Woodhaven (LIRR Atlantic Branch)

Woodhaven station was a station on the LIRR Atlantic Branch. It opened in 1942 after a grade elimination project and closed in 1976, even though Rockaway Beach Branch Woodhaven station closed in 1962.

Construction and operation
The Brooklyn and Jamaica Railroad was the second railroad in what is now the City of New York, and has been operated since opening day in 1836 by the third railroad, the Long Island Railroad. The railroad east of Flatbush Ave was laid in the property of a turnpike company that the railroad purchased, and, to make a long story short, by 1900, the railroad was running in a private right of way down the middle of a city street, Atlantic Ave.

At Woodhaven, a new railroad opened in 1881 crossing the Atlantic Branch at right angles. The New York, Woodhaven and Rockaway ran a service of trains from Long Island City to Rockaway Beach (now called Rockaway Park), using Long Island Railroad track for the first few miles. From the start, it ran on trestlework over the Atlantic Branch, avoiding a grade crossing, but there was a connection in the southwest quadrant for service from Brooklyn to Rockaway Beach. It was an all year operation but had far more service in the warm months.

The crossing was known as Woodhaven Junction. Another station called simply Woodhaven was located on the Atlantic Branch less than a half mile west, at Woodhaven Boulevard, and trains made both stops.

The Board of Atlantic Avenue Improvement, a joint project established between the City of Brooklyn and the Long Island Railroad in 1897, financed and built a combination of tunnels and elevated viaducts completed in 1903-1905 that got the railroad off street level in Brooklyn, except around East New York station and east of Atkins Ave. Thus the entire section in Queens Borough, through Woodhaven, remained at ground level for many years more.

The tunnel through Woodhaven today, which runs from Snediker Ave (just east of East New York) to 121 St, was built starting in 1939 and was opened in December 1942. Woodhaven, at the former location of Woodhaven Junction, was the only station in the new tunnel. The other stations in this stretch were closed in 1939. Also ended in 1939 was the separate service of "local electric" trains that had run from Brooklyn to Queens Village at a lower price, a tradition that dated back to the "rapid transit" service of 1877 from Brooklyn to East New York.

The new Woodhaven station looks much like an Independent Subway station. The tilework is of the same design, with a name mosaic WOODHAVEN. A curious point is that the Long Island Railroad had never purchased the Atlantic Branch, and that the owner company, through a chain of reorganizations and mergers, had become part of the BRT and BMT systems and had then been acquired by the City in 1940. Thus the new tunnel was a City project although the Long Island Railroad was the operator.

Service to Woodhaven soon declined. Any use it may have had as a transfer to Rockaway trains was lost after 1950 when the infamous Jamaica Bay trestle fire ended service across the bay. The railroad's attention was firmly on commuters riding past Jamaica, and as each timetable appeared, fewer and fewer trains made the stop at Woodhaven. It finally closed in 1976.