LIRR excursion to Montauk

[greatcats]

I will be visiting New York City in a few weeks from Arizona. I am figuring on making a one day round trip to Montauk from Penn Station, leaving at 7:49 am, having lunch and strolling around Montauk for 3+ hours and returning to Penn after 6pm. This will be on a Monday. The last time I rode the LIRR was in 1970, to Mineola! Any locals have some travel tips? Are the bathrooms halfway decent? Thx!

 

[FreeskierInVT]

LI's East End is still relatively quiet this time of year, since things don't really ramp up until Memorial Day Weekend. Montauk Station is about a mile north of the downtown area, and about 7 miles west of the Montauk Point Lighthouse.

You'd have to take a taxi to the Lighthouse if you wish to visit, which I recommend even if the lighthouse is closed when you visit. If the lighthouse is closed, you won't be able to walk inside or visit the museum, but it's still beautiful to visit. There is a pedestrian walkway along the rock revetment around the perimeter of the lighthouse, and you can get some great pictures of the lighthouse if you walk around the rock revetment to the beach on the western end.

There's a few beaches along the main strip in Downtown Montauk. Restaurants will be slowly opening back up over the coming weeks as the weather gets warmer, so you should have some options. Areas around East Hampton and Southampton will definitely be more lively, so perhaps visiting Montauk and then starting back west and checking one of the other villages out may be a better plan. There is bus service between Montauk and East Hampton if the LIRR schedule doesn't work to visit Montauk and one of the villages further west (https://www.sct-bus.org/schedules/10c.pdf)

Bathrooms on the LIRR are always something I try and avoid. It's really hit or miss if they'll be halfway decent, but they're always in odd numbered cars.

 

[jis]

One of my favorite trips when I lived on Long Island was to Amagansett, one of the few LIRR stations with a very short platform. It is a short walk to downtown with several nice eateries and also a short walk to the Atlantic Shore Beach.

I lived in, actually went to graduate school in what was then SUNY at Stony Brook, now called Stony Brook University, so a trip to Montauk involved a Suffolk County Bus System bus ride to one of the stations on the South Shore Line of LIRR, something like Blue Point or Patchogue in those days, forty or so years back. After I baught a second hand car, an Audi 100LS, I seldom took LIRR to Maontaul or Hamptons from Stony Brook. Just drove there. After moving out of LI I have been to the Hamptons and Montauk many times by LIRR from NYP. Montauk has grown considerably aroud the train station since those days when there was literally nothing within miles of the station. Now there is a substantial restauran right opposite the station within a short walk, the last time I was there about 6 years back. Probably there is more now.

 

[jis]

If you want to vicariously visit LI’s South Fork and specifically the Montauk area including the lighthouse, watch the cable serial, The Affair. The main locale of the first season is Montauk and the east end of the South Fork. Even in subsequent seasons they repeatedly go back there. There are many views of the Montauk LIRR station too.

 

[FreeskierInVT]

One of my favorite trips when I lived on Long Island was to Amagansett, one of the few LIRR stations with a very short platform. It is a short walk to downtown with several nice eateries and also a short walk to the Atlantic Shore Beach.

I lived in, actually went to graduate school in what was then SUNY at Stony Brook, now called Stony Brook University, so a trip to Montauk involved a Suffolk County Bus System bus ride to one of the stations on the South Shore Line of LIRR, something like Blue Point or Patchogue in those days, forty or so years back. After I baught a second hand car, an Audi 100LS, I seldom took LIRR to Maontaul or Hamptons from Stony Brook. Just drove there. After moving out of LI I have been to the Hamptons and Montauk many times by LIRR from NYP. Montauk has grown considerably aroud the train station since those days when there was literally nothing within miles of the station. Now there is a substantial restauran right opposite the station within a short walk, the last time I was there about 6 years back. Probably there is more now.

My first time out East was almost exactly like that! Took the S71 bus from Stony Brook to the Mastic-Shirley LIRR station, and LIRR from Mastic-Shirley to East Hampton. That afternoon I just missed the last westbound train that would get me to Mastic-Shirley in time for the last S71 bus departure, so my only option to get back to school was to take the ~5.5 hour journey back to Stony Brook via LIRR, transferring at Babylon, Jamaica and Huntington. My ticket got some odd looks from the conductors!