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| Possible new 76th Street Evidence and summary (1383388) | |||
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Possible new 76th Street Evidence and summary |
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Posted by Union Tpke on Thu Jan 28 20:17:46 2016  76th Street Station (IND Fulton Street Line) Appearance/Area’s Layout Blue Tiles, only the southbound platform has tiles and the platform floor is rough unfinished concrete. The station probably extends westward from 76th Street as maps from the late 1930s show the station as 75th Street. Tunnel ended at 79th Street. Exit in the center of the station The wall at the end of track is concrete not cinderblock. During the construction of Grant Av, before the concrete wall was put up, there was a temporary wooden wall. Cinderblock wall at Grant Avenue and North Conduit on the South side – A7 and A8 yard leads The Pitkin Avenue "mainline" also dips below both the leads to Grant Avenue station as well as underneath the K3-4 and K5 yard leads that does put 76th Street station pretty deep and probably below any sewer work in the area. The A7 and A8 yard leads had rail installed and were at one time connected by switches to A5 and A6 inside the portal. Yard moves were made on these tracks. In 1962, there were no cinder block walls, but the tunnels ended in mounds of earth. By that time the switches had been removed and the home signals and their associated stop arms protecting the now removed switches were still functioning. In 1983, the cinder block walls had been put up and the signals although still in place were no longer functioning and the stop arm mechanisms had been removed. The fact that the line may have been intended to go via Linden Boulevard could explain the partially built street between Pitkin Avenue and Cross Bay Boulevard. Most maps from the 1940's to the 1980's show Linden Boulevard completed there, as well as a cut across the northwest corner of Aqueduct Race Track, also never built. They also show a more elaborate interchange at Conduit Boulevard, and the street continuing across a still-visible ROW through Tudor Park to 88th Street. When Dumont Avenue was first built through to 88th Street there was actually a curb cut on the southwest corner, blocked by a temporary real estate office building. Plans It always was the Board of Transportation’s intention to recapture the Fulton Street Elevated, and extend the line to 229th Street and Linden Boulevard. In the 1939/1940 plan the line was cut back to 106th Street. The line was built before World War II from Rockaway Ave to somewhere around here. The full station at Broadway Junction was built, and tiled, but it lacked the metal for the rails and signals because of the war effort. The station shells at Liberty, Van Siclen, Shephard and Euclid were also all built before the war, and then construction stopped because of the war. Some early proposals for the IND Fulton St Line called for it to continue out on Fulton Street under the existing Jamaica Line structure and emerge just past the Crescent St station and connect to the Liberty Avenue structure from north of Liberty Av instead of south of it which is where it connects at present. This might be why the first portion of the IND ended at the odd location of Rockaway Avenue since the planners probably weren't quite sure where the line was going to go once it reached the ENY area. After unification, the concept of competition was no longer considered and the subway south of Rockaway Avenue was routed slightly north under Truxton Park to provide a transfer to the Broadway Junction complex. The possibility of replacing the BMT Jamaica Line, or connecting with the Jamaica Avenue Elevated was considered. A map from 1950 indicates that while the "mainline" portion of the Pitkin Avenue subway was intended to have connected to the LIRR ROW in the area of Aqueduct in 1948, by the time of the 1950 map those plans had been abandoned and the connection we now know as Liberty Junction was shown OK, as I am looking now at the May 2004 edition of the NYD Division Bulletion of the ERA, there is a created schematic map on page 6 that showed a proposal of the IND Fulton Street Subway line going past Euclid Avenue and into Queens. The credit goes to ERA member Jeffrey Erlitz for putting the map in the article, and it is based upon the Board of Transportation's drawing entitled "Study for Alignment and Grades from Grant Avenue to 106th Street with Connection to Rockaway Division of the L.I.R.R.", dated October 15, 1940 and revised April 16, 1945. The list of stations of the main trunk line were to have been as follows: 1. 76th Street (four track local station, side wall platforms, interlocking switches east of the station) 2. 84th Street (four track local station, side wall platforms) 3. Cross Bay Boulevard (four track express station, island platforms, interlocking switches west and east of the station; track arrangement would have almost similar to 168th Street-Washington Heights). From here, the line would split up to then continue with two track towards a stub end terminal station at 105th Street, plus a semi-storage lay-up yard east of Cross Bay Boulevard, and a two-track connection to the Rockaway Line going southward about a point north of what would be the present Aqueduct-North Conduit Avenue. The track connection between the Fulton Street and the Rockaway Line was to be tunnel portals at Pitkin Avenue, and as seen on the schematic drawing in the article. Thanks. I've been exploring that area ever since childhood (ca. 1960). The portion of Linden Blvd. between Centerville St. and Rockaway Blvd. does not show up in either the 1924 photos (NYC Map) or the 1954 photos (HistoricAerials.com). There may have been a curb cut at Rockaway Blvd. but nothing else. For a while, when Dumont Av. was first built through from 86th St. to 88th St. (and signed 135th Av, by the way) back around 1980, there was a curb cut for Linden Blvd. on the southwest corner next to a temporary building for real estate sales, but it was later filled in. If there was intended to be a stop at 105th St, that street would have to have been extended through the parking lot to Linden Blvd. It therefore appears that the IND was intended to turn from Pitkin Avenue onto Linden Boulevard near Sitka Street. jeff,76st was constructed 1941/2.i,ve got issuses of the era`s bulletin showing construction just east of liberty&penn.ave circa 1942.since i,m using a library pc I won`t be able to field any questions unless i,m emailed,then it still will take time it was built 1941to 1942. all construction on the A line ceased in may of 1942 when it was extended a little beyound euclid ave.this is according to fredric kramer in "building the ind" this section was a deep hole,just look how the 4 layup tracks dip under the grant ave.station.on the street there was nothing.all of those houses on the queens side were post WW2 construction.there were just a few buildings on the bklyn side that are pre WW2 construction. . Evidence There is a transit authority manhole just a few feet east toward 76th Street at Eldert’s Lane. It is located at the edge of the parking lot looking eastbound at Eldert’s Lane. The markings have been erased due to heavy auto traffic over the years. This may be the entrance to the tunnel beyond the 4 layup tracks at Grant Avenue. If so, this might be the easiest access to 76th Street. (Tunnelrat) In 1978, he said that he and his partner, a former transit cop, took him into Pitkin yard, got a set of keys from the yardmaster and took him to the cinder block wall, which at the time had a structure door in it. They went through the door and walked a distance on ballast. There were no rails or phantom trains until they reached the 76th Street platform they walked the platform to the end, They said that it was played out like an IND station with blue tiles on the wall. The center entrance to the street was sealed up, the other side, the city bound side was incomplete. They went as far as the edge of the eastbound platform. They shined their flashlights down the hole toward Queens and could not see the end of the tunnel. It was a typical four track right-of-way, with no tracks, and no roadbed, and lights. In 1962, I (Randyo) met an IND C/R that had been in the unfinished station on a long relay move a few years before. A fellow TA employee mentioned that when he was flagging for the construction of Grant Avenue in the early 1950s, he and another flagman got lost in the labyrinth of tunnels S/O Euclid and ended up in a partially built station which fit the description given by the C/R who first told me about it. The long relay move possibly from Pitkin Yard makes sense since from personal observation I know that the A7 and A8 Yard leads were at one time connected to the existing leads and were used for some yard moves before they were disconnected and removed. These accounts describe the station similarly and were given by people who didn't know each other so that seems to lend credibility to the existence of such a structure. The listing of 2 emergency exits on Pitkin Avenue in the approximate area of the station in the trainmaster's emergency exit book in 1983 also adds to the credibility. As I have mentioned over the years, when I was a trainmaster in 1983, the emergency exit book in the command center showed 2 emergency exits, one on each side of Pitkin Ave, between Grant Av and the next street which I believe is Eldert Lane. These would be past the definitely known end of construction. When George Abere and I attempted to find them when we explored the area in 1983, they were nowhere to be found. I don't recall the date the book was issued and unfortunately it has been updated and those exits are not shown in the new edition. What we did find was a manhole in the middle of Pitkin Av about midway between Grant and the next street with a cover marked "Independent Subway System City of New York." When I drove past that spot about 5 years ago, that manhole was no longer there and the street looked to have been freshly repaved. Some of my sources who support the existence of the station shell have indicated that the subway infrastructure only extends to around 79th Street so that would be a good reason why nothing was observed at 80th Street since it would be beyond the point where construction ended. in 1968 I was a transit cop working the A line.I asked the m/m if he knew anything about 76st,YES was the reply.in the early 1950`s he was a conductor on the pump train when they were ordered to go beyound the portals[the cinderblock wall]as the tunnel had flooded.they went a"distance" beyound the wall untill they hit water,they did see the shell station& your guess on what is a distance is as good as mine.you DON`T put up a cinder block wall at end of construction,you put up a concrete wall.he had heard from other m/m who had did a long relay from pitkin yard that they had found a "ghost"station at the end of the b/b.he did not see this for himself. Explanation The surveyors may have encountered problems with the ground under Pitkin Avenue that would have made further construction either prohibitively expensive or outright impossible. The decision to halt construction may have been made before construction actually ceased and to cover up whatever error did take place the area in question was simply sealed up to avoid potential embarrassment on the part of any individuals or government agencies and/or officials that might have been involved. Possible serious water problems – Until the early 1960's, the space now occupied by 79th St. south of Linden Blvd. contained a channeled watercourse, no doubt connected to the creek further south. The 1924 photos show this creek extending north to South Conduit Av. with what looks like a dirt path continuing to the north towards the cemetery on the north side of Pitkin Avenue. Perhaps there was still an underground stream there. Someone on the forum’s father had observed what appeared to be major street construction in the area of Conduit Blvd in the late 1940s, which may indicate that any sewer work done in the area may have been done at that time rather than at a later date. Since apparently there was a lot of non transit construction going on in the area as well as transit work, as I mentioned in some other posts, it could be possible that some other city department like water supply or even a private company like Con Ed or Brooklyn Union Gas might have built the infrastructure past the wall at the end of the known subway. It may be that the other agency or company was informed of the impending subway construction and opted to excavate the area for both utilities and the subway rather than have their newly installed utilities dug up again for the subway construction. That may explain why the MTA may have no records of such construction since it may not have been built by the B of T and therefore there would be no records to transfer. With this in mind, the PSC requested that the Bkln Edison Co which was building in the area at the time, construct its circuit breaker chambers as small sections of subway tunnel so that should the line be expanded, the additional tunnel sections could be easily connected to them. That is why the NYCTA records don't show any such construction even though it exists. Those sections were not built either by or for the PSC or any dual contract subcontractor and so as far as the TA is concerned they were never built and do not exist. If 76 St does exist and additionally, is not itself actually in use by any agency or utility company, any records of its construction may have by now either been destroyed or at best may be extremely difficult to find since nobody but transit historians like us would really know what to look for or even care about it or know what it is even if they found it. |
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