Thanks for posting. I rode the LIRR back when this station was a station. Never was on a rare train that stopped at Woodhaven. Now, the station just whizzes by when you look for it on a Flatbush Avenue train. Nice to have it slowed down. I tried to find my way in to the platforms in 1980 but couldn't. Glad you (and one other poster) succeeded, and keep the "how you did it" to yourself. I respect that.
I remember riding on an old train of MP54 cars in the late 1960s that stopped there. Today trains go through there at track speed so it's a bit difficult to get a glimpse of the IND style wall tiles. This station was opened in the 1940s when the tracks were moved from street level underground to eliminate all the level crossings. There is another abandoned station directly above this one on the long abandoned Rockaway Beach branch. This station was actually called Woodhaven Junction at one time. The trackways which connected the two lines have long abandoned since 1955 and the tunnel portals sealed up.
Trains to the Rockaway Beach Branch turned away from the Atlantic Branch before the Woodhaven Station. Trains from the Rockaway Branch to Brooklyn entered the Atlantic Branch after the Wooddhaven Station. When you ride a train between Jamaica and Brookly,n eastbound, you can still see the remnants of the portals for the diverging track as well as the open space in the walls between the eastbound and westbound Atlantic Branch tracks where the crossovers were located. The whole thing is kinda sad.
It was still in service in the 1960s when I was a boy in Richmond Hill, the next neighborhood over going in the way to Jamaica. The line was originally opened in 1834 on the surface and in 1903 half of the line was elevated and joined the Brooklyn El system in 2 points in Brooklyn.
