Nobody’s Riding These Rails
The hanging gardens of Forest Hills loom over this old rail bridge, as seen from above and below. Photos by Matt Hampton |
By Matt Hampton
Over the streets of Ozone Park and Woodhaven, the ghost of a long dead railway sags under broken bottles, old shoes and enough vegetation to qualify as a Queens interpretation on the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The railway, known colloquially as the Dead Tracks, is a former Long Island Rail Road fixture, a branch of the main line that ran from Rego Park across Jamaica Bay to the Rockaways.
Seen from above, the Rockaway Branch, as it was originally called, looks like a winding cord of trees running north-south through the borough.
The line itself was shut down in 1962 after numerous fires on the trestles of Jamaica Bay made maintenance and repair more costly than demand. The tracks remain, however, running through backyards, between apartment buildings and past everything from parks to cemeteries.
A tree grows out of this defunct overpass. |
Since its closure, no effort has been made to preserve the line or the tracks. As a result, the Rockaway Branch has become home to a collection of enterprising vegetation and wildlife, using the undisturbed switching boxes and overpasses as gigantic planters.
Local flora isn’t the only thing rooted to the tracks. Barbed wire squats tangled in threatening piles just yards from baseball fields and parks that are still in use near 66th Avenue in Rego Park. Dirt piles from construction projects represent nearly impassable mounds. Residents who live nearby even throw out dead Christmas trees at the feet of old signal towers.
Since the right of way is largely intact, save the interference of intense foliage, past plans for the Rockaway Branch suggested it could be used as a direct route to Kennedy Airport from Manhattan. Some of the line is still used by the MTA, and it could easily service the airport because of sheer proximity. Concern was raised about the age of the tracks, however, and the notion that costs of a clean-up could be deceptively large. The rusted and buckled track would have to be completely removed, interfering with neighborhoods and businesses that have sprung up around the old line. Further, residents who lived extremely close to the tracks were disturbed at the proposition of a train running so close to their homes.
Ultimately, the proposal fell by the wayside when AirTrain service began in late 2003.
Some roots of trees have found a home between the old rails that have all shifted over time. |
Kevin Walsh, of the website Forgotten-NY.com, walked the Rockaway Branch as part of an unofficial anthropological study in 2000.
“At spots the ground can be washed out and absent,” Walsh said. “There, the tracks go through midair with nothing underneath.”
Walsh continued to note that while some stations have remained almost eerily unaffected, the railroad completely disappears in places and has been plowed over to make way for a parking lot in Forest Hills.
In its current state, and without strong voices advocating a clean-up, the fate of the Rockaway Branch may be to wallow in relative obscurity. Many Queens residents are familiar with the tracks, in the same way that the people of Italy recognize the ruins of ancient Rome, but presently the Rockaway Branch’s only future may be as a barely visible relic of Queens’ past.
