Interlocking Walkthrough: FARM

FARM interlocking, short for Farmingdale, is a pretty busy interlocking on the Mainline just east of Farmingdale Station.  In fact, its' where the Mainline shrinks from two tracks to one (an event that causes the LIRR lots of problems and something they're hoping to fix).  FARM sits in both Nassau and Suffok counties, with FARM 1 being split roughly halfway down the middle by the border between the two.  Here's a bird's eye view of the interlocking.

I split the diagrams up for ease of viewing.  You can see the eastern limit of FARM 1 in the second diagram for scale:

FARM 1 and FARM 2 are separated by less than a mile, FARM 1 is the switches and North Side Track just to the east of the station, and FARM 2 is the actual place where the two tracks merge into one.  "Back in the day" FARM 2 used to be called PW, but I haven't a clue why.  FARM 2 was given its current name in September 1987.

The Switches
We'll start with FARM 1, right after leaving the station going east there is a crossover from Mainline 1 (the westbound track) to Mainline 2 (the eastbound track).  Then there is a crossover to the North Side Track.  The North Side Track has third rail power, and can be used to store trains, but in reality, it really isn't used all that much.  Most of the trains that terminate in Farmingdale turn right in the station and head back west.  However, down the road the siding might get some use turning new trains that would come to be post-ESA.  The North Side Track extends west a good bit before this crossover, and that extra space (that even goes past the platform for a bit before curving north) is used to store MoW and other work train equipment on occasion.

Right after crossing over into Suffolk County, the two spur for the Price Industrial Park split off from the North Side Track.  There are currently no active customers that receive freight at those two spur tracks (I think they're in pretty rotten condition anyways)

Just before FARM 1 ends, there is another crossover from Mainline 2 to the North Side Track for good measure.  The North Side Track continues east for a little bit more past this point, and it then merges back into Mainline 2 a little further down the line.  The switch back into Mainline 2 is not interlocked.

Curving off to the south just after FARM 1 ends is the Marjam Supply Company spur.  Unlike it's friend just to the north, this is an active freight siding.  To this day Marjam Supply still receives drywall and lumber on flat cars and in boxcars from NYAR on occasion.

Next, we meet FARM 2 a little bit further down the line.  FARM 2's principle switch can be seen flipping back and forth each day as it takes trains to/from the double tracked mainline all the way to the west and puts them onto one long single tracked line for the rest of the way to Greenport.

Also included in FARM 2 interlocking is one of the switches one the west leg of Pinelawn Wye.  The Wye recently had some work done to it and I'm not sure of it's current status.  I'll track down some information on Railroad.net and I'll get back to you later in the week on that.

At this point FARM 2 ends.  There are more manual switches as part of the east leg of Pinelawn Wye to the east of this point, but they're not interlocked.

Signals
FARM interlocking still has the old position light signals and they can be seen all over the place, from the station platform or from one of the many roads that parallel the tracks at some point.

Towers
There is no active tower at FARM interlocking, and there never has.  DIVIDE enjoys a nice monopoly on controlling all interlockings east of it on the Mainline and Port Jefferson Branch, and this is no exception.  The switches here have been remoted to DIVIDE since day 1.

Neighbors
To the west, BETH interlocking is only a short distance away.  However, JS interlocking, the nearest interlocking to the east, is a bit to far away from comfort.  Hopefully the double track project will fix that.

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You might notice in the lower diagram above the former location of Republic Station.  It was right by the Route 110 overpass, and you can still see some of the remains from the staircases from Route 110 when passing by there today.

Rebuilding a Republic station in this location has been an idea tossed around by the MTA from time to time.  The MTA's wishlist involves rebuilding this station and turning it into an intermodal center with lots of bus connections and parking and the like (a Mineola for western Suffolk County, if you will).  I don't see anything happening on this until a couple years after ESA opens, or bus ridership along the Route 110 corridor explodes first.  In my opinion, the LIRR's going to have to a lot of work on it's whole connecting services thing first before anything like this can become a real practicality, but we shall see.