For many riders, the most exciting stop along the entire MTA Metro-North Rail Line in New York City is also one of the newest—the 153rd Street Station in the Bronx. Completed in May 2009, it is the point of arrival and departure for baseball fans by the tens of thousands who flock to games at the new Yankee Stadium.
Passengers with an eye for metal construction products will be hard-pressed to miss one of the station’s most distinctive gateway features—a double-S-curved metal canopy roof that covers the stairs leading to and from the elevated platform. Those panels and others around the station were manufactured at the job site and installed by ADPI of Avenel, New Jersey. The two profiles utilized by the company include Series 1300 standing seam and T-Panel batten seam, both developed and marketed by Englert Inc. of Perth Amboy, NJ.
The new station provides daily local service on Metro-North’s Hudson Line and special service on the Harlem and New Haven Lines on game days. The project involved the construction of new platforms, a pedestrian bridge, stairs and mezzanines on either side of the bridge, and elevators capped by the Englert Series 1300 material. In order to accomplish the construction during the off season, extensive staging was involved. A portion of the existing pedestrian bridge had to be cut and the remainder used for pedestrian traffic during one season.
As the metal fabricator on the job, ADPI chose the Englert T-panels with batten caps to form the complex roof form over the east stairway. Although not as strong as double-lock standing seam panels, the T-panels were decidedly easier to install in this particular application because of their use of snap-on seam caps in lieu of machine seaming.
To match other station roofs along the Hudson Line, the metal roof panels were specified in a Forest Green color. The forest green color was chosen to match other station roofs along the Hudson Line of the railroad. Nearly every station along the Hudson Line has an Englert standing seam metal roof.
Ten trains before and after the games serve the station, allowing riders to leave from and travel to stations on all three Metro-North lines. A shuttle train also transports fans between the stadium and Grand Central Terminal, helping to reduce traffic on the subway lines used to connect to rail service from New Jersey and Long Island.