Carved through the lower center of Queens, from
the main trunk line of the Long Island Railroad, all the way
across Jamaica Bay into the Rockaways, from which it took its
name, the Rockaway line chugged along through nearly six decades
of service, from roughly 1908 to 1962, when a tapped out and
bankrupt LIRR pulled out its engines and ticket agents, plowed
under the more easily destructable station platforms and surrendered
the dual trackbed right-of-way to the whims of mother nature
and father time.If there is one force among us that we now know wastes no time, it is mother nature. Only a handful of years after the last mournful train whistle lowed along its route, what had already come to be known in my Rego Park neighborhood as The Dead Tracks had already become overgrown with weeds, tall grass, budding trees and vines, all fighting for ground with rusting hulks ranging from tin cans to window fans to automobiles, and all of them all too often hiding the detritus left buried at their roots by druggies, whom our parents constantly warned us about in vain effort to stop us from venturing onto the Dead Tracks to hang out.
To the right is the southern portal of the tunnel
through which ran the westbound Dead Track, on its way to link
up with the Penn Station bound LIRR main line, roughly just off
of a dead ended 65th Road, behind Austin Street in Rego Park.
