With Grand Central Terminal celebrating its centennial this year, most people have been so utterly focused on that event that they’ve forgotten another birthday (myself included). Metro-North Railroad is now 30, and has come quite a long way since its inception in 1983. Grand Central was restored to greatness, as opposed to being a dirty homeless shelter. For the most part, especially with the new M8’s, the railroad operates with decent equipment – not whatever the desperate railroad could scrounge up to have enough cars to operate.

Several other commuter rail services that were also run by ConRail in the past, like SEPTA and NJ Transit, are likewise celebrating their 30th anniversaries this year. NJ Transit has been celebrating their 30th by posting some of their first tickets and timetables, and I thought it would be fun to do the same for Metro-North. So here are some timetables, tickets, and other assorted goodness from the early days of Metro-North.

Some of the first Metro-North timetables. You can see the inside of the odd maroon Upper Harlem Line timetable in this previous post.

Metro-North published several guide books for riders in the early and mid ’80s.

Cashfares for the Harlem and Hudson Lines, and some ’80s seatchecks.

In the early days, tickets were small little strips like these, similar to the ones previously used by the New York Central and the Penn Central.

Backs of tickets showing their validation stamps. The ticket windows at each of those stations have since been closed.

In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some more interesting things from Metro-North’s 30 year history… Happy Birthday, Metro-North!