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If you happen to have a picture of Aqueduct Racetrack from around 2009, put it in a safe place.

It’s destined to become a collector’s item.

Those not so long ago days of Aqueduct masquerading as a ghost town are rapidly moving into the past, with the combination of New York City Off-Track Betting’s demise and the opening of the Resorts World Casino New York City making the Ozone Park track a red-hot destination.

And, don’t look now, but there’s more company on the way as NY Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to add a huge convention center to the complex.

Amazing, isn’t it, how the bells, whistles and buzzers of a slot machine can bring a business back from the dead as Aqueduct is suddenly as crowded as Saratoga.

Which can create a problem, that we’ll call the Yogi Berra Syndrome.

Decades ago, Berra came up with a funny yet wise remark when he uttered, “Nobody goes to that place anymore, it’s too crowded.”

There is some logic to that as the New York Racing Association, after needing little more than a skeleton staff at Aqueduct -- and Belmont for that matter -- suddenly has a small army of people to service. A visit to the Big A on New Year’s Day found long lines trying to get into the track’s parking lot and long lines at the betting windows.

In an era when it’s actually more efficient to wager online from home, the last thing NYRA needs is a deterrent to attend and bet on the races.

With a walkway between the track and casino now open and streams of people using it, a good resolution for NYRA in 2012 would be to spend some of its new-found gold from the casino on staff and equipment at the Big A to keep its customers happy.

Judging by the crowds at the casino and the construction plans being voiced by Gov. Cuomo, those days of spending a quiet day of solitude at the Big A are long gone.

As the money-making machine better known as the Resorts World Casino New York City continues to generate revenue at a dizzying pace, there’s a natural tendency to ponder a rather expensive what if.

What if the Aqueduct casino, which received legislative approval late in 2001, had not run into one ridiculous roadblock after another? What if the casino had opened in, say, 2003 and had been providing tens of millions of dollars per month for both the New York racing industry and the state’s tax coffers for the last eight years?

What if, indeed.

Yet the way trainer Rick Violette, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, sees it, right now that’s just “water under the bridge.”

“There was a lot of money left on the table, no doubt about it,” Violette said. “But you can’t focus on that. It certainly took a long time to get here, but in the end maybe the delay got us the perfect partner. Genting [the parent company of Resorts World] has built a casino that has been impressive in a lot of ways. In the gambling business you hear a lot of talk about one casino wanting to build a better mousetrap than the other casinos. Well, it’s hard to imagine a better mousetrap than this one.”

As much as the bustling casino has congested traffic in the neighborhood, it’s been a small price for horsemen like Violette to pay. With the casino’s 2,486 Video Lottery Terminals (a.k.a. video slots and games) averaging a weekly profit of about $9.4 million the last two weeks, New York racing is less than a month away from finally reaping the full benefits of a casino that, for so long, seemed as real as talk of pirate’s gold in Flushing Bay.

According to Violette, the New York Racing Association will use its share of the casino revenue to boost purses by 35-40 percent on Jan. 1. There’s even a possibility that the final four cards of 2011 following a Holiday break (Dec. 28-31) will be supplemented to prevent horsemen from keeping horses in their stalls until the new year brings higher purses.

As an example of the new structure, maiden special weight races are expected to jump from a $50,000 purse to $60,000 and maiden races from $40,000 to $50,000. Stakes will also grow in value.

To no one’s surprise, the lure of higher purses has spawned prospects for the best winter racing in recent memory. The horse colony promises to be bigger and better than in past years with numerous NY trainers electing to keep more horses than usual in the Big Apple and others like Eddie Kenneally, Ken McPeek and Dale Romans, who usually ship out of New York in the fall, stabling a few of their runners in chilly New York rather than sunny and warm Florida.

“A year ago, [racing secretary] P.J. Campo used smoke and mirrors to fill cards,” Violette said. “But this year, with the higher purses, there should be larger fields. It makes more economic sense to race your horses here in New York rather than ship them south.”

Down the road, Violette expects additional hikes for the 2012 Belmont Park and Saratoga meets, all thanks to a river of loot flowing into the casino’s VLT’s that, if anything, promises to grow larger in the coming months.

Additional floors of the casino, with high-end wagering areas, are expected to open in mid-December, which should nearly double the number of VLT’s at a facility that’s already packed, even without an aggressive marketing campaign. The nearby Yonkers casino may have its television ads with a talking horse to lure customers, but the Resorts World Casino has decided to work out the early kinks and open its new floors before telling the world why it should come out to Ozone Park.

One can only imagine the financial figures once that happens.

“It’s exciting to think about the future when you consider this was only a partial opening,” Violette said.

Aside from the ka-ching of the new-found cash rolling in, Violette has also found much to like in the way racing has not been pushed into the background by its new neighbor that occupies the old grandstand at Aqueduct.

At some tracks that house a casino, it sometimes takes a simple phone call to find out who calls the shots in the marriage of horses and slot machines. A recorded phone message that says “Dial 1 for the casino; Dial 2 for the racetrack” pretty much says it all about the batting order.

At Aqueduct, while the Resorts World Casino is certainly attracting more people than the racetrack, it has not obscured the racing product.

“The casino and racetrack are separate entities. They have different owners and phone numbers,” Violette said. “But they are not isolated. There’s a walkway from the racetrack to the casino. They have balconies to watch the races. They even have windows, which you will not find in most casinos, so you can see the track.”

While slot players and horse players are generally two different types of gamblers, the casino, which opened Oct. 28, has no doubt played a role in larger than usual crowds at the racetrack. On Saturday, Nov. 26, when Aqueduct’s final two Grade 1 stakes of the year -- the Cigar Mile and Gazelle -- were contested, attendance was listed at 7,762, an increase of 15.5 percent over the previous year’s figure. The on-track handle on Aqueduct races was $1,498,680, jumping 35.2 percent from the 2010 figure of $1,108,170.

“There’s no real way to measure whether the casino is bringing new fans to the racetrack or old ones out to the track, but on the day of the Cigar Mile there was not a empty table at [Aqueduct’s] Equestris dining room, and I haven’t seen that in quite a while,” Violette said.

And so, as the millions continue to roll in and new floors will soon open, for Violette and New York horsemen there is finally a golden life saver after an insufferable wait for financial salvation.

“Now with the casino here, farms in New York are re-opening and new stallions will be coming to the state,” Violette said. “There’s more life here at Aqueduct. The crowds are bigger. The food is better. And all of this is leading to jobs, jobs and more jobs. What we’re seeing from the casino has already exceeded our expectations.”

Somehow, it seems safe to say that view of prosperity does not figure to change anytime soon.