#long island railroad

[tjtevlin]

Photo by @patrickkoconnor

[planetoidsfun]

These days, I mostly spend my time flipping the bird at Long Island Railroad trains, or at the LIRR, as an abstract entity.

Here I'm giving the finger to Jamaica Station.

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

Northeast corridor electric trains

[imfunnyha]

[amazonbabystuff]

[longislandmasterblog]

Come to Long Island, where you can view our waters from the comfort of public transportation!

[trainphilos]

Adieu to 2023

2023 is history. Not that I will look back upon it fondly. Too many scary things reared their ugly heads during the year gone by. I fear though, that 2024 will disappoint us even more. November 2024 will be a water shed moment for the US. And I am not hopeful. But enough of these dark thoughts. It has been quite a while since the last blog appeared here. I just never seemed to find the time and…

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

We strongly Advocate for Lesbianism in all aspects of your life where possible, it's good for the soul and for the efficiency of the trains probably

[planetoidsfun]

Ramiro Zeta T-Shirt. My Long Island Railroad commuting shirt. NOT for sale.

[eltristan]

LIRR ran four of these little hirail VW Transporters back in the 1960's -- basically for less cost and hassle than a Fairmount Speeder and just as good on gas...

Came equipped with a homemade pintle jack turntable for fast U-turns! Seemingly the track maintenance crews, who called themselves the Cockney slang "Gandy Dancers" lovingly called this versatile little Volkswagen Transporter a "Gandyvvagen"

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

These are DC power right?

1500 Volts DC just like the South Shore Railroad rather than the 12,000 Volts AC used elsewhere

This one is the Old South Shore Railroad in Indiana and is an Essential service for getting commuters into Chicago

However these lower one each use a different electrical system some use the 12,000 Volts AC but others use 750 Volt third rail or 3000 Volts DC used by the Lackawanna Railroad

And also the AC lines use a mixture of 60 and 25 Hertz traction systems

And of the course the M2/M4/M6 and M8 are multi voltage and can switch between multiple different electrical systems

2023.5.30~12.15 東京 埼玉　西武新宿線 西武拝島線

西武新2000系 本川越・拝島側の小窓

西向きか北向きなので曇り・雨の日か、逆光が多い

[lesbianshepard]

i once heard a someone praise the LIRR as a fantastic example of what public transport should be like and it was at that moment i fully realized exactly how pathetic and broken public transport in the usa really is.

[aryburn-trains]

New York Penn Station by Bob Anderson Via Flickr: Multi-view,New Haven FL9 pair 2013 2010. GG1 4938 approaching Hudson River Tunnel, Long Island fleet standing by. Sept 1967.

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

Are any of your Emu's married pair formation?

Cause almost all Multiple Units here are Married Pairs

An introduction to VR multiple units, part 5: Sm6

The Sm6 Allegro. When I started this series about our multiple units, I first thought I would cover the Sm6 in the "operated for others" -series, then thought I would leave it out altogether... but events overtook my plans and now I'm introducing them as VR's own multiple units, although they are not yet in operation as VR trains.

An Sm6 unit on the Kerava-Lahti line, currently the only bit of high-speed rail in Finland, 2011. Teemu Peltonen, Vaunut.org.

Since the 1990s, two daily return trains had been operated between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, Russia: the Sibelius, which used VR carriages, and the Repin, which used RŽD carriages. In 2006, the two rail operators decided to replace the locomotive-hauled trains, which took five hours to make the trip, with jointly-owned high-speed trains. For this purpose, a new jointly-owned subsidiary Karelian Trains was established.

Two Sm6's during pre-service entry test runs at Vainikkala, the border station between Finland and Russia, with the locomotive-hauled St. Petersburg train Sibelius on the right. Lari Nylund, Vaunut.org.

After a round of tenders, Karelian Trains opted for the Pendolino design (already used by VR in the form of the Sm3) from Alstom in 2007, with four units to be delivered in 2010 (there was also an option for two additional units, which was never taken up). Although the exterior design of the new Sm6 units was almost identical to the Sm3, in terms of technology they feature numerous improvements compared to the older class, and were outfitted to operate both on the Russian and Finnish electric systems. Due to the small difference in gauge between the two countries (Russia uses 1520 mm but Finland 1524 mm) the trains were given near-unique gauge of 1522 mm.

Interior of the Sm6's first-class carriage as delivered. Otto Karikoski, Wikimedia Commons.

Branded Allegro, the new Sm6 units begun operations in December 2010, cutting the travel time between Helsinki and St. Petersburg to 3½ hours. In addition to services offered on Sm3 units, the Sm6 has (or perhaps more accurately had) a space for the border patrol to use, as passport control was done en-route on the train, and a kid's playroom. The original grey-dominated interiors were replaced by new, more colourful blue designs in 2018-2019.

The new interiors were not in use for long before the Covid-19 pandemic caused for passenger train services between Finland and Russia to be suspended in March 2020. The Allegro services were restored in December 2021 (the Helsinki-Moscow sleeper train Tolstoy, however, was not), and ran for less than four months until closed again in March 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (VR subsequently stopped freight traffic to Russia too - other Finnish rail operators continue to serve freight to and from Russia, however).

Second-class carriage in the post-2019 look. VR.

After March 2022, the four Sm6 units languished at VR's Ilmala depot in Helsinki, without maintenance as RŽD refused to make any payments for their share in Karelian Trains (which, although jointly Finnish-Russian owned, was registered in Finland). In March 2023, when Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin visited Kiev, Ukrainian Railroads requested the Sm6 units be handed over to them, but nothing ever came of this. Instead, in December 2023, when Karelian Trains was on the brink of bankruptcy due to RŽD not paying their share of the company's bills, VR bought out Karelian Trains and took over the Sm6 units.

The trains will be given a thorough technical refit, which will include removal of the systems to operate with Russian electrification, and will enter services on routes within Finland in 2025. How they will be branded is unknown, though a VR representative said in an interview they will not be called Allegro. Presumably this will make the Sm6 the first VR rolling stock class to be fully painted in the new livery.

[20th-century-railroading]

LIRR S1 448 Sunnyside Yard Queens NYC NY 08 03 69 JEH Coll