Interlocking Walkthrough: LEAD

This weeks interlocking walkthrough takes a look at LEAD interlocking, one of the LIRR's most unique interlockings.  LEAD interlocking lies on the Long Beach Branch between Island Park and Long Beach stations.

Shortly after leaving Island Park and crossing over the Long Beach Road grade crossing the two Long Beach Branch merge into one and the line goes over the LEAD drawbridge.

LEAD interlocking gets its name from the section of the Reynolds Channel it passes over, Wreck Lead.  When the railroad was originally constructed through here there was a much older swing bridge that existed at this crossing.  At one point the old swing bridge and control tower was demolished and the current drawbridge and LEAD tower that we know today was put into service.

Today's post will focus more on LEAD interlocking, the tracks themselves.  A post which will appear tomorrow morning will have a lot more information on the LEAD drawbridge which spans the Reynolds Channel.

The interlocking itself begins a couple hundred yards after the Long Beach Road crossing, immediately to the west of Island Park station.  Right after the interlocking begins Long Beach Branch track 2 merges into Long Beach 1.  As soon as the two tracks merge together the speed limit drops down to 30 m.p.h. (though southbound trains will get further restricted later on).

View of the LEAD drawbridge going south into
Long Beach station.

Trains going southbound into the station get knocked down a cab signal aspect or two because the train is arriving at a terminal station (Long Beach is really that close to the drawbridge).  Southbound trains usually get knocked down to 15 m.p.h. on the bridge and they will ultimately get further knocked down to 5 m.p.h. for the final couple hundred yards.

Northbound trains can cross the drawbridge at speeds of up to 30 m.p.h. if all goes well.

LEAD interlocking officially ends just after the drawbridge ends.   Only a small handful of switches into the Long Beach station and yard are part of LEAD interlocking.  Everything else at Long Beach is hand-thrown.

Long Beach still retains a number of position light signals, including a number of dwarf signals (as pictured in the photo above).

LEAD interlocking is also home to one of the LIRR's few remaining active towers, LEAD tower.  If you look in the photo above you can see LEAD tower, it's the dark brick structure on the drawbridge itself, to the right of the steel lift structure.

LEAD essentially needs a tower here because of the movable bridge at this location.  It could be possible to remote the interlocking and control of the bridge to Jamaica, but the best rule of thumb when it comes to moveable bridges is to have an actual human on site making sure everything is going well (a computer screen might say the bridge is down, but if something malfunctioned, it could not be a pretty ending.

That essentially completes today's tour of LEAD interlocking.  Be on the lookout for tomorrow's post which will detail more thoroughly the operations of LEAD drawbridge itself.  Furthermore, Friday's post will take a look at the three other moveable bridges on LIRR territory.