NASSAU Tower - Gone But Not Forgotten

You may recall that some years ago I was sounding the alarm about the pending demolition of NASSAU tower in Mineola, Long Island. Well, New York being completely dysfunctional, the demolition to make way for the LIRR Main Line Third Track project took far longer than anticipated, eventually taking place sometime between August 2021. The demolition was just in time for the complete collapse of peak-period commuter travel in the NYC area rendering the third track capacity expansion completely unnecessary (😢). 

NASSAU interlocking, sans Tower, February 2022.

Anyway as the third track megaproject continues to creep forward, someone spotted NASSAU's late model interlocking panel dumped out back near some storage containers. It was unclear that the fate of this artifact was to be, as in museum preservation, scrapping, theft or vanishing into a railroader's basement, however it is worth checking out for any signal fans who happen to live in the area (and who might own a truck and some high visibility vests, wink wink).

Apparently this panel type interface was replaced by a VDU late in the tower's existence as plans were carried out for the transfer of operations to the Jamaica dispatching center as was done with QUEENS tower a few years ago. Thanks to multiple visits to the tower while it was in service along with some contributed interior photos I plan to post a more complete retrospecting on NASSAU tower in the near future, so stay tuned for that. 

In other news the pneumatic movable point diamond at the NASSAU flat junction has been removed. A major maintenance headache, the diamond has been replaced by a second Oyster Bay switch onto main track one, creating a bottleneck by forcing all Oyster Bay trains to platform on the westbound local platform. 

You can see the new configuration in the LIRR Main Line 3rd Track plan.

This type of 2-tracks into 1-track configuration is extremely rare as it doubles the chance of a switch failure impacting main line traffic compared with merging both branch tracks before a single main track switch. This will also end of ritual of inbound and outbound Oyster Bay train passing eachother at NASSAU to minimize impacts to Main Line service. The ideal solution would have been a two track flat junction using full turnouts and a mid-platform signal on the new eastbound track 3. That would have allow for the option to use both platforms if extended wrong running on track #1 was not available.