Broadway Line express service for Coney Island riders (NX). Though these expresses are thought of as being Sea Beach Expresses, they did not serve a single station on the Sea Beach Line. The express tracks on the Sea Beach had other uses over the years. Most new equipment, especially experimental cars, was broken in on these tracks. The tracks were used for motorman training and set up with a short stretch of 1950s-era automation to test the ill-fated system later used on one track of the IRT 42nd Street Shuttle. Historically, the two express tracks were an absolute block, that is, there was no signal control between one end of the tracks near Sixth Avenue and Kings Highway. A train was not supposed to enter the block until any train in front of it had departed the block. The express tracks' section on this block was allowed to deteriorate severely as did much of the system from the 1970s on. In 1998, it was decided to rehabilitate the express tracks in this area, with full signaling. Only the northbound (E4) track was rehabilitated, however, for two-way traffic from its northern end to Kings Highway if needed. The southbound (E3) track remains unused, being disconnected from the other three tracks and inaccessible from 59th Street to Kings Highway. History Early history The New York and Sea Beach Railroad was organized on September 25, 1876, as a steam-powered excursion railroad. It opened from a junction with the Brooklyn, Bath and Coney Island Railroad (West End Line) and concurrently-opened New York, Bay Ridge and Jamaica Railroad (Manhattan Beach Line) to Coney Island on July 18, 1877. After a delay of two years, it was opened to the Bay Ridge Ferry (to South Ferry, Manhattan) on July 17, 1879, at which time the Sea Beach Palace opened at the Coney Island end. Except at its two ends, the railroad used the same route as the current Sea Beach Line. At the Bay Ridge end, the railroad ran just north of the Long Island Rail Road's Bay Ridge Branch, ending at the Bay Ridge Channel around 64th Street. The current line joins this alignment near Fifth Avenue. The old railroad crossed the Bay Ridge Branch with a pronounced S-curve just east of Seventh Avenue; the crossing is now much straighter with the Bay Ridge Branch in a deeper cut. On the Coney Island end, the