Fordham Road
Fordham Road is an Express station served by all trains on the Concourse Subway Line. The stop has an extremely unique design because of the need for the 'express' through lanes of the Grand Concourse that run in an underpass beneath the busy Fordham Road intersection to fit between Downtown Local track and center Expresss track towards the northern half of the station. This means that there is a convential and relatively narrow Uptown platform, while the Downtown platform is extremely wide (getting wider with the local track running at at angle away from the express track) before splitting into two for it's northern third. For the northern third of this platform, each track has what feels like just a side platform, complete with white text with a Blue trimline name tablets. Along each track wall are blue trimlines with black text beneath them.
The station was built with mezzanine areas above nearly all platform areas of the station, execpt for a portion of the northern end of Downtown Express platform. Starting above the southern end of the platforms, the mezzanine has been closed off with a removed staircase from the uptown platform and a closed staircase and removed staircase from the Downtown platform, next the mezzanine enters passenger service with regular staircases down to the narrower uptown platform and extra wide staircases down to to the middle of the Downtown platform that is slowly forming it's wedge shape.
Next is the main fare control area with the full time token booth in the middle of the mezzanine between two banks of turnstiles into seperate halfs of the mezzanine within fare control. From this exit staircases (all with intermediate staircases berfore reaching the streetstair) lead up to all four corners of East 188th Street and the Grand Concourse.
Continuing north is where the fare mezzanine gets more complicated, along this entire half of the mezzanine, gated but no longer open to the public, and now just taking up extra space outside of fare control passageways on the outside walls of the mezzanine once allowed passengers to enter from all four corners of the Grand Concourse and reach the main fare control area at East 188th Street with the 'change booth' as a mosaic tile still visibly says. The gates and fencing along each wall of the mezzanine still exists, just not open to the public and making the rest of the open portions of the mezzanine more narrow. To the north the mezzanine soon has two sets of three staircases down to the two platforms, at each of these locations, a single staircase leads down to the Uptown platform with two staircases, one by the middle express track, one by the local track to the Manhattan-bound platform, this is above the area right where the Downtown platform splits into two seperate platforms.
Next the mezzanine gets signifigantly narrower and the open to the public portion continues above the Uptown platform only, here are two more staircases down to the uptown platform, plus a final staircase at the extreme northern end of the downtown express platform. Then the within fare control portion of the mezzanine ends with 4 High Entrance/Exit turnstiles, a token booth was here until 2006, that lead to a narrower mezzanine passageway. Here there is a streetstair up to the SE corner of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse (local roadways) and a passageway that leads up a ramp to a short intermediate staircase before reaching a streetstair up the NE coner.
Above the downtown local platform was once its own narrow mezzanine, a closed gate and two closed off staircases up to it from the platform are remaining evidence, here a fare narrow fare control area once led to pretty much a mirror image of what is still open to the east side of the Grand Concourse, with a streetstair up to the SW corner of the Grand Concourse (local roadways) and a further passageway that led up to a ramp before reaching a streetstair up to the NW corner, both of these streetstairs have been removed from the street and slabbed over.
Photos 1: February 28, 2004; 2-9: February 10, 2007; 10-13: June 30, 2008
