Summerring in the Hamptons this year? The Cannonball retuirns to once again speed you to Long Island's weekend Hamptons get-a-ways. The MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) will launch a nonstop service on The Cannonball on Fridays, departing from Penn Station and traveling nonstop to the Hamptons. The train will run nonstop from Manhattan, arriving 94 minutes later in Westhampton with follow-up stops at Southampton, East Hampton, Bridgehampton and Montauk.The new service is scheduled to start May 24 and continue to operate every week through the Labor Day weekend.
This service continues the trains tradition as fast transportation to Long Island east End for Summers. Its history dates it to the 1920's when steam did the job and the train had two parts a South Fork service to Montauk and a North Fork service to Greenport. At Manorville, in the early days the Greenport section was cutoff at speed and a Flying coupling made with a waiting engine.
In the late 1920's, the Pullman Company got into the act and began operation of the Sunrise Special an all parlor car train with a Parlor from Washington DC. The train had a diner as well. It was handled by a G5s ten wheeler with a special herald of a colorful Sunrise on the Tender. MTH made a O gauge model of this locomotive.
The Cannonball continued to run through the steam era , into the diesel era powered by C liners and eventually the Alco C420's Through this period , the train sported an open platform observation car and was the last all extra fare train to do so in the US. In the 1970s, The Lackawanna, tavern lounge cars were used on this train and were called the Asharoken and the Aquabogue. They were painted in MTA colors then. The Heavyweight parlors were replaced by converted P72s and other lightweight cars that the railroad had acquired at that time. These lasted until the present day service with the dual mode locomotives and the bilevel cars.
So if you are summering in the Hamptons this year, enhance the experience with a ride on the LIRR Cannonball starting May 24th.
