Northport Branch

The Northport Branch was a spur off the Port Jefferson Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, running from between Greenlawn and Northport stations to directly within Northport Village.

Northport Branch
Overview
StatusAbandoned
LocaleTown of Huntington, New York
TerminiNorthport Junction (west)
Northport (east)
Stations1
Service
TypePassenger and Freight (1868-1899)
Freight only (1899-1978)
Operator(s)Long Island Rail Road
History
OpenedApril 15, 1868 (1868-04-15)
Closed1978 (1978)
Technical
Track gauge1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)

Northport became the terminus of an extension of the Hicksville and Syosset Railroad line (later the Hicksville and Cold Spring Branch Railroad), after some arguments with Oliver Charlick over the locations of stations in Cold Spring Harbor, and Huntington led to the line bypassing both towns, the latter of them two miles to the south, though a station was built for both of them. The line was extended from Syosset past Huntington to Northport in 1868,[1] and in 1873 the Smithtown and Port Jefferson Railroad opened from a mile south of Northport to Port Jefferson,[2] turning the old line into Northport into the Northport Branch, the result of another argument between Charlick and Northport.[3]

Old Northport Station was abandoned in 1899,[4] but the Northport Branch was used as a freight line throughout much of the 20th Century. Between the 1950s and early-1980s, the New York State Department of Transportation wanted to use part of the branch for construction of the Babylon-Northport Expressway. Opponents of the expressway assumed that the NYSDOT was using the expressway as a plot against the railroad. In reality, the industries that previously used the line no longer found it useful, and it was abandoned in 1978, and dismantled in 1985.[5]

In 2007, a 4.4-acre (18,000 m2) segment of the former right-of-way was preserved as the Northport Rail Trail.[6] The size of the rail trail was doubled in 2009 with the addition of 4 acres (16,000 m2) of parkland from an adjacent undeveloped parcel that had been acquired by New York State by eminent domain for the Babylon-Northport Expressway.[7]

Stations
Station Miles (km) from
Penn Station[8]		 Date
opened		 Date
closed		 Connections / notes
For continuing service to Hicksville and points west, see Port Jefferson Branch
Greenlawn 39.2 (63.1) c. 1868 HART Bus: H30
Originally Centerport
Port Jefferson Branch diverges at Northport Junction
Northport Village April 15, 1868 October 17, 1899 Originally Northport; Renamed Northport Village or Old Northport in 1873.
The entire line was converted to freight only in 1899, abandoned 1978, and dismantled in 1985

References
  1. "PRR Chronology, 1868" (PDF). (93.8 KiB), June 2004 Edition
  2. "PRR Chronology, 1873" (PDF). (100 KiB), February 2005 Edition
  3. Ziel, Ron; George H., Foster (1987). Steel Rails to the Sunrise: The Long Island Railroad. Mattituck: Amereon House. pp. 13–14. ISBN 0-8488-0368-X.
  4. "OLD NORTHPORT". www.arrts-arrchives.com. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  5. "LIRR Northport Spur". www.lirrhistory.com. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  6. "Trails Guide Northport Rail Trail" (PDF). Retrieved February 15, 2015.
  7. "Huntington Doubles Size of Rail Trail" (Press release). Town of Huntington. August 4, 2009. Retrieved February 12, 2010.
  8. Station pages linked from LIRR Stations Archived September 7, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
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