page_title: History of the Long Island Rail Road
section_title: 1960s–1980s: M1s, push-pulls, and electrification extensions
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Long Island Rail Road / State ownership, 1966–present / 1960s–1980s: M1s, push-pulls, and electrification extensions
caption_attribution_description: English: A Roger Puta Photograph
context_page_description: The Long Island Rail Road is a railroad owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in the U.S. state of New York. It is the oldest United States railroad still operating under its original name and charter. It consolidated several other companies in the late 19th century. The Pennsylvania Railroad owned the Long Island Rail Road for the majority of the 20th century and sold it to the State in 1966.
context_section_description: The PRR was looking to rid itself of the money-losing LIRR, its most costly subsidiary, but no one was willing to buy it. Various plans, including turning it into a monorail or abandoning the eastern extremities and turning the rest into part of the New York City Subway, had been proposed. On January 20, 1965, the state of New York decided to buy the LIRR. Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller set in motion work that was need to draft the enabling legislation, to determine a realistic value for the property. The Pennsylvania Railroad submitted a very high initial estimate, and the result of negotiations was a direct payment of $65 million and a similar amount of relief for unpaid taxes. In return, all shares of stock were surrendered to the State along with the property, rolling stock, and infrastructure. The Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (now the MTA) was formed to buy and operate the LIRR. However, trimming the LIRR from its system did not provide the relief the PRR sought; after the 1968 merger into Penn Central Transportation it was bankrupt in 1970.The MCTA set out to improve the LIRR by instituting massive capital improvements in the form of a strengthened electric traction substation system, accelerated track improvements, and new rolling stock.
  Once under State ownership, the Dashing Dan logo was dropped and a new paint scheme was created for locomotives and coaches. The new electric coaches, the M1 cars, replaced the aging Multiple Unit fleet. The cars were put into service between 1968 and 1972. The cars were called "Metropolitans", and they were clad in stainless steel, with air-conditioning and lighting, as well as semi-bucket seating. Quarter point doors were installed in order to speed loading and unloading from high-level platforms. High-level platforms were required by the design of the M1 and LIRR carpenters engaged in a speeded up program to build temporary high-level platforms at all stations within electrified territory. All electrified branches became completely equipped with high-level platforms when the final branch, the West Hempstead Branch, was completed in 1973. A total of 53 new high-level platforms were constructed at 38 stations in electric territory that originally had low platforms. Ultimately, they were replaced by permanent concrete platforms at a slower pace.
  By the mid-1970s the M1s comprised the entire electric fleet, supplemented by 174 new M3 cars between 1985 and 1986. The newer, postwar single-level electric MU cars were converted to operate behind diesels, joining the postwar diesel-hauled coaches already in that service whose HVAC systems were converted from steam heating to head-end power (HEP). A modified type of push-pull operation was introduced to the diesel trains, using retired first-generation freight diesels from other railroads (mostly ALCO FAs) converted into control units capable only of HEP generation and controlling the locomotive at the other end of the train. The first 16 control cabs were created by GE using the last 16 Alco-GE FA-1 and FA-2 units in existence, all of which had been traded in to GE by the last four railroads to operate them: the Penn Central, Louisville & Nashville, Spokane, Portland and Seattle, and Western Maryland. Many of these units survive today in rail museums. New diesels for general use were purchased to replace the LIRR's ALCO Century 420s and other diesels, in the form of GP38-2s and MP15ACs. The latter switchers were innovatively used as "pull-pull" pairs on each end of short off-peak trains on the Oyster Bay Branch and the Greenport shuttle, whereby the leading unit would provide the motive power, and the trailing unit would supply the train with HEP, the process being reversed at the terminal. By 1973, the LIRR had a completely air-conditioned fleet.
  Two more electrification projects were undertaken under state ownership. Third rail electrification was extended on the Main Line and Port Jefferson Branch from Mineola to Hicksville and Huntington on October 19, 1970, after being started in 1968. This was the first time in 4
caption: Long Island Rail Road trains at Jamaica Station on November 9, 1969
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