Ah, the GREAT LIRR! Rode the electric MU's to Rockaway Beach with my parents as a young child (1945-48), and to my grandfather's house in Hicksville behind those marvelous G5's. We would take the Atlantic Ave. Line from Brooklyn to Jamaica, and I still vividly remember the heat from the boiler of that G5 as it pulled into Jamaica Station. Later, in my college years, I rode the Atlantic Avenue line from Woodhaven to Jamaica, and then to the Nassau Blvd. station in Garden City, for a short walk to Adelphi College. Once I walked from the campus to the Mineola station to catch the train for a short ride to Hicksville to spend the weekend with my cousins. After having moved to Hicksville in 1962, I frequently took the train into Penn Station with the change at Jamaica to the electric MU's. The ride through Sunnyside Yard before plunging into the East River tunnel was a always a special treat with those GG1's and DD1's and the huge passenger car marshalling yard! I well remember ALCO RS1's and the FM C-Liners, after steam had been phased out. As a child growing up in Woodhaven, Queens in the 1950's, my friend and I occasionally rode our bikes out to the Morris Park engine terminal, where the old coaling tower still stood in the early diesel years. Wonderful memories of a GREAT railroad!
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