Branchville station is a

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are con ...

station on the

Danbury Branch The Danbury Branch is a diesel branch of the Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line from downtown Norwalk, Connecticut north to Danbury, mostly single-tracked. It opened in 1852 as the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad. Until the early 1970s, passenger ...

of the

Metro-North Railroad Metro-North Railroad , trading as MTA Metro-North Railroad, is a suburban commuter rail service run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), a New York State public benefit corporations, public authority of the U.S. state of New Yor ...

New Haven Line The Metro-North Railroad New Haven Line is a commuter rail line running from New Haven, Connecticut to New York City. It joins the Harlem Line at Mount Vernon, New York and continues south to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. The New Haven ...

, located in the Branchville neighborhood of

Ridgefield, Connecticut Ridgefield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York ...

History

Ridgefield opened in 1852 as an original station on the

Danbury and Norwalk Railroad The Danbury and Norwalk Railroad, chartered in 1835 as the Fairfield County Railroad, was an independent American railroad that operated between the cities of Danbury and Norwalk, Connecticut from 1852 until its absorption by the Housatonic Rai ...

. The name was changed to Branchville upon the 1870 opening of the

Ridgefield Branch The Ridgefield Branch was a branch line of the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad and later the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. It ran for from Branchville to the center of Ridgefield, Connecticut. After a difficult and costly constructio ...

. A new station building was built around 1887 and served until the current station house was built in 1905. The building is currently occupied by the Whistle Stop Bakery, which opened in the 1980s. The Ridgefield Branch was used for passenger service until 1925 and for freight service until 1964.

Station layout

The station has one three-car-long high-level side platform to the west of the single track. A

passing siding A passing loop (UK usage) or passing siding (North America) (also called a crossing loop, crossing place, refuge loop or, colloquially, a hole) is a place on a single line railway or tramway, often located at or near a station, where trains or ...

extends north from the station. The station has 168 parking spaces,"Task 2: Technical Memorandum parking Inventory and Utilization: Final Report" submitted by Urbitran Associates Inc. to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, "Table 1: New haven Line Parking Capacity and Utilization", page 6, July 2003
is owned by the

Connecticut Department of Transportation The Connecticut Department of Transportation (often referred to as CTDOT and occasionally ConnDOT, or CDOT) is responsible for the development and operation of highways, railroads, mass transit systems, ports and waterways in Connecticut. ...

(ConnDOT), and managed by the town, but Metro-North is responsible for trash removal.

References

External links

Connecticut Department of Transportation, "Condition Inspection Branchville Station" report, September 2002
{{MNRR stations navbox Stations along New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad lines Metro-North Railroad stations in Connecticut Railroad stations in Fairfield County, Connecticut Buildings and structures in Ridgefield, Connecticut Railway stations in the United States opened in 1852 1852 establishments in Connecticut