Cannondale 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

Cannondale The Cannondale Bicycle Corporation is an American division of Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings that supplies bicycles. Its headquarters are in Wilton, Connecticut with engineering offices in Freiburg, Germany. Frames are manufactured in Taiwan. ...

neighborhood of

Wilton, Connecticut Wilton is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 18,503. In 2017, it was the sixth-wealthiest town per capita in Connecticut, the wealthiest U.S. state per capita. Officially recog ...

. The station building was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1992 as part of the

Cannondale Historic District Cannondale Historic District is a historic district in the Cannondale section in the north-central area of the town of Wilton, Connecticut. The district includes 58 contributing buildings, one other contributing structure, one contributing sit ...

. The station has a two-car-long high-level side platform west of the single track. The station has 140 parking spaces, all of which are managed by the Town of Wilton."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

History

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 ...

opened the line in late February 1852, with the official opening on March 1. Charles Cannon of Cannondale was the subcontractor who helped build the route through Wilton. The train cost passengers 30 cents to go to South Norwalk and 50 cents to Danbury at a time when the day's wages of a laborer might not be a dollar. Two trains made the trip up and down the line each day. In the first few years, a freshet and a flood from the

Norwalk River The Norwalk River is a river in southwestern Connecticut, United States, approximately long.U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed April 1, 2011 The word "Norwalk" comes from t ...

twice shut down the line for repairs. The station made travel suddenly much quicker than stagecoach transportation. After a few years, when speeds picked up a bit on the line, it took 28 minutes to reach South Norwalk.Cornwall, L. Peter, "The Danbury & Norwalk Railroad and its impact on Cannondale", pp 105–132, published in ''Cannondale: A Connecticut Neighborhood'' (no overall editor named), published by the Wilton Historical Society, 1987 In its early years, the line had no more than 390 passengers a day using the service, and an average of 34 passengers per train. L. Peter Cornwall, a railroad historian, estimated that perhaps no more than a dozen people used Cannondale in its early years. Although there may have only been a flag stop (in which passengers or railroad employees raised a flag if they needed the train to stop), by 1856 it was a regular stopping point for all trains, and the stop was originally called Cannon's. In the early 1870s the station was no longer listed and was probably a flag stop. In the 1890s it was again listed as a station, now called Cannon. Just before World War I, the station name was changed to Cannondale. The station is currently a contributing property of the

, which has been on the

since 1992. The Cafe au Lait coffee shop in the station house closed on March 31, 2010.

References

External links

Station on Google Maps Street View

Connecticut Department of Transportation, "Condition Inspection Cannondale Station" report, August 2002
{{MNRR stations navbox Stations along New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad lines Metro-North Railroad stations in Connecticut Buildings and structures in Wilton, Connecticut Railroad stations in Fairfield County, Connecticut Historic district contributing properties in Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in Fairfield County, Connecticut Railway stations in the United States opened in 1852 1852 establishments in Connecticut