My desk at the Southold Town Attorney's office has a great view (when the trees are bare) of the LIRR Youngs Avenue crossing and the Southold "formerly a real station" platform. It's not a tremendous perk, and seeing only four short trains a day can't match other guys' experiences, but we'll take what we can get. The only excitement so far was an engineer over-running the platform one day, and taking 4 minutes to back up to the platform, where exactly one person disembarked and zero passengers got on.
There are two East bound trains and two West bound trains during my tour every day. Today, I heard an East bound train whistling for the crossing, but it was not at a scheduled time, and it was really moving fast. I said to myself "He isn't going to be able to stop!" Since it wasn't a scheduled movement, at first I figured it was a Sperry car or some MOW hi-railers coming through.
Sure enough, some weird non-revenue movement went by (Eastbound) at around noon, and went back (Westbound) a couple of hours later. It was traveling around 45 mph and didn't slow down as it went through the station, accompanied with a lot of horn-blowing. There was a DE30AC at each end, and a single older-style passenger coach between them. Through the trees, I could just about see the car in the middle. It looked like maybe a 2900 type, but as I said, my view was obstructed by the trees. It was grungy gray, with a dark red or brown stripe through the windows. I could have driven the four miles down to the Greenport terminal and taken a photo, but our bosses seem to take a dim view of trainspotting during work hours.
Can an expert enlighten us with an explanation? Thank you!
