Cannondale station - Misplaced Pages

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Cannondale

File:WiltonCTCannondaleRRstaHouse09162007.JPGStation house and restaurant

General information

Location

22 Cannon Road
Wilton, CT, 06897-2625

Line(s)

Metro-North: New Haven Line

Connections

Norwalk Transit District
Housatonic Area Regional Transit

Construction

Parking

104

Accessible

Yes

Services

Preceding station		MNRR		Following station
Template:MNRR stationstoward Template:MNRR stations		Template:MNRR lines		Template:MNRR stationstoward Template:MNRR stations

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 and area is notable for being the eponym for the Cannondale Bicycle Corporation which is now headquartered in Bethel.

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.

Platform and track configuration

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.

History

The Danbury and Norwalk Railroad opened the line opened 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.

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 staton name was changed to "Cannondale".