Overview | |
---|---|
Locale | Poughkeepsie, NY to Boston Corners, NY |
Dates of operation | 1872–1938 |
Technical | |
Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
The Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railway was the first railroad to run east from Poughkeepsie, New York, and was taken over by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and assigned to the Central New England Railway in 1907.
The Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railroad was chartered April 13, 1866 to be built from Poughkeepsie on the Hudson River northeast to Boston Corners in Ancram, Columbia County, NY, and then southeast to the Connecticut state line, where it would connect with the Connecticut Western Railroad, which would continue east to Hartford, Connecticut.
The line opened on January 24, 1871 and ran from Poughkeepsie to Stissing. At Stissing the P&E had trackage rights to use that portion of the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad line that ran from Stissing to Pine Plains. On October 1, 1872 the remainder of the P&E line was opened from Pine Plains to the state line. [1]
The P&E's main yard and engine facilities were at the Smith Street Yard in Poughkeepsie, where there was a passenger station, a freight house, turntable and engine house. The local trolley line on Smith St. also served the station. From the Poughkeepsie yard P&E trains traveled east through Pleasant Valley, Salt Point, Clinton Corners, Stanfordville, Stissing, Pine Plains, Boston Corners and State Line near Millerton.
It was anticipated that in addition to passenger service, the railroad would make money hauling iron ore from the ore beds of Columbia County, and milk from local dairy farms; however, revenues were not as great as expected. [1]
On June 24, 1874 the company went into receivership. It was sold in April 1875 and reorganized May 15 as the Poughkeepsie, Hartford and Boston Railroad. It again went bankrupt and on January 26, 1884 the Hartford and Connecticut Western Railroad bought the section southeast of Boston Corners, to which they already had track rights. The rest was sold in late 1886 and on January 22, 1887 it was reorganized as the New York and Massachusetts Railway. Profit was still hard to come by, and it entered receivership for a third time in February 1893. It was sold under foreclosure March 2 and reorganized April 13 once under the name, the Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railway Company. Yet again, on June 17, 1898, the company went into receivership.
On July 12, 1904 P&E had a wreck at Salt Point when a passenger train was mistakenly switched to a siding where a freight train was waiting. The conductor on the passenger train was injured.
In 1907 the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad bought it and on June 25 merged it into the Central New England Railway.
The CNE had been forced to build the parallel Poughkeepsie and Connecticut Railroad in the late 1880s due to the Poughkeepsie and Eastern's refusal to sell. In 1910 the P&C was abandoned between Salt Point and Pine Plains, with trains rerouted over the P&E. With the 1925 abandonment of the P&E from Ancram Lead Mines northeast to Boston Corners, the P&C served as the sole route east of Pine Plains (it too was closed in 1932). Abandonment came in 1938 to the rest of the P&E.
Mileages reflect those after the 1910 consolidation, with the ex-Poughkeepsie and Connecticut Railroad serving as the Poughkeepsie entry. Prior to 1910, the line used a station on its own alignment west of Smith Street in Poughkeepsie (though mileages were not substantially different). [2] [3] Between Stissing Junction and Pine Plains, the line used trackage rights on the Newburgh, Dutchess and Connecticut Railroad (ND&C).
Miles (km) [4] | Municipality | Station | Connections and notes |
---|---|---|---|
0.0 (0.0) | Poughkeepsie (city) | Poughkeepsie | |
1.8 (2.9) | Poughkeepsie (town) | – | Junction with Poughkeepsie and Connecticut Railroad |
3.8 (6.1) | Van Wagner's | ||
6.1 (9.8) | Pleasant Valley | Pleasant Valley | |
10.7 (17.2) | Salt Point | ||
12.2 (19.6) | Clinton | West Hibernia | |
13.2 (21.2) | Clinton Corners | ||
14.2 (22.8) | Stanford | Upton Lake | |
15.8 (25.4) | Willows | ||
17.8 (28.6) | Stanfordville | ||
19.8 (31.8) | McIntyre | ||
21.1 (34.0) | Stissing Junction | Junction with ND&C | |
22.9 (36.8) | Pine Plains | Attlebury | |
25.1 (40.3) | Briarcliff Farms | ||
26.3 (42.2) | – | Junction with Poughkeepsie and Connecticut Railroad (1910-built connector) and ND&C | |
26.6 (42.7) | Pine Plains | ||
30.7 (49.5) | Ancram | Ancram Lead Mines | |
32.5 (52.3) | Halstead's | ||
34.4 (55.3) | Tanner's | ||
37.1 (59.8) | Boston Corners | Junction with Rhinebeck and Connecticut Railroad and NYC Harlem Division | |
41.0 (66.0) | North East | Mount Riga | Shared station with the Harlem Division |
44.1 (70.9) | State Line | Junction with Hartford and Connecticut Western Railroad and ND&C | |
Pine Plains is a town in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 2,218 at the 2020 census.
The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, commonly known as The Consolidated, or simply as the New Haven, was a railroad that operated principally in the New England region of the United States from 1872 to December 31, 1968. Founded by the merger of the New York and New Haven and Hartford and New Haven railroads, the company had near-total dominance of railroad traffic in Southern New England for the first half of the 20th century.
Beacon station is a commuter rail station on the Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line located in Beacon, New York. The station has three tracks, with one island platform and one side platform.
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 Poughkeepsie Bridge Route was a passenger train route from Washington, D.C. to Boston, Massachusetts, via Baltimore, Maryland and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The New York and New England Railroad (NY&NE) was a railroad connecting southern New York State with Hartford, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; and Boston, Massachusetts. It operated under that name from 1873 to 1893. Prior to 1873 it was known as the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad, which had been formed from several smaller railroads that dated back to 1846. After a bankruptcy in 1893, the NY&NE was reorganized and briefly operated as the New England Railroad before being leased to the competing New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in 1898.
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 New Haven Railroad (NY&NH) was a railroad connecting New York City to New Haven, Connecticut, along the shore of Long Island Sound. It opened in 1849, and in 1872 it merged with the Hartford & New Haven Railroad to form the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. The line is now the Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line and part of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
Boston Corner is a hamlet of the town of Ancram in Columbia County, New York, United States and the town of Northeast in Dutchess County. The District of Boston Corner was incorporated by Massachusetts in 1838 from a tract of unincorporated land west of the town of Mount Washington, Massachusetts, and was ceded from Massachusetts to New York on January 11th, 1855, because its geographical isolation from the rest of Massachusetts made maintaining law and order difficult.
The Lehigh and New England Railroad was a Class I railroad located in Northeastern United States that acted as a bridge line. It was the second notable U.S. railroad to file for abandonment in its entirety after the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. It was headquartered in Philadelphia.
The Housatonic Railroad is a Class III railroad operating in southwestern New England and eastern New York. It was chartered in 1983 to operate a short section of ex-New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in northwestern Connecticut, and has since expanded north and south, as well as west into New York State.
Stissing Junction was a railroad junction where the Dutchess and Columbia Railroad joined with the Poughkeepsie and Eastern Railroad, and the Poughkeepsie and Connecticut Railroad. It was located approximately 3–4 miles south of Pine Plains, New York.
The Rhinebeck and Connecticut Railroad (R&C) was a railroad in Dutchess and Columbia counties in New York, United States. Its line ran 35 miles (56 km) east from the Hudson River at Rhinecliff to Boston Corners. It was chartered in 1870 to connect the Connecticut Western Railroad with the Hudson River to transport coal mined in Pennsylvania. Construction began in 1871, with the line opening in stages from 1873 to 1875. The railroad went bankrupt in 1881; it was purchased the next year by Connecticut Western successor Hartford and Connecticut Western Railroad (H&CW).
The Metro-North Railroad's Beacon Line is a non-revenue line connecting the railroad's three revenue lines east of the Hudson River. From west to east, the lines that connect are Hudson Line, Harlem Line, and the Danbury Branch of the New Haven Line. It was purchased by Metro-North in 1995 for $4.2 million from Maybrook Properties, a subsidiary of the Housatonic Railroad, to preserve it for future use, training, and equipment moves. Maybrook Properties purchased the line from Conrail after Conrail withdrew from the Danbury, Connecticut, freight market in 1992.
The New York, Westchester and Boston Railway Company, was an electric commuter railroad in the Bronx and Westchester County, New York from 1912 to 1937. It ran from the southernmost part of the South Bronx, near the Harlem River, to Mount Vernon with branches north to White Plains and east to Port Chester. From 1906, construction and operation was under the control of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (NH) until its bankruptcy in 1935.
The Boston Corners station was a former New York Central Railroad station that served the residents of Ancram, New York.
The Maybrook Line was a line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad which connected with its Waterbury Branch in Derby, Connecticut, and its Maybrook Yard in Maybrook, New York, where it interchanged with other carriers. It was the main east-west freight route of the New Haven until its merger with the Penn Central in 1969.
The Nutmeg train was a unique east-west train through Massachusetts and Connecticut which did not travel along the Atlantic Coast; in the course of following its route it connected several of Connecticut's medium-sized cities. Operated by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (NH) from 1950, it took a route from Boston's South Station, running through southwestern Boston suburbs but making no stops until Blackstone, Massachusetts, then through northeast Connecticut along the path of the old Southbridge and Blackstone Railroad, divisions of the old New York and New England Railroad to Hartford's Union Station, and finally to Waterbury's Union Station. Running directly through northeastern Connecticut, it made a shorter trip than the itineraries through Springfield, Massachusetts that the New Haven offered.