LILCO Sidings

Got a copy of the 66' track diagram book..seems like there were alot of LILCO sidings, what did these get? any of them still around?

Also the Hicksville location, what did they recieve there?

- Paul

Paul,

Being that I work for Keyspan (LILCO). I can tell you along with Hicksville there were siding in Greenlawn, Brentwood and at the Rockville Centre Gate Station. At this time none get any shipments. The sidings in Greenlawn and Brentwood are no longer connected to the railroad. Hicksville still is, but it has been years since anything has come in. I don't know why, but poles and gas pipe are delivered from trucks with the poles brought in by flat cars then trucked in!

Mike

Mike, thanks for the info!
Where was the one in brentwood?

Paul,

You're welcome. The siding was in the back of the LIPA/KEYSPAN yard off RT 112 south of the tracks.

Mike

i'd say route 111. also, if you look at the maps, apparently LILCO had sidings in Brightwaters/ Bay Shore near the Gas Plant. Where the Keyspan yard is now, there were apparently sidings, i suppose into the 60s or so.

Aerial photos show that the sidings at Hicksville were quite extensive. Any reason for this? It seems LILCO got poles, reels of wire, and big equipment like transformers. I wasn't aware of pipe, but I should have thought of that. Despite the items I mentioned, the yard behind the Hicksville office shows two fairly long tracks that seem too big for the customer.

A review of my old maps shows that just about everywhere there was a LILCO siding, it serviced a pole yard.

Dave

Check out the NYA Forum for more information about LILCO/Keyspan service.

Occasionally, Lilco (now LIPA) gets a generator that comes as a dimensional load. Due to clearance issues, it usually winds up sitting in Fresh Pond for a month or more waiting for proper clearance. We've moved those generators both to Hicksville and to their own siding east of Divide.

We used to get poles on 90 foot flatcars, and they were unloaded in PW. With Coastal now at PW, those moves don't seem to happen anymore. Possibly they don't want to pay Coastal to unload the cars.

Jay

Hi Gang,

I'm curious now, if poles were making it up the PW branch, why not deliver the cars directly to the LIPA yard(s) - are there clearance problems for a 90' flat in other areas of the system?

From my understanding, the 90' poles are for high voltage primary feeder lines. The more plentiful street size 45' - 55' poles should be in higher demand. Have there been deliveries of that size pole as well?

de Don n2qhvRMLI

I saw Keyspan/Lilco get a transformer sometime around 1998 in Hicksville. Other than MofW gons left on it, that is the only time I ever saw a delivery.

On the South Shore there is a siding that goes into a switching substation near Massapequa. At one time most of those substations had a siding just in case they needed new transformer (I am guessing).

I would suppose LIRR does not want to deal with High And Wides, and that is why the stuff is trucked. Even the LIRR's own ties are trucked to places like Sayville, where there is a long siding.

I would suspect the same was true for Verizon (NY Telephone at that time, of course - prime suspect would be the former Garden City Secondary; the branch which crossed north of the Meadowbrook and Zeckendorf, and then headed east across East Gate, formed the boundary between NY Telephone and AVIS - as an aside, the Verizon facility has (or at had a as of a few years ago) a forest of poles in back for linesman training.

I believe Rockville Centre, like Freeport, has it's own municipal power company, although I think nowadays the power comes from NY State Power Authority (or at those rates anyway)

did that power plant in RVC ever have a sideing "after" the line was elevated. and if it did, was the sideing entering from the east?

Ok, first don't confuse LIPA with Keyspan. Next the last generator delivered for a powerplant by rail was in '60s for the Island Park station ( the book, "Harbor Railroads of New York vol. 2 has a picture of it at the LIC float bridges.). Yes, there have been smaller generators brought in but those were for the small plants that are popping up all over that Keyspan doesn't own or run.
Now in the Hicksville yard itself there are 2 tracks entering off the main line east of the Hicksville station. One track was used for the movement of large transformers, there's an overhead crane which you can see from the road. The other track goes almost the entire width of the yard. It goes along the back of the warehouse and loading dock and then to where the pole storage is. I hope this clears it up some.

Mike