As part of the Dual Contracts, The city brought rapid transit to the borough of Queens when it provided for the IRT and what became the BMT to operated joint service to Flushing and Astoria. As part of the expansion, the largest El Station on the system was constructed at Queensborough Plaza at the foot of the Queensborough Bridge. It was on two levels , had 4 island platforms and 8 tracks. The West 4th Street station on the IND subway replicated this arrangement below ground but the Queensborough Plaza Station had more lines serving it.
IRT lines coming from Manhattan included the Steinway line which is today's # & route and the 2nd El which was discontinued in 1942. The BMT 60th st Tunnel provided Manhattan BMT service. Going out to Queens were the Flushing Elevated and the Astoria Elevated.
On the IRT side , both Steinway trains and the 2nd Ave El had through trains to both Flushing and Astoria, Steinway trains using lov's and 2nd ave trains operating MUDC's or composites . The BMT side from Manhattan terminated at this station. The service used the BMT Standards, the Triplex cars and R-1-9's in the 1940's . Going out to Queens, BMT Q cars and earlier, Gate cars operated from the plaza to both Astoria and Flushing. The Q cars when rebuilt were painted in the Blue and orange city colors in 1939 and handled the special Worlds Fair service for the BMT while the IRT had a fleet of 50 cars it bought for the Worlds fair service which were known as ...well you guessed it.. Worlds Fair cars.
The elaborate service arrangement lasted until 1949 when the dual operations were eliminated and the Flushing service became all IRT and the Astoria service became all BMT. Astoria line was shorter and its platforms had to be cut down to handle the wider BMT cars. I suspect this is how the BMT got the Astoria Line because there was less work and cost associated with the platform modifications.
Here are afew photos.
The station at the Plaza, the IRT Steinway line is in service but the BMT line is still under construction.
A Flushing Line train coming from Manhattan. You can still see the second ave el track.
BMT Standards arriving from Manhattan on the now gone North side of the station. Astoria Train is behind it. The IRT 2nd ave El track is still in place in this view and was probably the last part of the 2nd ave line existing.
At the East End of the North Side of the station, a R-1-9 set is heading to the layup track to turn around for the trip back to Manhattan.
Again on the North Side now beyond the station, we see a group of BMT Q cars handling trains to and From Astoria and to Flushing. Thats a Steinway Transit car in the street. The Bridge line was the last Streetcar line in New York City closing in 1957.
On the Flushing Line heading EAST . the trackwork is now much less complicated. The crossover is still there and represents the only link for the No 7 line with the rest of the NY subway System. The Flushing line heads over Sunnyside yards at this point and in those days, one had quite a panoramma of the PRR long distance trains GG1s and the LIRR Freight yards.
