138 St-Grand Concourse
3 Avenue-138 Street is the first 6 stop in The Bronx. It has three tracks and two island platforms. Just south of the station the 3rd diamond 6 express track begins. In addition to express through-trains, the middle track was used to short-turn Midday 6 trains (the Bronx only received half of the service Manhattan received) until 1994 when all day Peak direction express service was introduced with diamond 6 trains operating during both rush hours and the middle of the day, To Manhattan until 12:30pm and to Pelham Bay Park starting at 1:00pm. The middle track is still used as a scheduled relay track (not just for through service) to turn-around 3 trains at the tail end of the AM rush hour between 8:45am and 9:10am to maximize service in Manhattan when its needed. Finally, the middle track is also still used to terminate trains when construction in the Bronx requires a reduction in service to keep maintain frequent service in Manhattan. This can happen during middays for construction on the elevated portion of the line (beyond Hunts Point Avenue), where construction overnight is prohibited.
The station itself is in poor repair and needs to be cleaned. A lot of the paint is chipped. The track walls have a simple mosaic pattern with 3s in them at regular intervals above normal white subway tile. The station platforms have tall ceilings reading up to just beneath the street (from the views of the light from subway grates that are just visible in angled shafts that curve high above the local tracks. These ceilings become lower where there is a mezzanine for the station’s two exits. A set of yellow columns along the edges of both narrow island platforms making the platforms feel cramped, not cavernous.
The station has two exits. The full-time exit is accessed via a single staircase up to a mezzanine level a third of the way from the front of a Pelham-bound train. This leads to a mezzanine with a newsstand between the two staircases. There is than a required walk than longer than feels necessary (maybe because of platform extensions, perhaps this was once the end of the of the platform when the station opened) before leading to a bank of turnstiles, with the token booth across from them. A narrow area outside of fare control leads to short passageways out to two streetstairs up to the SW corner and two streetstairs up to the NW corner of 138 Street & Alexander Avenue
The other exit is to 3 Avenue-138 Street. It is at the Manhattan-bound end of the platform. Here each platform has a single still open staircase with a second now closed off a non-public area on the former mezzanine but a very visible staircase leading to farther down each platform. These single staircases lead almost immediately up to a single High Entrance/Exit Turnstile by the Manhattan-bound platform, a single High Exit Only Turnstile by the Pelham-bound platform. A very small mezzanine leads to a short passageway to an intermediate staircase that splits into two streetstairs up to the south side 138 Street just east of 3rd Avenue. Two the north a short staircase leads up to an intermediate landing up to the north side east of 3 Avenue, there used to be a fourth streetstair up to the NE corner but this streetstair has been removed and slabbed over for some reason, with a cream-colored temporary looking wall on its lower landing.
Photo 1 & 2: December 19, 2003; 3-9: February 17, 2004; 10-34: June 10, 2011; 35 & 36: September 10, 2013
