Westwood (LIRR station)

Westwood

Westwood Station's Malverne shelter. The Lynbrook shelter can be seen across the tracks.
Location Foster Avenue & Motley Street
Malverne, NY
Coordinates 40°40′05.8″N 73°40′53.1″W / 40.668278°N 73.681417°W / 40.668278; -73.681417Coordinates: 40°40′05.8″N 73°40′53.1″W / 40.668278°N 73.681417°W / 40.668278; -73.681417
Owned by MTA
Line(s)
  West Hempstead Branch
Platforms 1 side platform
Tracks 1
Construction
Parking Yes; Village of Malverne & Lynbrook permits required
Bicycle facilities Yes; Bicycle Racks
Disabled access Yes
Other information
Fare zone 4
History
Opened September 1929
Rebuilt 1955
Electrified October 19, 1926
750 V (DC) third rail
Traffic
Passengers (2006) 711[1]
Services
Preceding station   LIRR   Following station
West Hempstead Branch

Westwood is a station on the Long Island Rail Road's West Hempstead Branch serving the villages of Malverne, Lynbrook, and Valley Stream, New York. The station platform is located on Foster Avenue in Malverne, New York, with parking facilities on both the Malverne (Foster Avenue at Motley Street) and Lynbrook (Whitehall Street at Whittier Street) sides of the tracks. It has no station building other than a pair of open shelters, the larger one on the Malverne side of the tracks. It also features a gated at-grade pedestrian crossing,[2] one of only two such stations on the Long Island Rail Road to exclusively feature such crossings, the other being Stony Brook.


No buses connect to Westwood Station, however local suburban taxi cabs do stop there. A basketball court can be found on the Malverne side of the station between the platform and parking lot.[3]

History

Before the establishment of Westwood Station, the station itself was the site of a junction of two freight sidings in Lynbrook that existed only in 1924 both of which were abandoned in September of that year. The line was electrified on October 19, 1926 and the station itself was established in September 1929. The small station house had a single platform on the Malverne side, as well as an un-gated pedestrian crossing, and a pedestrian bridge over the tracks which existed only until 1938.[4] By 1955, the station house was gutted, leaving only the roof and the frame, thus transforming it into an open shelter.[5] At some point, an identical open shelter was built on the Lynbrook side of the tracks, which had a separate color scheme[6] from the Malvern shelter[7] until the 21st Century.

Platform and track

1 ■ West Hempstead Branch toward New York (Valley Stream)
■ West Hempstead Branch toward West Hempstead (Malverne)

This station has one four-car-long side platform on the west side of the single track, which was converted into a high-level platform in the autumn of 1973.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Average weekday, 2006 LIRR Origin and Destination Study
  2. ↑ Westwood's at-grade Pedestrian Crossing looking from Lynbrook into Malverne (Unofficial LIRR History Website)
  3. ↑ DanTD (June 10, 2010). Westwood Station from the Basketball Court (photograph). Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  4. ↑ February 23, 1946 view of Westwood Station House in Malverne from across the tracks in Lynbrook, by William Gilligan (TrainsAreFun)
  5. ↑ LIRR station History (TrainsAreFun.com)
  6. ↑ Westwood Station on the Lynbrook side in February 1999 (Unofficial LIRR History Website)
  7. ↑ Westwood Station on the Malverne side in June 2006 (Unofficial LIRR History Website)
  8. ↑ Westwood Shelter Track View High-level platforms under construction September 27, 1973 George Povall collection (TrainsAreFun)

Media related to Westwood (LIRR station) at Wikimedia Commons

A train bound for West Hempstead as seen from the Lynbrook side of the tracks.
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