12-02-17 PHOTOS: Woodlawn

Not to be confused with either Woodhaven or Woodside, Woodlawn is one of two major junctions on the Metro-North system where the New Haven Line splits from the Harlem Line. In addition to the junction there is a rather insignificant passenger station that only sees about 1 tph off peak. Of course what it lacks in service it makes up for in having lots of train pass through the interlocking at top speed (well, 60mph at least) and a (4) train stop only two blocks away.

Woodlawn has two main vantage points for taking photos of trains. One is from a pedestrian walkway on the north side of the Bronx River parkway and the other is the station itself. Of course if you don't know the way to reach the walkway you can try taking pictures from the Neried Viaduct, but its close mesh chain link fence makes taking pictures there challenging.

Anyway I spent about two hours taking photos from both the viaduct and the station itself. You can see the entire set here.

We start with a train of outbound M-2's making a reverse direction move onto the New Haven Line through the east end of WOODLAWN, crossing over to the proper outbound tracks. Please take note that because Metro North doesn't put numbers on the the front of its MU's I can't tell the difference between an M-2, M-4 and M-6 so I'm just going to refer to all unidentified NH MU's as M-2's.

Despite Metro-North's complete expungement of wayside signaling, at WOODLAWN they made a mistake and left in place a few remnants of Penn Central signaling here in the form of a signal bridge and mast.

Outbound 4-car NH Line train passing under the Bronx River Parkway on the proper outbound local track.

Hey, it looks like the new Joint Metro-North, JR East service between Grand Central and Tokyo is up and running.

Moving down to the station I am going to start things off with a little montage of the constant parade of trains that pass through there, even if they are a but uniform and sterile. There were some MoW guys fixing up part of the outbound platform so that prompted a good bit of horn blowing.



View from the station looking east/north showing the stump of WOODLAWN interlocking tower and the NH Line flyover in the background.

Inbound New Haven Line train crossing under the Bronx River Parkway.

Another followed close behind coming in over the flyover.

Inbound train of M-3's sliding in for a station stop. I passed up the opportunity to ride it as I had nothing to do for an hour and decided to risk getting harassed by the police by staying an extra headway at Woodlawn. 

M-3 departing under the NYC vintage signal gantry containing the junction indicators.

New train of evil M-8's heading in off of the direct ramp to track 1. All of the junction turnouts at WOODLAWN interlocking have been upgraded for 60mph operation over Clear cab signals.

M-2's up close and personal on the inbound local track.

M-2's passing a string of M-7's.

Drink up, its a bar car.

M-7's rolling north after the station stop.

M-7 inbound on the local track.

And away it goes.

M-8 inbound on the flyover.

There's a face only an Animee fan could love. Someone should draw a set of moe figures for Metro North now.

Inbound M-2 with WOODLAWN tower.

Railfan standing at the rear of the same outbound M-2 trainset.

M-2 #8407 passing by the workers on the outbound platform. Despite the poor lighting on the inbound side I didn't want to risk a confrontation with the workers over on the outbound platform over my being a "terrorist". 

For those of you who don't like Metro North here's NJT RiverLINE trainset 3504 at Trenton.

And MARC HHP-8 #4910 at Baltimore Penn Station.

Well there we have it. I hope to get out again to take some more M-2/4/6 photos on the NHL before they go the way of the Silverliner II's. If anyone is interested in a trip to the South Norwalk tower museum on Saturday August 5th let me know.

Next week more photos from the Bay Area.