Ghent | ||||||||||||||||
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General information | ||||||||||||||||
Location | New York State Route 66 and Railroad Avenue Ghent, New York, 12075 | |||||||||||||||
Coordinates | 42°19′37″N73°37′07″W / 42.3270°N 73.6187°W | |||||||||||||||
Tracks | 0 | |||||||||||||||
History | ||||||||||||||||
Opened | May 10, 1852 [1] | |||||||||||||||
Closed | March 20, 1972 (passenger service) [2] March 27, 1980 (freight) | |||||||||||||||
Former services | ||||||||||||||||
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The Ghent station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Ghent, New York.
The station catered to a local community that had a substantial industry during the era of the NYCRR, and, earlier, the New York and Harlem Railroad. Prior to this, however, another railroad laid tracks through the community nearby: specifically, the Hudson and Berkshire Railroad, which was completed in 1846 between Hudson and Chatham It went bankrupt and was reorganized as the Hudson and Boston Railroad in 1855: later acquired by the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1870, which eventually downgraded it to the B&A Hudson Branch. The New York and Harlem laid tracks through Ghent to Chatham in 1852. The line was eventually taken over by the New York Central Railroad (NYCRR), and provided both passenger and freight train service. Ghent was the station that served both the Harlem Division and the former Boston and Albany Railroad Hudson Branch. [3] The station had a tower that coordinated the two railroads from here to Chatham Union Station until 1936. [4] It also included a hotel named The Bartlett House, which was built in 1870 and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since May 8, 2012. [5]
However, with the demise of the NYCRR, and its 1968 merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad to form the soon to be bankrupt Penn Central Railroad, passenger services ceased on March 20, 1972. [2] Ghent provided commercial freight-only service, and even became a terminus for freight when Conrail acquired the line in 1976 and eliminated it between here and Millerton station in Dutchess County. The station continued to do so until 1980, when the tracks between here and Chatham Union Station were dismantled. The Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association plans to extend the trail along the right-of-way in front of the site of the former station. [6]
Metro-North Railroad, trading as MTA Metro-North Railroad, is a suburban commuter rail service operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a public authority of the U.S. state of New York. Metro-North serves the New York Metropolitan Area, running service between New York City and its northern suburbs in New York and Connecticut, including Port Jervis, Spring Valley, Poughkeepsie, Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, White Plains, Southeast and Wassaic in New York and Stamford, New Canaan, Danbury, Bridgeport, Waterbury, and New Haven in Connecticut. Service in Connecticut is operated under contract with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. Metro-North also provides local rail service within the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx.
The New York and Harlem Railroad was one of the first railroads in the United States, and was the world's first street railway. Designed by John Stephenson, it was opened in stages between 1832 and 1852 between Lower Manhattan Island to and beyond Harlem. Horses initially pulled railway carriages, followed by a conversion to steam engines, then on to battery-powered Julien electric traction cars. In 1907, the then leaseholders of the line, New York City Railway, a streetcar operator, went into receivership. Following a further receivership in 1932, the New York Railways Corporation converted the line to bus operation. The Murray Hill Tunnel now carries a lane of road traffic, but not the buses.
The Central New England Railway was a railroad from Hartford, Connecticut, and Springfield, Massachusetts, west across northern Connecticut and across the Hudson River on the Poughkeepsie Bridge to Maybrook, New York. It was part of the Poughkeepsie Bridge Route, an alliance between railroads for a passenger route from Washington to Boston, and was acquired by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in 1904. The New Haven ran the CNE as a separate company until finally merging it in 1927. The vast majority of the system was abandoned by the 1930s and 1940s. Surviving portions of the Central New England Railway are operated by the Central New England Railroad and the Housatonic Railroad.
The Boston and Albany Railroad was a railroad connecting Boston, Massachusetts to Albany, New York, later becoming part of the New York Central Railroad system, Conrail, and CSX Transportation. The line is currently used by CSX for freight. Passenger service is provided on the line by Amtrak, as part of their Lake Shore Limited service, and by the MBTA Commuter Rail system, which owns the section east of Worcester and operates it as its Framingham/Worcester Line.
The Harlem Line is an 82-mile (132 km) commuter rail line owned and operated by the Metro-North Railroad in the U.S. state of New York. It runs north from New York City to Wassaic, in eastern Dutchess County. The lower 53 miles (85 km) from Grand Central Terminal to Southeast, in Putnam County, is electrified with a third rail and has at least two tracks. The section north of Southeast is a non-electrified single-track line served by diesel locomotives. Before the renaming of the line in 1983, it eventually became the Harlem Division of the New York Central Railroad. The diesel trains usually run as a shuttle on the northern end of the line, except for rush-hour express trains in the peak direction.
The Newburgh, Dutchess and Connecticut Railroad was a railroad in Dutchess County, New York, United States. Its line ran 58.9 miles (94.8 km) northeast from the Hudson River in Fishkill to the Connecticut state line near Millerton. The Dutchess and Columbia Railroad (D&C), was chartered in 1866 to link rural villages with the Hudson River Railroad and New York and Harlem Railroad. The under-construction line was leased by the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad (BH&E) in 1868. The first segment opened in July 1869, and it reached Pine Plains the following February.
The New York and Putnam Railroad, nicknamed the Old Put, was a railroad line that operated between the Bronx and Brewster in New York State. It was in close proximity to the Hudson River Railroad and New York and Harlem Railroad. All three came under ownership of the New York Central system in 1894. The railroad was abandoned starting in 1958, and most of the former roadbed has been converted to rail trail use.
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The Harlem Valley Rail Trail is a paved rail trail on an abandoned portion of the New York and Harlem Railroad, north of the hamlet of Wassaic and accessible by train, one mile north of the start at the Metro-North Railroad Harlem Line terminus in Wassaic. It is owned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP). It is maintained through an agreement between OPRHP, Dutchess County and the Harlem Valley Rail Trail Association, a private not-for-profit organization.
The Amenia station was a New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Amenia, New York via the Harlem Line. It was 85 miles (136 km) from Grand Central Terminal and travel time to Grand Central was approximately two hours, sixteen minutes.
Union Station served the residents of Chatham, New York, from 1887 to 1972 as a passenger station and until 1976 as a freight station. It was the final stop for Harlem Line trains. It had originally served trains of the Boston and Albany Railroad, then the New York Central Railroad and the Rutland Railway. It served as a junction for service that radiated to Rensselaer, New York, to the northwest; Hudson, New York, to the southwest; Vermont, to the northeast, and Pittsfield, Massachusetts to the east and New York City, to the south.
The Millerton station is a former New York Central Railroad (NYC) station on the NYC's Harlem Division that served the residents of Millerton, New York.
The Coleman's station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of North East, New York.
The Copake Falls station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Copake, New York.
The Philmont station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Claverack, New York.
The Martindale station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Hillsdale, New York and was the next stop on the Harlem Division after Craryville.
The Craryville station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Copake, New York. It is currently located along New York State Route 23 in the hamlet of Craryville.
The Highbridge Facility, also simply known as Highbridge or High Bridge, is a maintenance facility for the Metro-North Railroad in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, New York City, United States. It is the third stop along the Hudson Line north of Grand Central Terminal, and is for Metro-North employees only, though this stop also formerly served commuter rail passengers and was called High Bridge station.
The Hudson and Boston Railroad was a railroad that spanned across Southern and Central Columbia County, New York. It was chartered in 1855 and acquired by the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1870, only to face its gradual demise beginning in 1959. Despite its name, it never actually reached Boston, but it did serve as an important connecting line for the Boston and Albany Railroad, which converted it into the B&A Hudson Branch upon acquisition. The line formed a cutoff between the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad towards New York City and the Boston and Albany Railroad, toward Pittsfield, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston.
The Pittsfield and North Adams Railroad was a railroad based in northwestern Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1842 and was purchased by the Western Railroad of Massachusetts before construction was finished in 1846, then acquired by the Boston and Albany Railroad in 1870, only to face a gradual demise between the 1960s and 1990. It ran 18.539 mi (29.836 km) from North Adams Junction in Pittsfield to North Adams, where it connected to the Troy and Greenfield Railroad, an affiliate of the Fitchburg Railroad.