Interlocking Walkthrough: NECK

NECK interlocking, located just east of Great Neck, roughly 14 miles east of Long Island City.  The interlocking, which marks the end of double-tracked territory on the Port Washington Branch, sees a good bit of use over the course of any normal day.  The interlocking was put into service sometime in the 1980's.  Here's a bird's eye view of the location.

The interlocking is somewhat simple in design.  At the end of the two track line there is a crossover that takes trains from track 2 and sends them into track 1 for the reminder of the run to Port Washington.

But NECK interlocking has an added twist: a built in pocket track.  This pocket track, which makes the high level of rush hour service along the Port Washington Branch possible, lies just to the other end of track 2 east of Great Neck station.  Eastbound trains that are continuing to Port Washington would merge into track 1 using the crossover just to the east of the station, while trains terminating at Great Neck and turning back west will pull east on track 2 straight into the Pocket Track where they can turn around.

Once the train has turned around they can then use the second crossover diagrammed above to get from the pocket track back to track 1 for their next westbound run.

At the very east end of the pocket track there is a switch that allows the pocket track to merge back into track 1 going east.

So in summation, going from west to east, there's the crossover that allows eastbound trains continuing to Port Washington to go from track 2 to track 1, there's the crossover that allows turning trains coming off the pocket track to get back onto track 1, there's the pocket track which allows trains to turn at Great Neck and thus allows a much higher throughput on the line, and then there's one last switch that allows the trains on the Pocket Track to merge back into track 1.

It is worth noting that this pocket track mentioned here is the same pocket track the LIRR is looking to extend as a part of the Colonial Road Improvement Project.  A post that will appear tomorrow will go into a lot more detail about the Great Neck Pocket Track, how its used, its importance, and how the LIRR plans to expand it.

But for now, we return to NECK interlocking.  NECK interlocking is home to the the "old style" position light signals that are located on gantries at the western end of the interlocking.  There are signals on pedestals to the eastern point of the interlocking for westbound trains coming off the Manhasset Viaduct.

There is no control tower at NECK interlocking.  From its inception, the switches at NECK (like all the other Port Washington Branch interlockings) were controlled from HAROLD tower, near the busy HAROLD interlocking in Queens.  When HAROLD tower was closed in 1999, control over all of the Port Washington Branch interlockings was handed over to the Jamaica Control Center.

For the first portion of the interlocking, the speed for trains is 60 m.p.h. (which is the general speed limit along most of the Port Washington Branch).  About halfway through the interlocking, however, the speed drops down to 50 m.p.h. for the remainder of the run to Port Washington.

To the west, the nearest interlocking is BAY interlocking near Bayside.  NECK interlocking is the easternmost interlocking on the Port Washington Branch, as the switches into and out of Port Washington yard are not part of any interlocking.

That's just about it for this week's Interlocking Walkthorugh.  Tomorrow's post will detail a lot more about the Great Neck Pocket Track.  The next installment of our Interlocking Walkthroughs will appear next Wednesday with PD Interlocking on the Montauk Branch.