Metro-North Railroad
| File:MTA Metro-North Railroad logo.png | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | New York, NY |
| Reporting mark | MNCW |
| Locale | New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey |
| Dates of operation | 1983–present |
The Metro-North Railroad (officially the Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company, and usually abbreviated as Metro-North) is a suburban commuter railroad service between New York City to its northern suburbs in New York State and Connecticut. Trains terminate in Wassaic, New York, Poughkeepsie, New York, Port Jervis, New York, Spring Valley, New York, New Canaan, Connecticut, Danbury, Connecticut, Waterbury, Connecticut and New Haven, Connecticut. Metro-North also provides local service within the Bronx, and from the Bronx into midtown Manhattan.
Metro-North is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which also operates the MTA New York City Transit buses, the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road. The MTA has styled Metro-North as MTA Metro-North Railroad, and has current plans to merge it with MTA Long Island Rail Road to form MTA Rail.[1]
There are three Metro-North lines on the east side of the Hudson River, running into Grand Central Terminal - the Hudson Line, Harlem Line and New Haven Line. The New Haven Line has three branches providing connecting service - the New Canaan Branch, Danbury Branch and Waterbury Branch. Amtrak also operates intercity train service along the New Haven and Hudson Lines; on both lines, it splits onto its own trackage to New York Penn Station. At New Haven, Shore Line East connecting service, run by the State of Connecticut, continues east to New London. The Hudson and Harlem Lines were originally part of the New York Central Railroad system, and the New Haven Line and its branches were owned by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.
Metro-North also operates trains west of the Hudson River from Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey in partnership with New Jersey Transit (with connecting service to New York Penn Station at Secaucus Junction). Those trains go to Port Jervis (the Port Jervis Line) and Spring Valley, New York (the Pascack Valley Line), operating on New Jersey Transit trackage in New Jersey. Both lines were once part of the Erie Railroad system.
Some services are operated by diesel, but all services running directly into Manhattan are electric powered. Most, if not all, of Metro-North's diesel locomotive consists are General Electric GENESIS P32 diesel-electric hybrids capable of switching to a pure electric mode by extending shoes to contact the railroad's third rail power distribution system. On the Hudson Line, trains are powered by electrified third rail from Croton-Harmon, and are powered by diesel north of that station. The Harlem Line has third rail from Southeast station and diesel north of that station. The New Haven Line is special in that trains are electrically powered through either DC from a third rail or AC from an overhead catenary wire. The main line from approximately Pelham, New York east to New Haven, as well as the entire New Canaan Branch, are powered by catenary. The Danbury Branch was formerly electrified but in 1961 became a diesel-only line. Locomotives on the Waterbury Branch are powered by diesel.
The third rails on all three of the eastern Metro North lines are unusual in that power is collected from below the third rail, as opposed to above, which is the case in the vast majority of third rail systems. This allows the third rail to be completely insulated from above.
The Metro-North mascot is Metro Man. A robotic cyborg in the shape of a train, he educates children about railway safety.
| East of Hudson |  | |
|---|---|---|
| West of Hudson (operated by NJ Transit) | ||
| Non-revenue and Predecessor lines | ||
| Other | ||