Bay 50 Street (D) - The SubwayNut

The Bay 50 Street is a subway station that is located on a segment of track that forms a wye with the very large Coney Island Yard and Maintenance Complex. A single track enters the yard curving around the platform just north and just south of the station. Although if a train wanted to get from the station directly into the yard it would have to make a back up move just north or just south of the station. The yard track just south of the station meets at the same interlocking where the middle express track ends, with the D train becoming a two-tracked line for the one stop to its terminus at Coney Island. The northern track has simply at grade switches to the middle followed by the Coney Island-bound track. These switches mean that a Coney Island-bound train could skip the station on the middle track, but a Manhattan-bound train can't exclusively skip the station but would also need to skip 25 Avenue before using the next set of switches just before Bay Parkway.

The station itself has two side platforms for the 3 track line. These were renovated in 2012 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Today the station has the cream with green trim windscreens that were normal during this period of station renovations. When the platforms were extended to accommodate 10 car trains they were made slightly offset by about half a subway car. Coney Island-bound trains stop slightly south of Manhattan-bound trains.

There is a canopy structure that begins by the station's one exit at the back end of the Manhattan-bound platform and about half a car from the Coney Island-bound platform. The exposed portion of the canopy has a tall 8 foot high wire fence. I feel that this fence may have been installed for safety reasons since the station is heavily used by nearby John Dewey High School students.

The station's one exit is accessed by a single staircase down from each platform to a mezzanine level. Fencing (with emergency exits), but no high turnstiles, separates these landings from the upper landings of adjacent streetstairs. Passengers must go through doors into the small station house with a bank of 3 turnstiles facing a token booth. On each side of the token booth doors lead out to walkways around the platform stairs and staircases down to all four corners of the station house. These stairs are on each side of Stillwell Avenue, just east (one is at the SE corner) of Bay 50 Street's angled T-intersection with Stillwell Avenue the angled intersection of Harway Avenue is just south of here.
Photos 1-18: August 11, 2009; 19-28: October 1, 2012