Long Island Rail Road HO Scale Models

The Long Island Rail Road traces its origins to 1834, when it was chartered with the ambitious goal of providing a through route between New York City and Boston. The plan called for trains to cross Long Island from a Brooklyn waterfront terminal to Greenport on the North Fork, where passengers would board a ferry to Stonington, Connecticut, and continue by rail to Boston. The first section of track, running between the Brooklyn waterfront and Jamaica, opened on April 18, 1836. This original routing through Boston was rendered obsolete by 1849, when an all-land rail connection through Connecticut made the island ferry route impractical for long-distance travel. The LIRR then turned its attention to serving Long Island itself, competing with a number of smaller local railroads that had developed across the island. During the 1870s, under railroad president Conrad Poppenhusen and his successor Austin Corbin, the LIRR systematically acquired and consolidated these competing lines, bringing them under unified management and establishing the network's basic geographic shape. Financial difficulties plagued the railroad through much of the late nineteenth century, and in 1900 the Pennsylvania Railroad purchased a controlling interest in the LIRR as part of its own strategic plan to gain direct access to Midtown Manhattan. The Pennsylvania Railroad's resources allowed the LIRR to modernize substantially, including the introduction of electric operation in 1905 and the opening of tunnels beneath the East River that gave the railroad access to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan beginning on September 8, 1910. The PRR subsidized the LIRR through the first half of the twentieth century, enabling continued expansion, but the postwar decline of the railroad industry eroded those financial supports. By 1949 the LIRR had entered receivership, and the State of New York, recognizing the railroad's essential role in connecting Long Island's rapidly growing suburban communities to New York City, began providing subsidies through the 1950s. In June 1965 the state completed the purchase of the LIRR from the Pennsylvania Railroad for sixty-five million dollars, placing it under the newly created Metropolitan Commuter Transit Authority, which was reorganized and renamed the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968. Under MTA ownership the railroad continued to modernize its fleet and infrastructure, and it was formally converted to a subsidiary public benefit corporation in 1980. The railroad operates out of four western terminals in New York City, with Pennsylvania Station in Midtown Manhattan serving as the primary terminus for the vast majority of its trains, accessed via the East River Tunnels. A major expansion of that terminal capacity was realized with the completion of East Side Access, a project first proposed in 1968 that ultimately cost approximately eleven billion dollars and delivered a new eight-track underground terminal called Grand Central Madison beneath Grand Central Terminal. Limited service began there on January 25, 2023, with full service commencing on February 27, 2023. Other significant infrastructure investments during the twenty-first century included the addition of a second track on the formerly single-tracked portion of the Main Line between Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma, completed in September 2018, and the expansion of that same corridor to three tracks between Floral Park and Hicksville, completed in 2022 in conjunction with the East Side Access opening. The Long Island Rail Road holds the distinction of being the oldest railroad in the United States still operating under its original name and charter, a record of continuous operation spanning nearly two centuries. Headquartered since 1913 in the headhouse of Jamaica Station, which serves as the primary hub connecting its various branches, the LIRR operates 126 stations across approximately 319 route miles on two main lines and eight major branches stretching from New York City to the eastern tip of Suffolk County. Freight operations over its trackage are handled under contract by the New York and Atlantic Railway. With average weekday ridership in the hundreds of thousands, the LIRR has long held the distinction of being the busiest commuter railroad in North America, and it remains one of the few commuter rail systems in the world to operate continuously around the clock, every day of the year.