority issued on its website in the lead-up to the grand opening of Grand Central Madison, the Long Island Rail Road’s brand new station beneath Grand Central Terminal, located approximately five blocks east of Pennsylvania Station, on Feb. 27.

“We’ve opened a new Manhattan terminal for the first time in a century,” the message continues, “and we have completely rewritten the schedule for the riders of today and tomorrow.”

This includes the riders on the North Fork, whose only rail option is still the antiquated diesel locomotive that runs the final few eastern stops on the LIRR’s heavily used Ronkonkoma line through to Greenport. 

Even before the LIRR train schedule was reconfigured to split trains between Penn Station and the new Grand Central terminal, North Forkers resented the limited number of trains at their end of the line. Many residents say the new timetable is frustrating, with trains running at inconvenient times.

After a week’s work as a fine arts appraiser at Christie’s Auction House in Rockefeller Center, Anne Hargrave typically comes home to family in Jamesport on Friday evenings. She used to take the 5:41 p.m. train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma, then transfer to a 7:03 diesel train to either Riverhead or Mattituck. But now, the final train out of Penn that connects to the Greenport end of the line departs from Penn at 5:04 p.m.

“Even leaving at 5:41 p.m., that was too early for a normal workday in New York City,” Ms. Hargrave said. “But with it leaving at 5:04 p.m., it’s just preposterous.

“I would have to effectively leave my office no later than 4:20 p.m. to make that,” she continued. “You’re leaving with two hours left in the workday in that case. It’s crazy, and I’d love to know what worker they’re picturing using this train with that new timetable.”

Ms. Hargrave, who does not own a car of her own, opts to take a Hampton Jitney bus into the city on Sunday evenings or Monday mornings, as she described catching one of very few trains near her as “inconvenient.” Many North Forkers with cars would agree, instead opting to drive to Ronkonkoma to catch a train. 

Up until last week, the trains available to them from Ronkonkoma to Penn were plentiful.

“Weekday rush hour service to Manhattan has increased on many branches, but will be split between Penn Station and Grand Central,” the MTA’s website reads. “On many branches, there are fewer trains to Penn Station than we’re running today. Nearly half of our riders travel to the east side of Manhattan and are better served by using Grand Central.”

John Tuthill, a bond broker in the city’s financial district, has commuted by rail for more than three decades. Until last week, he drove from his Orient residence to Ronkonkoma to catch either a 5:29 or a 5:42 a.m. train to Penn Station. He hoped trains would alternate evenly between the two Manhattan LIRR stations, but learned the Ronkonkoma trains that head to Penn closest to his previous schedule are an hour apart: one too early at 5:13 a.m. and one too late at 6:13 a.m. In between are three Grand Central-bound trains.

Since the new schedule took effect, Mr. Tuthill has been choosing the middle of the three Grand Central options at 5:42 a.m. while occasionally trying different options. Some days he rode trains straight to the Grand Central Madison station, but said they arrived several minutes late. He added that the 714,000-square-foot terminal takes significantly longer to navigate to take a subway downtown. Last Thursday, he transferred from a train heading for Grand Central to one bound for Penn at Brentwood. Although he still arrived late for work, he considers this his best option for now.

On Tuesday, he tried to transfer to Penn at Jamaica Station, which presented its own set of problems. Familiar transfers to Brooklyn are now several tracks apart, and trains no longer wait to connect with one another, causing confusion and more crowding on platforms. Mr. Tuthill said it was the first and last time he would attempt that “stressful” transfer.

“We’re getting into Jamaica it seems somewhere on time, but there’s so many trains on the tracks and for whatever reason we’re just crawling from Jamaica into Grand Central,” he said. “I feel a tremendous amount of people still want to get to Penn Station, because the trains to Penn Station are mobbed, they are absolutely overflowing with people. The trains to Grand Central are empty.

“They got a new toy, a new project, and they’re trying to really make it work,” Mr. Tuthill added. “To me, they’ve got to get the kinks out, they’ve got to get it moving faster because that time schedule, it’s an arrival time that’s consistently 10 or 15 minutes late.”

In a statement, LIRR interim president Catherine Rinaldi said the MTA is monitoring these and other complaints that have come in since Grand Central Madison opened.

“We really took to heart some of the complaints that we were hearing from our customers last week and tried to develop a plan to be able to address those issues,” Ms. Rinaldi’s statement reads. “To address crowding, we are reviewing ridership data train by train, car by car so we can see which trains are crowded and make adjustments. It’s a dynamic process and over the coming weeks and months people will figure out what works best for them. We’re not waiting, as we see things that are kind of jumping off the page we address them. Our customers deserve a good experience and we’re committed to give it to them.”

The MTA said that the changes could be beneficial for some Long Islanders, estimating that 45% of LIRR commuters would choose Grand Central Madison. The agency also projected that riders who work on the East Side of Manhattan would shave up to 40 minutes off their commute.

The new station is part of the $11 billion East Side Access project, the MTA’s largest capital project to date. In addition to the new station beneath Grand Central, the project will boast 40 miles of new tracks for the LIRR upon completion.

As these changes have frustrated city-bound commuters, those working on the East End are still left with few options. Andrea Stewart of Riverhead, who works as a certified nursing assistant at San Simeon by the Sound in Greenport, takes the bus to work as it runs more frequently. When she attempted to take a train from Riverhead to Ronkonkoma last week, the changes to the schedule caused her to miss the usual train.

“It was 10:38 a.m. before, now it’s 10:05 a.m.,” she said. “I had a doctor appointment in Ronkonkoma. I stuck to the [old] schedule, and when I got here I realized something had changed and I had to cancel my appointment.” The next train wouldn’t be for another 4 1/2 hours.

On weekends, only two trains run daily from Greenport to Ronkonkoma, at 11:54 a.m. and 4:54 p.m. Likewise, only two trains run from Ronkonkoma to Greenport, at 9:27 a.m. and 2:27 p.m.

The Ronkonkoma to Greenport leg of the Ronkonkoma line has seen few riders in recent years, according to agency figures. In 2019, this segment saw an average of 220 daily riders. After the pandemic, during which ridership decreased across the board, this figure decreased to 200.

But local residents believe ridership would increase if they had more options.

“The train is not running for the convenience of people who take the train,” Ms. Stewart said. “Because if the train was running more frequently from here to Ronkonkoma where I could catch a train to go to the city, maybe I would go to the city more often to do shopping.”

The post Grand Central Madison alters LIRR train times, disrupting North Forkers’ commutes appeared first on Riverhead News Review.