Cannondale (Metro-North station)

Cannondale

Station house and restaurant
Line(s)
  Danbury Branch
Platforms 1 side platform
Tracks 1
Connections Norwalk Transit District: Route 7 Link
Construction
Parking 104
Disabled access Yes
Other information
Fare zone

41

Cannondale Railroad Station
Location in Connecticut
Coordinates 41°13′0″N 73°25′36″W / 41.21667°N 73.42667°W / 41.21667; -73.42667Coordinates: 41°13′0″N 73°25′36″W / 41.21667°N 73.42667°W / 41.21667; -73.42667
Built 1892
Part of Cannondale Historic District (#92001531[1])
Designated CP November 12, 1992
Services
Preceding station   Metro-North Railroad   Following station
Danbury Branch
toward Danbury

The Cannondale Metro-North Railroad station serves residents of the Cannondale area of Wilton, Connecticut via the Danbury Branch of the New Haven Line.

The station is 50.2 miles to Grand Central Terminal and the average travel time from there is 1 hour, 24 minutes regardless of through trains or transfers at Stamford or South Norwalk.

The station has 140 parking spaces, all owned by the state.[2]

Cannondale Station provided the name and original logo for what is now the Cannondale Bicycle Corporation.

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 built 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.[3]

In its early years, the railroad line had no more than 390 passengers a day using the service in its early years, and an average of 34 passengers per train, L. Peter Cornwall, a railroad historian, estimated that perhaps no more than a dozen people used the train from Cannondale in its early years. Although there may only have 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".[3] 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 that used to operate out of the station house closed on March 31, 2010 and a search for a new building tenant has been ongoing since that time.[4]

Platform and track configuration

1 ■ Danbury Branch for South Norwalk or Grand Central
■ Danbury Branch for Danbury

This station has one two-car-long high-level side platform to the west of the track. The Danbury Branch has one track at this location.

See also

References

  1. ↑ National Park Service (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ "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.
  3. 1 2 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
  4. ↑ Tuohy, Laurel (May 24, 2010). "Cannondale To Get New Coffeeshop by July?". Wilton Patch. Retrieved 2012-04-17.

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