Built in 1923 as a mechanical plant, the flat junction between the LIRR Main Line and the Oyster Bay branch has become a major bottleneck in recent years. The new third track is being constructed south of the existing Main Line due to the divergence of the Oyster Bay branch to the north so demolition or relocation of the tower was inevitable and the MTA ultimately chose the former.
The flat junction also involves a grade crossing and is in an area of poor drainage, requiring the whole plant to be dug our and re-graded on an almost yearly basis. It will be interesting in what the final configuration will be.
As was seen with the Ronkonkoma double tracking project, the existing position light signals between QUEENS and DIVIDE will likely be removed and replaced with Reduced Aspect dwarfs.
How the interlocking will be operated is a bit less clear. It is likely that the NASSAU territory between QUEENS and DIVIDE on the Main Line and the entire Oyster Bay branch will be giver to a new dispatcher at Jamaica. However I believe that DIVIDE tower had alternate control of at least the Main Line portion of NASSAU's territory so until the dust settles with the third track, the LIRR might just wheel in a second office chair there. It is also not clear what will be done about the NASSAU train order station as orders are frequently hooped up to Osyter Bay trains for various reasons.
I was personally able to visit NASSAU in 2007 and again in 2016 and I feel confident enough in my documentation that feel no reason to brave the NYC COVID hot zone to rush back up there. The only exception is the pneumatic switch machine used for the NASSAU movable point diamond. If anyone heads out there please get as many photos as you can as a work crew thwarted my 2016 attempt.
As you can see I have some inside photos of NASSAU, but I plan to do a full interlocking write-up once the new configuration is in place so I won't need to do a followup. Until that point I'll probably work on getting QUEENS out.
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