Richmond Hill (LIRR station)

Richmond Hill

The Richmond Hill station as it appears in 2008, photographed from a passing NYCS J train.
Coordinates 40°42′02″N 73°49′56″W / 40.70056°N 73.83222°WCoordinates: 40°42′02″N 73°49′56″W / 40.70056°N 73.83222°W
Line(s) Montauk Branch
Platforms 1 island platform
Tracks 2
History
Opened 1868
Closed March 16, 1998
Rebuilt 1923
Electrified August 29, 1905
Services
Preceding station   LIRR   Following station
Ridgewood station Montauk Branch
(current and former locations)		 Shops station

Richmond Hill Station was a station on the Montauk Branch of the Long Island Rail Road in the Richmond Hill section of the borough of Queens, in New York City. The station was located at Myrtle Avenue and spanned from the intersection of Jamaica Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard through an unnumbered section of Hillside Avenue.

History

Richmond Hill station on an 1891 map

Richmond Hill Station was originally built by the South Side Railroad of Long Island in 1868 as Clarenceville Station, which is not to be confused with the LIRR Clarenceville Station on the Atlantic Branch. The name was changed to Richmond Hill in November 1871. It had two tracks with a station house on one side and an enclosed wooden shelter on the other. The original building survived until a grade crossing elimination project replaced it with an elevated structure in 1923.[1]

The station was closed on March 16, 1998, along with nine others (including the other four on the Lower Montauk branch) due to low ridership (this station and Penny Bridge, also on the Lower Montauk, had just one daily rider each at the time of their closure).[2] The station and platform remain, though access via the staircase is gated off.

Configuration

Richmond Hill was the only station on the Lower Montauk Branch that was elevated and had a high-level platform for passengers to wait for trains (the other four stations only had strips of pavement beside the tracks, requiring passengers to wait on track level and climb aboard trains). The station's island platform had a small shelter in the middle and two stairways (one in the shelter that goes down to Hillside Avenue and the other on the railroad east end that goes down to Lefferts Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue). The Montauk Branch has two tracks at this location.

References

  1. ↑ Morrison, David D.; Pakaluk, Valerie (2003). Long Island Rail Road Stations (Images of Rail). Chicago: Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-1180-3.
  2. ↑ Sengupta, Somini (March 15, 1998). "End of the Line for L.I.R.R.'s 10 Loneliest Stops". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-08-07.

External links