West Hempstead Branch

West Hempstead Branch
Side view of West Hempstead Station, from Hempstead Avenue.
Overview
Type	Commuter rail
System	Long Island Rail Road
Status	Operational
Locale	Nassau County, New York, USA
Termini	Valley Stream West Hempstead
Stations	5
Services	West Hempstead Branch
Operation
Opened	1893
Owner	Long Island Rail Road
Operator(s)	Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm)
Electrification	750 Volts (DC) Third rail, since 1926
Route map AirTrain JFK Zone 1 Zone 3 10.8 Jamaica 13.6 St. Albans Queens/Nassau County border Zone 3 Zone 4 17.9 Valley Stream 19.3 Westwood 20.1 Malverne 21.2 Lakeview 21.9 Hempstead Gardens 22.5 West Hempstead Distances shown in miles from Pennsylvania Station. This diagram:

Distances shown in miles from Pennsylvania Station.

The West Hempstead Branch is an electrified rail line owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in the U.S. state of New York. It runs between Valley Stream, New York, and West Hempstead, New York.

The branch separates from the Montauk Branch just east of Valley Stream, and runs northeast to West Hempstead. The line has one track between Westwood station and Hempstead Gardens and two from there to the end of the line in West Hempstead, the southbound or east track being a siding. The right-of-way of the West Hempstead Branch is wide enough for two tracks for its whole length. There are three grade-crossings on the line, reducing the maximum speed to 65 miles per hour (105 km/h), and because of curves at the Lakeview and Malverne stations, the speed is lowered to 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) on that stretch.

Since Valley Stream only has platforms on the Atlantic Branch, which parallels the Montauk Branch to the south, most West Hempstead Branch trains that serve Valley Stream are shuttles that terminate there.

The branch had one manual block from “HC” to “VA” until “WM” block limit was installed in 1935.

As the smallest LIRR commuter branch, the West Hempstead Branch was one of the last in the system to modernize. It was the last of the electrified LIRR branches to receive high level platforms, in the early 1970s, and the last of the electrified branches to be fitted with Automatic Train Control (known as Automatic Speed Control by the LIRR), which it received in October 2009 during a system overhaul and upgrade at Valley Interlocking. The branch has the lowest ridership of any on the Long Island Rail Road. Nevertheless, the branch is one of the LIRR lines most vulnerable to closure, and has been threatened with abandonment in recent years. In September 2010 until November 22, 2014, the line had no weekend service due to budgetary constraints, (except for St. Albans, which has always had passenger services since Babylon Branch trains stop there on weekends).