167 Street
167 Street is located above River Avenue, 1 stop north of Yankee Stadium and the stadium looms in the background. Just north of the station the elevated goes around a gradual curve and onto Jerome Avenue where it stays until terminating at Woodlawn (Road). There are also switches between the Track M and the two local tracks on this curve just north of the station, these switches are used for a few northbound 4 trains at the end of the AM and PM rush hours that run non-stop from 167 Street to Burnside Avenue where they terminate on the middle track and then continue out of service up the middle track to the Mosholu Yard. The reason is so that terminating trains needing to go to the yard can be fumigated of passengers at Burnside Avenue and not delay through trains from service.
The switches north of the station though were built for a different reason though: Just south of 167 Street used to be the junction of where the 9th Avenue elevated line curved onto the Jerome Avenue line and ran joint service up to Woodlawn Rd prior to its abandonment on August 31, 1958. (The line from here to 155th Street-Polo Grounds, which was called the 155 Street Shuttle in its final years terminated here using Track M. It outlasted the rest of the 9th Avenue Elevated which closed on June 11, 1940). There is still evidence of the old junction south of the station. The Local El tracks curve around two now skeletal track rises, the former elevated track structures end at the Northeast corner of the new 2009-built Yankee Stadium as if they are entering the stadium.
The 167 Street station was closed for a rehabilitation March 27 to June 31, 2004. The station is a typical IRT elevated station with windscreens and canopies (before the station's 2004 closure there were only the canopies skeletons due to rehabilitation, and the windscreens consisted of the blue plywood) on two side platforms. Today the windscreens are green.
At The station has a small mezzanine with fare control that used to be much more cluttered and quite hard to navigate. During the rehabilitation period it was redesigned and is now much easier to navigate. The enter the station, passengers use one of four staircases, one up from each corner of River Avenue and 167 Street to reach the beneath the tracks station house. From here there is a single bank of turnstiles that lead to two staircases up to each platform in the middle of the mezzanine. The station house is located about 2 cars from the northern end of each platform, with a signal relay room at the northern end of the Uptown platform. Here the downtown platform continues slightly, while the uptown platform is slightly longer at the southern end of the station, meaning trains stop offset from one another.
Photo 1: December 19, 2003; 2-5: March 21, 2004; 6-8: August 2, 2004; 9-15: December 12, 2004; 16-21: January 29, 2005; 22-23: February 21, 2005; 24-28: June 16, 2005; 29-32: June 27, 2005; 33-38: December 23, 2005; 39-43: August 18, 2007; 44 & 45: January 7, 2011; 46-54: October 12, 2012;
