New York City's narrowest jungle stretches across 3.5 miles of Central Queens, concealing the ruins of a rail line that's been gathering rust for half a century. Abandoned by a bankrupt Long Island Railroad in 1962, the Rockaway Beach Branch is stirring debate today as opposing visions for its future emerge. The plan to turn a 3.5-mile stretch of abandoned railroad tracks in Queens into a vibrant park now has a blueprint. Queens Commerce Chamber Backs Park Plan For Abandoned Rail Line - Forest Hills, NY - The Queens Chamber of Commerce says the abandoned Rockaway Beach rail line, which runs from Rego Park to … The Rockaway Beach Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road in Queens, New York City, United States. No purchase necessary. The two rail lines were connected, and in railroad lingo this location was better known as ‘Glendale Junction’. The Rockaway Beach Branch was a rail line owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road in Queens, New York City, United States. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. An outlandishly overgrown abandoned railroad was guaranteed to be a popular playground. No train has traversed its overgrown rails since 1962. Growing up in Rego Park, Queens, which back in the 1960s was a neat, tidy, well kept neighborhood, an abandoned anything was a rare mystical treat. It has been abandoned for five decades, a railway relic that once served Queens passengers on the old Rockaway Beach branch of the Long Island Rail Road. An overgrown overpass at Union Turnpike and Woodhaven Boulevard, part of the proposed Queensway project. Quietly making its way through the overgrown backyards of a Queens suburb is an abandoned elevated railroad. A passenger traveling on the Rockaway Beach Branch in the 1920s would board a southbound train at Whitepot Junction, pass through developing neighborhoods in Forest Hills, Glendale, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, and Ozone Park, and traverse a burgeoning estuarine habitat called Jamaica Bay before arriving in the sandy Rockaways, then a popular vacation destination for privileged Manhattanites known as “New York’s Playground.”  Today, the neighborhoods are flourishing, Jamaica Bay is losing 40 acres of marshland a year, and the isolated Rockaways are entering a stage of redevelopment. Looking northwest at abandoned southbound track of Rockaway Beach Branch. It was a lovely forest (for Queens, lol) even then. ( Log Out /  Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). Now I have to go dig up some of those pics! The station has two tracks and an island platform. The Trust for Public Land is seeking private funding for a feasability study as a first step toward making the park, dubbed the “Queensway,” a reality. Â Some early railroads cut through Queens to serve already established towns like Flushing and Jamaica and some were built as real estate ventures that went bust, but by the turn of the 20th Century all of these had been consolidated into the Long Island Railroad or been abandoned. These tracks were… We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders. An outlandishly overgrown abandoned railroad was guaranteed to be a popular playground. Built in 1877 and operated by the Long Island Railroad, the train line ran from affluent Rego Park down into the Rockaways, carrying merry making Queens residents to the beaches there. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. I just love these photos, you’re incredibly talented. Every weekday we compile our most wondrous stories and deliver them straight to you. , When I took up photography, I took many a black and white roll (developed in my college’s darkroom) n my travels along the rail line. ( Log Out /  The Long Island Rail Road has recently abandoned a number of stations In Queens and Nassau.Many of these stations are along the Montauk Branch between Jamaica and Long Island City. Oh well… the full second Avenue Subway will be built before any transit initiatives favoring Queens are even discussed! One of the last taxidermists in New York City. Trudging through this palsied limb of the New York City transit system, it’s hard to imagine either plan coming to fruition here, a place where few people venture and fewer have a good reason to. The ruins of Vancouver's abandoned heritage railway. And with the huge success of the west side High Line, attentions turned inevitably to doing the same for Queens. 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