The IND World's Fair Line, officially the World's Fair Railroad, was a temporary branch of the Independent Subway System (IND) serving the 1939 New York World's Fair in Queens, New York City. It split from the IND Queens Boulevard Line at an existing flying junction east of Forest Hills–71st Avenue station, ran through the Jamaica Yard and then ran northeast and north through Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, roughly along the current path of the Van Wyck Expressway. The line continued along a wooden trestle to the World's Fair Railroad Station, located slightly south of Horace Harding Boulevard (now the Long Island Expressway). The World's Fair station, the only one on the line, consisted of two tracks and three platforms.
The line was planned beginning in 1936, and it was constructed in 1938. The line and station were only open in 1939 and 1940 during the Fair's operating season. Passengers had to pay a ten-cent fare to use this line, double the subway's standard five-cent fare. This was not the only line to serve the world's fair. The Interborough Rapid Transit and the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit operated service to the Fair via the World's Fair station of their joint-operated IRT Flushing Line. The World's Fair Railroad and station are the only IND line and station to have been closed and demolished. Remnants of the line are still present in the Jamaica Yard.
History
In 1935, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses selected the then-new Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in central Queens for what would become the 1939 New York World's Fair. In December 1936, the Board of Transportation and the New York State Transit Commission sent a request to the New York City Board of Estimate in order to have adequate rapid transit facilities to handle World's Fair crowds when the fair opened in 1939. An extension of the city-operated Independent Subway System (IND) to the World's Fair was part of this plan. It was facilitated by the extension of the Queens Boulevard Line to Union Turnpike and the nearby Jamaica storage yard, all of which had opened at the end of December 1936. It was originally expected that the World's Fair spur would cost about $1.2 million, of which $700,000 was allocated on construction and $500,000 was allocated for equipment. However, it ended up costing $1.7 million. For legal and financial reasons, the line was called the "World's Fair Railroad" and was considered a separate entity from the IND. Part of this designation included the state legislation approving the "double-fare" for the line (see ).
The Board of Transportation awarded the contract for the IND World's Fair Line on October 26, 1937, to the P. T. Cox Contracting Company. The company had been the lowest bidder for the contract, having offered to construct the trestle for the World's Fair Line at a cost of $308,770. The World's Fair extension was opposed by Parks Commissioner Moses, who believed the new subway spur would be "extravagant and wasteful".
During the line's planning stages in 1937, the Board of Estimate considered making the line a permanent connection to Flushing Meadows Park following the end of the fair. They also looked at the possibility of intermediate stations along the line to serve the local areas, comprising what is now Kew Gardens Hills and Flushing. The upgrades to make the line permanent would have cost around $6 million. However, it was determined to be impractical due to the absence of permanent attractions in the park at the time; these attractions, such as the Citi Field baseball park and the USTA National Tennis Center, were not added until later.
In early 1938, construction on the IND World's Fair Line began. It originated at the Queens Boulevard portal of Jamaica Yard as a continuation of the tracks that diverged from the Queens Boulevard Line east of 71st−Continental Avenues. The line ran along the eastern edge of Flushing Meadows–Corona Park for to approximately what is now the interchange of the Long Island Expressway and the Van Wyck Expressway. The line consisted of two tracks ending in a stub-end terminal called World's Fair Station. The marshy swampland in the line's right-of-way was filled in, and a trestle was built over the landfill. The line was designed to be removed following the fair in 1940.