Cannondale (Metro-North Station)
History
The Danbury and Norwalk Railroad 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 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.
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 Cannondale Historic District, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992.
The Cafe au Lait coffee shop in the station house closed on March 31, 2010.
Station layout
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.
References
- ^ Office of Rail, Bureau of Public Transportation (January 2007). "New Haven Line Train Station Visual Inspection, Summary Report" (PDF). Connecticut Department of Transportation.
- ^ "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 Archived July 12, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Metro-North 2018 Weekday Station Boardings. Metro-North Railroad Market Analysis/Fare Policy Group. April 2019. p. 6.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
- ^ 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
- ^ Tuohy, Laurel (May 24, 2010). "Cannondale To Get New Coffeeshop by July?". Wilton Patch. Retrieved April 17, 2012.
- ^ "Metro-North Railroad Track & Structures Department Track Charts Maintenance Program Interlocking Diagrams & Yard Diagrams 2015" (PDF). Metro-North Railroad. 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
External links
Media related to Cannondale station at Wikimedia Commons