I had so much fun riding the $2 Far Rockaway Ferry
on my last visit that I just had to do it again, this time unencumbered by heavy bags and a travel deadline. On the second go around the weather was gorgeous and with no ancillary LIRR trip I could take full advantage of the temporarily "free" JFK Airtrain, which would save me the normal $10 fare or the hassle/indignity of having to take a Bus to the Federal Circle station.
After Lunch I traveled back to the Rockaways to catch the 4:30 ferry inbound to Manhattan, this time in wonderful sunny weather. I also discovered that the boat contained an outside upper deck from which I could drink my $3 16oz beer and take all the unobstructed photos I wanted. With A Train service set up resume later this week I urge any and all persons to take advantage of this amazing bargain before it goes away.
All of the photos can be found
right here so make sure you go nuts after reading the whole post.
I am going to start things off at Chambers St where I caught the trifecta of an R32 departing, an R160 arriving on the adjacent WTC tracks and then an R46 A train arriving. I stopped filming at that point and missed another R46 A arriving from the opposite direction, but so it goes.
Flagging down
an oddly clean R32 on the C I got some head end video between Chambers and Hoyt to fill a hole in my collection.
At Hoyt I took this photo of R32 #3929. It's amazing how someone in the NYCTA got it looking almost like it had just rolled out of a factory? Not many 50 year old pieces of rolling stock that could pull that off! A testament to the Budd company.
Video of the same train departing Hoyt St and crossing over to the local track in front of Hoyt tower.
R46 #5936 sits at Howard Beach ready to take the
Diverging Approach Restricting signal into the turnback pocket track there.
R46 #5838 returns to the inbound platform past construction workers
there to repair the signaling and track damaged by Hurricane Sandy.
A flexible A train shuttle bus sitting outside the Howard Beach Air Train station.
Here is the inside of the Howard Beach station. Because the JFK
"AirTran" Air Train is little more than a glorified elevator there
wasn't really much to photograph in terms of
signaling or infrastructure, so I mostly got video of the entire route and a few other select photos.
Here is a route video of the AirTran AirTrain as it runs from Howard Beach through Federal Circle and then Anti-Clockwise around the terminal complex back to Federal Circle. The PA was doing a lot of trackwork so the AirTrain was running on a 20 minute headway with several en-route delays. Wonderful for a system that is trying to get people to their flights in a timely manner. This did mean several good shots of wrong railing. Due to a bit of a miscue the first part of the route from Howard Beach to the next station is the last part of the video and is taken in the outbound direction.
BTW Pigs and I were bothered multiple times about taking photos by PA security and attendants, but it was a pretty soft bother due to the whole tourist zone thing and we didn't protest. The good news was the reliance on ZPTO was that nobody was ever around to stop us from taking photos and video on board the trains so every time we were bothered we simply clicked ignore.
Oh, after a while Pigs got tried of being quiet and we began to engage in a running commentary partly about the airport, but mostly about Seinfeld and TV Tropes.
AirTrain car #209 departing the Federal Circle station for the JFK Terminal complex. For those of you who don't know the AirTrain us a fully automated system that uses Bombardier's
Advanced Rapid Transit concept. One of the hallmarks is the use of linear induction motor technology that requires an
aluminum slab to be run down the center of the track to eliminate the "need" for old fashioned rotational motors. Yeah, this is much simpler.
Well the title promises planes so here you all go. Here we see an Asiana Boeing 777 #HL7791 about to land on Runway 13L.
