Bronx Park East
Bronx Park East is located just north of East 180th Street and the junction where 2 and 5 trains separate. The 5 train's Viaduct, which doesn't fallow one street, but cuts its way through the neighborhoods of Van Nest and Pelham Parkway is viewable about 1 block east of the station. There are no nearby 5 stations; since the 5 runs on the former Right-of-Way of The New York Westchester and Boston Railway, and the stations are much farther apart. There is <5> service at this station, which are twelve peak direction rush hour specials that run to up to Nereid Avenue, these 5 trains terminate one stop short of Wakefield-241 Street for better access to the 239th Street yard, which is located between 241 Street and Nereid Avenue, since the two-track terminal can’t handle such frequent service.
The station has two side platforms for the three-track line. The middle track is only used in regularly scheduled service by three northbound 5 trains at the tail end of the AM rush hour that run express from 3 Avenue-149 Street to Gun Hill Road (where they terminate on the middle track to be out of the way of through 2 train service) before heading to the 238 Street yard via the middle track.
The station was renovated during 2004 and used temporary platforms to keep service running in one direction. When I visited in December 2004, all Wakefield-bound trains were running on Track M, and stopping at the station using temporary wooden platforms built over the normal Wakefield-bound local track. When I was there in February 2004, it was the opposite, Manhattan-bound trains were using the temporary platform.
The station has a single entrance via a station house that I believe was originally in the exact middle of the platforms until they were extended south to accommodate longer trains. Canopies extend equidistant from the entrance area. The canopied portions of the platforms have green and cream windscreens. The exposed portions of the platforms have a modern low black fence and a series of white lampposts.
To leave the station, passengers exit through a station house that was given the clad in decorative concrete treatment with mosaic tile facing the street at platform level. Casement windows line both the platform and mezzanine area facing Sagamore Street below (these were boarded up before station renovations), to leave the platforms two staircases set back from the platforms clad in this concrete lead a short way down to an intermediate mezzanine where they combine into one staircase to reach each side of the mezzanine. From here there are High Exit turnstiles (close to the Wakefield-bound platform), the token booth followed by the turnstiles. Street stairs lead out to three of the four corners, NW, NE, and SE of Sagamore Street and Birchall Avenue. There was once a streetstair also to the SW corner, but this was removed around 2004 during station renovations.
Photos 1 & 2: February 10, 2004; 3-7: December 18, 2004;
