Double Decker Trains on the LIRR
 

Help make my sons dream come true!

I'm heading to NY with my kids tomorrow and I can't find any information online anywhere.

My son loves trains of all types and one of his wishes is to take a ride on a double decker train. Since we don't have much time, I remembered seeing that the LIRR has some double decker trains - but I cannot find any information about what routes they are on.

Does anyone have any insight on their routes and schedules or are they assigned randomly? The closest station to us is going to be Hicksville and hope that there are some double decker trains who can catch from here's (either direction).

I'll call the LIRR helpline tomorrow but am hoping the good folks of FT can help.. Thank you.

Railroad.net is the Flyer Talk of trains. There's a very active LIRR forum over there, I'm certain they can help you.

How long are you staying? On Sunday, the only one I know for sure is running the double deckers is the Oyster Bay line that you can take from Jamaica. During the Weekdays, there are a few more that you can pick. BTW if you're near the NY area and you like double deckers, NJ Transit also has double deckers, and they're even less predictable.

Oyster Bay has the added benefit that there is a small railroad museum there and also has a beach, though the beach is not that great.

Also, a bit further out in Long Island, is the Long Island Steamers which your kids will surely enjoy, and tomorrow happens to be a run day. http://longislandlivesteamers.org/index.php

Also, regarding LIRR Double Deckers, any train going to Montauk (or any other unelectrified line) are double deckers.

All the Montauk line trains are double-deckers -- they're the only trains (AFAIK) with Diesel engines, and the tracks past Babylon are not electrified.

Other than a very select few that go into Penn Station, you'd probably need to catch one at Jamaica. On a weekend, looks like you could, for example, take an 9:45a or 11:45am from Penn, and change in Jamaica to the 10:10a/12:10p to Montauk, and get out at Babylon (from which there should be a good number of options to return, though most won't be double-deckers).
Also from Jamaica, the 2:41p to Speonk or 5:41p to Patchogue.

Here's the Montauk Branch timetable.
http://web.mta.info/lirr/Timetable/B...taukBranch.pdf
The schedules can be a bit tricky to read because of the transfers (i.e., the J and T notations), but happy to help decipher.

If you end up just going to Babylon, then I'd just use the web-based form to figure options back, unless you really wanted a double-decker back as well, but that may be difficult to do because of the schedule.

ETA: Oh, I just noticed the Hicksville part...
I *think* the Ronkonkoma branch past Ronkonkoma (to the North Fork) is not electrified, and should be double-deckers. Looks like there's a 9:55am from Hicksville to Rononkoma, which then connects to a train that continues out toward Greenport at 10:37am. I suppose you could take it a few stops, but then you'd probably need to figure alternate transportation back to Ronkonkoma/Hicksville because trains on that line only run 2x per day.

Any trains terminating at Oyster Bay, Port Jefferson, or Montauk will be double-decker with diesel engines on the LIRR.

Thank you all! Yes we took the train from Hicksville to Mineola and caught the double decker to Oyster Bay. Wish I'd known about the small railroad museum prior! Thanks again.