Harold Interlocking is a large railroad junction located in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

. It is the busiest rail junction in the United States. It serves trains on

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

's Northeast Corridor and the Long Island Rail Road's Main Line and

Port Washington Branch The Port Washington Branch is an electrified two-track rail line and service owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road in the U.S. state of New York. It branches north from the Main Line at the former Winfield Junction station, just ...

, which diverge at the junction. Reconstruction work on Harold Interlocking started in 2009, as part of the

East Side Access East Side Access (ESA) is a public works project in New York City that extended the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) from its Main Line in Queens into a new station under Grand Central Terminal on Manhattan's East Side. A project of the Metropoli ...

project to bring LIRR service to Grand Central Terminal. As part of the project, two tunnels for Northeast Corridor trains to bypass Harold Interlocking are being built to address congestion problems and occasional accidents.

Location and operation

The junction is located in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

, New York, east of the East River Tunnels and next to Amtrak's and NJ Transit Rail Operations' Sunnyside Yard. During the rush hour period, over 40 trains per hour pass through the

interlocking In railway signalling, an interlocking is an arrangement of signal apparatus that prevents conflicting movements through an arrangement of tracks such as junctions or crossings. The signalling appliances and tracks are sometimes collectively ...

; and a total of 783 trains each weekday. In addition to Amtrak trains, the interlocking serves the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), whose Main Line and

diverge from the Northeast Corridor at Harold Interlocking. Harold Honeywell jeh

left, Entering the Harold Interlocking on the LIRR from the east The complexity of the junction and the large volume of traffic have caused frequent delays and occasional accidents in this portion of the Northeast Corridor.

History

The Pennsylvania Railroad built the Harold Interlocking in 1908 as part of the New York Tunnel Extension project, which built Pennsylvania Station, the North River Tunnels (under the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...

), the East River Tunnels and Sunnyside Yard. The interlocking was renovated in summer 1990 during a nine-week modernization project. This renovation was conducted several months after a power surge caused trains to be stuck in the interlocking. Since the 1990s, Harold Interlocking has been controlled from a tower at Penn Station.

East Side Access improvements

The

Metropolitan Transportation Authority The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a public benefit corporation responsible for public transportation in the New York City metropolitan area of the U.S. state of New York. The MTA is the largest public transit authority in t ...

(MTA) began construction of several infrastructure improvements to the junction area in 2009, but a major project to redesign and rebuild the interlocking required additional funding. In May 2011, a $294.7 million federal grant was awarded to address congestion at the interlocking. The work will allow for a grade-separated route between the East River Tunnels and the Hell Gate Bridge for Amtrak trains traveling to or from

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian province ...

, thus avoiding LIRR traffic. Northeast Corridor trains from the Hell Gate Bridge and New England would be able to avoid the junction entirely, while trains to the Hell Gate Bridge and New England would be able to bypass a major section of the junction. As part of the project, Amtrak's car-washing facility within Sunnyside Yard, as well as several small Amtrak buildings, are being relocated. The MTA is constructing and managing the improvement project as part of the adjacent

project to bring the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal. The MTA estimates that East Side Access will be substantially complete in 2022. , two of three East Side Access tunnel portals had been built at Harold Interlocking; the remaining portal had been completed by early 2021. Work on the Northeast Corridor bypass started in 2013. However, by October 2015, the tunnels were behind schedule because Amtrak and the MTA could not cooperate on track access schedules. These delays ultimately raised construction costs by almost $1 billion as of April 2018, and in a report that month, the MTA attributed the delays to a lack of cooperation on Amtrak's part. The work at Harold Interlocking also included the installation of a microprocessor-based interlocking logic, replacing the old relay-based one.

References

External links

Map of Harold Interlocking
- MTA
"Inside Sunnyside Yards, New York City's Next Megaproject"
– ny.curbed.com (February 19, 2015) {{Coord, 40.7485, N, 73.927, W, display=title Amtrak Rail junctions in the United States Rail transportation in New York City Long Island Rail Road NJ Transit Rail Operations Long Island City