Northport Branch

Northport Branch
Overview
Status	Abandoned
Locale	Town of Huntington, New York
Termini	Northport Junction (west) Northport (east)
Stations	1
Service
Type	Passenger and Freight (1868-1899) Freight only (1899-1978)
Operator(s)	Long Island Rail Road
History
Opened	April 15, 1868 (1868-04-15)
Closed	1978 (1978)
Technical
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in)

The Northport Branch was a spur off the Port Jefferson Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, running from between Greenlawn and Northport stations to directly within Northport Village.

Northport became the terminus of an extension of the Hicksville and Syosset Railroad line (later the Hicksville and Cold Spring Branch Railroad), after some arguments with Oliver Charlick over the locations of stations in Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington led to the line bypassing both towns, the latter of them two miles to the south, though a station was built for both of them. The line was extended from Syosset past Huntington to Northport in 1868, ^[1] and in 1873 the Smithtown and Port Jefferson Railroad opened from a mile south of Northport to Port Jefferson, ^[2] turning the old line into Northport into the Northport Branch, the result of another argument between Charlick and Northport. ^[3]

Old Northport Station was abandoned in 1899, ^[4] but the Northport Branch was used as a freight line throughout much of the 20th century. The spur was refurbished in the mid-1970s to prevent the loss of a local lumber firm, which had planned to move to New Jersey when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority previously announced it would abandon the line. ^[5] Between the 1950s and early-1980s, the New York State Department of Transportation wanted to use part of the branch for construction of the Babylon-Northport Expressway. Opponents of the expressway assumed that the NYSDOT was using the expressway as a plot against the railroad. In reality, the industries that previously used the line no longer found it useful, and it was abandoned in 1978, and dismantled in 1985. ^[6]

In 1987, the Long Island Rail Road leased the segment of the former right-of-way from Elwood Road to Route 25A to a group of local developers that sought approval to build a car wash on the site. ^[7] Construction of the car wash began in 1994 and the facility opened the following year. ^{[8] [9]} In 2007, a license agreement was made between the Town of Huntington and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to convert the 0.65-mile-long (1.05 km) segment of the former right-of-way between Laurel Hill Road and Elwood Road into a rail trail. ^{[10] [11] [12]} The size of the 4.4-acre (18,000 m²) greenway was nearly doubled two years later with the addition of 4 acres (16,000 m²) of parkland from an adjacent undeveloped parcel that had been acquired by New York State through eminent domain for the proposed Babylon-Northport Expressway, which had been canceled in 1982. ^{[11] [13] [14]} The side-by-side properties were named the Northport Rail Trail Park. ^{[13] [15] [16]}

Stations

Station	Miles (km) from Penn Station [17]	Date opened	Date closed	Connections / notes
For continuing service to Hicksville and points west, see Port Jefferson Branch
Greenlawn	39.2 (63.1)	c. 1868		HART Bus : H30 Originally Centerport
Port Jefferson Branch diverges at Northport Junction
Northport Village		April 15, 1868	October 17, 1899	Originally Northport; Renamed Northport Village or Old Northport in 1873.
The entire line was converted to freight only in 1899, abandoned 1978, and dismantled in 1985

References

1. "PRR Chronology, 1868" (PDF) (June 2004 ed.). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 3, 2004. 
2. "PRR Chronology, 1873" (PDF) (February 2005 ed.). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 5, 2005.
3. Ziel, Ron; George H., Foster (1987). Steel Rails to the Sunrise: The Long Island Railroad. Mattituck: Amereon House. pp. 13–14. ISBN   0-8488-0368-X.
4. "OLD NORTHPORT". www.arrts-arrchives.com. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
5. Scovel, Jim (September 26, 1973). "Action on LIRR Spur Prevents Loss of Firm". Newsday. Retrieved July 4, 2024– via Newspapers.com.
6. "LIRR Northport Spur". www.lirrhistory.com. Archived from the original on August 29, 2000. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
7. Ambro, David (October 5, 1989). "ZBA Approves Northport Car Wash Application". The Observer. Northport. p. 2. Retrieved August 9, 2024– via NYS Historic Newspapers.
8. Ambro, David (February 10, 1994). "Car Wash Under Construction". The Observer. Northport. p. 1. Retrieved August 9, 2024– via NYS Historic Newspapers.
9. Robinson, Elizabeth (February 2, 1995). "Business Flows Into New Car Wash". The Observer. Northport. p. 2. Retrieved August 9, 2024– via NYS Historic Newspapers.
10. Campbell, Kelly (June 7, 2007). "Abandoned rail eyed for trail". The Observer. Northport. p. 2. Retrieved August 10, 2024– via NYS Historic Newspapers.
11. Carter, A.J. (August 4, 2009). "Huntington Doubles Size of Rail Trail". Town of Huntington. Archived from the original on February 19, 2012. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
12. Hughes, Robert C. (August 25, 2022). "Rails to Trails, Huntington Edition". Huntington History. Retrieved August 10, 2024.
13. Campbell, Kelly (March 6, 2008). "DOT transfers land to Town". The Observer. Northport. p. 12. Retrieved August 10, 2024.
14. Fortunato, Claudia S. (January 31, 2011). "What Would Have Been: The Northport-Babylon Expressway". Northport, NY Patch. Retrieved August 10, 2024.
15. Koehler, Mike (April 3, 2008). "Building A Natural Alternative". The Record. Huntington. p. A11. Retrieved August 10, 2024– via NYS Historic Newspapers.
16. "Trails Guide Northport Rail Trail" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on January 31, 2017. Retrieved February 15, 2015.
17. Station pages linked from LIRR Stations Archived September 7, 2014, at the Wayback Machine