Passenger Trains > JFK AirTrain Bombardier Innovia Mark II

This was not my first time taking the JFK AirTrain from Howard Beach, but it was the first time I discovered that if you walk all the way east in the station, there is a set of stairs with plate glass windows that give you a great view of the trains. It's thick glass and between the bright sun and the interior lighting there's some color shift and diffraction issues you can't get away from, but it's still a really neat place to get shots from and I'm glad I discovered it.

Grabbed some shots of the train I'd ride from there and then took the "railfan" position up front to grab some shots along the way of the Bombardier shops and trains coming the other way along the way.

First two shots are from the Howard Beach station.

Image three is of a train leaving the Bombardier shops.

 

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Images four and five are of trains passing along the way into the airport.

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Does the train use a contact slider underneath like the old Marx System?

Nice photos and neat to see actual rail transit at the airport, seems more and more people movers (like Sacramento and SFO) use rubber-tired trains.

Rich

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/19 14:29 by PasadenaSub.

How far is Howard Beach from the airport?

It’s been a while since I used the Howard connection, but it seems like it was much shorter than the connection to Jamaica. Still probably a couple miles though.

Nathan

Posted from iPhone

TomPlatten Wrote:
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> Does the train use a contact slider underneath
> like the old Marx System?

No, the plate you see in the middle of the tracks is an aluminum plate. These trains don't use conventional rotary motors on the axles for propulsion, they use a linear electric motor with no moving parts in the "motor" itself. A series of coils under the train (possibly under the trucks?) pulls on the aluminum plate on the tracks thus propelling the train forward. Current pickup is still via a conventional third-rail.