Despite the fact that I may be on another continent, I’ve worked hard to come up with almost a month’s worth of posts to cover May. Although I had been planning to visit a bunch more stations before I left, haven’t really gotten a chance to go to too many New Haven Line stations as of yet. It is my goal for the year, and I am publicly committing myself to that fact. Next week I will be presenting the first Tuesday Tour of the New Haven Line, and I have every intention of going until I’ve visited and posted each New Haven Line station.
A few people have asked me why I’ve decided to go and do the New Haven Line, as if I was going to do another Metro-North line, the Hudson would seem to make more sense. But I do feel I have a bit more connection to the New Haven Line than I do to the Hudson (besides the fact that I lived in Connecticut most of my life). Many people that I’ve encountered have railroad family members, and their love of the rails came from that. Even though it is not nearly as common as it once was, there are still Metro-North employees whose fathers and grandfathers worked for the railroad. I don’t have much of a familial connection to the rails… and most of my older male relatives I don’t even remember (not to say that females didn’t work for the railroad – but that is something that is more common now than it was before). I have no recollections of my paternal grandfather, and the only memory I have of my maternal grandfather was at his funeral. I did, however, have an uncle named August. He worked as a brakeman for the New York, New Haven & Hartford, but I don’t think I even knew that until fairly recently. I don’t remember much of him, but I remember when I was a little girl he gave me a football. Maybe that is why I like the guy – he didn’t really give a damn about those all-too-common gender stereotypes – and I sure as heck loved that football.
I’m not sure how old I was in the above photograph, but that is me, my mother, and my Uncle August. Amusingly, if you look closely, you will note that the hood I’m wearing has ears on it. Well look where destiny has brought me… to wearing cat hats and writing about trains, and this time the next stop will be on the New Haven Line.
I guess the stations aren’t as pretty without the river that the Hudson Line stations have in the background, but the Northeast corridor has a lot more frequent Amtrak trains to photograph than any of the services that run along the Hudson Line.
Hello!! ;
Please visit the SoNo Switch Tower Museum in South Norwalk a few blocks East of the train station. This is an 1885 lever-operated track switching system and one of the very few of it’s type to be preserved completely intact in it’s original form. The Tower is at the junction of the “Main Line” and the Danbury branch.
Be glad to treat you to lunch!!!
Cheers, Al B.
wrote that letter about the Mt Pleasant Station refound and also consider Brewster my home station, which seems very cleaner in your pictures than i remember last ive seen it 15 years back, Wish they did not stop amtrack out of Phoenix as traveling with the option of ease has become just a memory. Am glad someone is keeping the history forefront of those systems as they are almost non replaceable, as riding a bus for hours to get on a train is almost intolerable, and hopefully not something they do to the outer edges of Metro North reaches which had brought goods and basic materiels into the city and seemingly be needed to again, not exactly mineral assays at Goldens Bridge, lovely stone houses?????