Hike #1503; Danbury to Brewster

Hike #1503; 9/11/22 Danbury to Brewster with Professor John DiFiore, Gregory Andres, Robin Deitz, and Diane Reider

This next hike would be the real final one in my Maybrook Line series, which I’d been working on for many years.

The crazy thing was, I didn’t realize it, but this wouldn’t be the final one at all. The Maybrook line formally went from Derby Connecticut to Maybrook, when I had made the mistake and thought Danbury to Maybrook. What this means is that I have some thirty more miles to go before I finish the Maybrook line to Derby, and there are still tracks in place for most of that.

I’m not bumping that up on the priority list because of that, but I’m far from done.

Pretty much the abandoned portions of the line at least were west of Danbury, so I can say that we completed that anyway.

I decided we would park a little bit down the Putnam Division of the New York Central, which was a line we had followed in a series before, but we did the last section of it after dark, so I wanted to see it. There was parking up on Putnam Avenue just a little bit north of the former railroad crossing.
The Putnam Division is now separate trails depending on where it is, but is really a contiguous greenway on the “Old Put”. It is the Putnam Trailway in the northern portion, and in Westchester County it is North County Trailway and South County Trailway in two segments, and Old Putnam Trail in the Bronx. It is now part of the Empire State Trail along with much of the Maybrook Line.

We met actually at the JV Bagels over on Rt 6 a short distance from the parking, which I figured would be easier to find and give the group an opportunity to get something to eat before we got moving. 

I guess this was kind of a bad idea because John paid like a million dollars for some small sandwich he got there.

We moved the cars to the lot, and then shuttled east to Danbury, where we parked on the north side of Quirk Works Brewing. It wasn’t open, and we didn’t visit the brewery even at the end this time because we had such a far drive, but maybe in the future.

There was a small park at the corner called Freedom Park with a miniature Statue of Liberty, and smaller statues of different branches of military saluting her.

This was the corner of Triangle Street and Lee Mac Avenue. We went straight ahead and crossed the Still River on Triangle Street, with the parallel former Housatonic Railroad to the east crossing the same. 

We walked through some adjacent lots to avoid the road, and one was some “Earthmover’s” place.

We followed Triangle Street to Wildman Street, and then turned to the left on that, just after crossing the tracks, and walked parallel with them.

The tracks were well-signed, so I decided that even in this urban environment of Danbury, we would not be walking on them. They appeared to be well used.

We passed through a rather rough looking area and people were looking at us going by. 

Two young ladies, who looked to be strippers, were heading into a club building to the left. 

We turned left on Chestnut Street, which paralleled the tracks somewhat. We turned briefly left on Liberty Street, then right on Pahquioque Avenue, uphill a bit. We were still parallel with these tracks.

We descended slightly on this road, and we could see the tracks we had been parallel with to the right of us a bit. A train was moving along slowly on these tracks, with a small depot building next to it.
When I looked this one up, if I got it right, it was actually quite a newer depot made to look like it fit in with the older surroundings.

The site was apparently once location of the Union Station built in 1903, where the New York, New Haven, and Hartford converged with the Housatonic Railroad, or maybe some entity that was active at the time. 

I’m not really sure. The first station on that site was built in 1852, and the current station replaced the 1903 structure, surprisingly, in 1993.

We cut to the right through grass and out to Independence Way, where the train we saw moving was approaching. It was a passenger train towed by a black, white and red engine. The cars it was towing were MTA cars. Several people were walking around the area, looking like they had just gotten off of the train.

We continued to the north on Patriot Drive, and soon reached the main Danbury Station, now the home of Danbury Railway Museum.

When the three major railroads that served the Danbury area were merged into the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, local pressure came on the railroad to build the new Union Station here in 1903. At its peak, 125 trains per day stopped at this station. When the aforementioned 1993 station went into use on the south side of the little rail loop here, this station fell into disrepair. 

The museum was formed and restored to its glory within two years.

Like other stations, this one is done in a Colonial Revival style with touches of Richardsonian Romanesque in the details.
The museum shares a yard with heritage rail cars with MTA, and has all sorts of displays inside. I figured it would be appropriate for us to pay a visit to the museum as part of this “last” trip in the series.

The beautiful station has a very unique “L” shaped platform cover around the outside, so interesting in view that Alfred Hitchcock chose the site for filming of his movie “Strangers on the Train”.

We walked the entire length of the shelter, then around the station before we headed inside.

When we got up to pay, Diane came forward and offered to pay everyone’s admission, and she pulled out the $100 bill she had found on the Jordan Creek hike two weeks prior! She said she found it on the hike, so it was only right that she use the money for this!

There was so much to look at inside the station, it was incredible. There were a couple of model layouts set up as the looping track and yard with the Danbury Station, as well as more that was representative of the type of railroad activity of the area. 

There were displays of lanterns and tags and such, and a piece of original strap rail that was used on the Housatonic Railroad starting in 1838.

Strap Rail was the regular type of railroad rail earlier on because no railroad rails could be produced of the solid kind we know today until 1844. Strap rail was simply taking rolled metal and affixing it to wooden rails for the trains to roll over. These would inevitably break loose under the weight of the trains, and the ends would stick up. Eventually, they’d stick up enough that they’d bust through the floor of a railroad car, which could wreak havoc if it was full of passengers. These things were nicknamed “snake heads”.

We talked to the guy who took our admission for a while, and he was pretty interested in the hike we were taking. A second guy came out and talked to us after him.

I wish I could remember the third guy’s name, because he spent the most time with us on sight.

He guided us out of the building and into the rail yard where we looked at all sorts of old rail cars, starting with a Pullman car from the Towanda Valley line.

He then showed us a Sperry Rail Service car that had originally been a passenger car, but then was outfitted with interesting equipment to be used as a rail inspection car. There’s apparently not another one quite like it.

Next, we were brought to a beautiful 1907 steam locomotive, an ALCO that rain on the Boston and Maine Railroad. We were able to climb up into this one and have a closer look at the tender area.

 There was even a cutaway image on display that identified all of the parts of the locomotive, which was impressive.

We were able to visit a New York Central caboose, from what look to be early days, as well as a more modern caboose. The more modern one was known as a North East Style, built by the Reading Company, which also made kits for other railroads at Reading shops. This one was a little more modern than the previous one, with riveted metal on the outside instead of paneled wood, and what appeared to be a refrigerator inside.

There was one more even more modern caboose with a “CN” on the outside, but it was far more boring on the inside.

One of the cool things we’d heard about that we requested to see specifically was the historic Mill Plain Station from the Maybrook Line. 

We would be walking past the former site of this station for this hike, but the station was removed from the site and brought to the rail yard for restoration.
The station was built by the New York and New England Railroad, predecessor to the New Haven’s involvement with the line.
The station served the Maybrook line until 1927 when it closed. The building was then moved away from the tracks and served several other businesses over the next ninety years before it was brought to the museum.

There was an historic photo of the station beside the tracks, but at the time I didn’t know where the original site was, so I wouldn’t have been able to get a then and now of it.

The station looked really nice, but was still a work in progress. The awning still had no cover on them, but they were putting a lot of good work into this.

Another interesting thing in the yard was a 1910 Pennsylvania Railroad post office car. We were able to go up inside this one as well, which was really cool. It was in quite excellent shape, with all of the cubbies for mail, as well as mail bags and a display of how they could be picked up or dropped from the train.

One of the coolest pieces we saw was the first ever hybrid vehicle.
This was one of the attractive bulldog nose engines, an FL9 unit that was combination diesel and electric. The New York Central lettered unit is identified because it has our wheel trucks on the one side, and six on the other because of how it functioned.

There was one more bulldog nose F Unit engine in the yard, which I was going to skip seeing because it was out of the way and I figured it would look just like the other one, until I was told that this was the last bulldog nose engine that saw regular commuter service in America.

This is of course not considering that other tourist railroads operate F Units and other bulldog nose trains, but this was the last one to see regular daily commuter service via MTA. 

Actually, I think I saw this one in action while hiking along the Hudson one year, and I recall pointing out that I couldn’t believe there was an F Unit pulling a regular commuter train.

This particular one was built in the 1940s, and was used on the Hudson River line until just a couple of years ago. It is still painted in the typical MTA colors, which is weird to see on such a classic engine. It almost feels like if someone painted Amazon delivery colors on a Chevy Bel Air.
On one hand, it feels like this engine is begging to be adorned with traditional New York Central colors, or whatever line it began service on, but on the other hand, just leaving it with the MTA colors from its last day of operation is really cool too.

We could have spent hours in this yard seeing everything there was. There was another ALCO diesel unit that once operated on the New Hope and Ivyland Railroad in Pennsylvania, still with its color scheme on it.

We looked around a bit more at some more of the equipment in the yard, but we did have to get moving. 

We had a long way to go before we got to Brewster, and there would be a long stretch of tracks in place with conditions for which I wasn’t sure what to expect.

We walked around the station one more time to see if I could figure out how some of the historic photos of it were set up, and when I couldn’t figure out a couple of them, I said screw it because we didn’t have enough time.

We got on the former Maybrook Line, which was previously New York and New England and double tracked soon after 1900 for the New Haven’s branch, and continued west across White Street.

One of the tracks was almost completely overgrown, the former westbound, while the eastbound only had small bushes and such growing through it. It wasn’t too bad.

The rails didn’t look terribly rusty, but I had been told that this line had not seen any service in years. The tracks are indeed mostly in place as far as Hopewell Junction, but at the NY/CT state line, MTA had placed a blockage, which is apparently illegal because Housatonic Railroad has a right of way over it. At this time, it is in courts or something I understand.

We crossed over Balmforth Avenue, followed by Maple Avenue, and paralleled Garamella Blvd. In this stretch, we crossed over the Still River for the first time.

We crossed Rt 53, Main Street, skirted some buildings that had some really amazing artwork on it (including a tribute to a fallen officer), and then crossed over the Still River for the second time.

There were quite a few bushes growing through the line at this point.

Soon, we crossed the Still River for the third time, but first Rose Hill Avenue at an industrial site where the Still River goes underground for a brief time.
From the third crossing of the river, there was a beautiful old dam in view just to the south. It was old and of stone construction, with other old brick industrial buildings all around it.

We crossed over Still River a fourth time just ahead, as well as West Street on the same bridge. Beyond this point, we were still within very urban setting, but the railroad was on a shelf to the left of the Still River, and down at a lower elevation from all of the other development.
In this section, it was a mess of stuff that had been dumped, communities of homeless people, and the entire westbound track was totally overgrown to the point that we couldn’t even see it.

I would not have thought the line had seen any traffic any time recently looking at some of this, but I recently found out that there was a delivery out around former Mill Plain Station site in March of 2022, and that it had been the first train over the tracks in something like a decade. 

I don’t’ live up there and haven’t seen it much, but that is what I am told.

There was a group of homeless people out there when we went by, and they were all on the tracks as we were approaching. They moved off when they saw us coming, and sat off to the side.

The area between the gauge of the tracks was very well worn from so much pedestrian traffic along it.
This made it that much crazier that we walked into a yellow jacket’s nest right in the tracks. I got stung a couple of times, but John got several. I think Greg might have escaped harm this time.

We moved on ahead, and crossed the Still River for the fifth time, and soon after a sixth time.

Diane and Robin were behind us and saw us running, so they got off of the tracks to avoid any of the nests. I’m not sure if they got stung on this trip at all.

The line shifted from west to south and then west again in this stretch, skirted some sort of stone industry, and then came to cross Segar Street. The main indication that this line might still see some activity was the fact that the road still had cross arms at the tracks.

Just ahead, the tracks passed beneath the two bridges carrying Route 7. There was a cop parked directly beneath the bridges. 

I figured this would be the indication if we were allowed to be there or not. He gave us a wave as we walked by and I knew we were okay.

We continued on the tracks ahead and passed beneath Interstate 84 via a couple more bridges, or maybe it was one bridge. This one had tons of graffiti under it, some of it quite impressive.
On the south side of the culvert, there was something to the effect of “If Momma only Knew” written on the walls. I keep forgetting to tag my mom in the post of that every time I look at it.

Route 202 was soon closely parallel with us to the right, and we skirted several businesses that were on the right. I figured somewhere in this stretch would end up being our lunch stop.

Our friend Polly Delafield lives in Brewster, and I was hoping she could join us, but she already had prior commitments. However, she was going to try to stop by and say hello to us when we had our lunch stop so I stayed in touch the most of the day.

I looked over the maps in this stretch of highway that ran parallel with the tracks, and found Mariposa Taqueria to be the most attractive possibility, just because we all love Mexican food.

I think we ran into another yellow jacket’s nest somewhere in this stretch as well, and John got hit again when I didn’t.

The tracks soon came very close to Interstate 84, and we were sandwiched between that and Rt 202, and the businesses along it. 

There were little access points to those businesses where we could easily get out and get to them, so I assumed that our chosen lunch stop would be about the same.
There were weeds and such growing through the rails, so I figured this section hadn’t been used for a very long while, but apparently it was in this area that the recent deliveries in March were made. Something to do with the power line transformers or something.

We passed beneath Kenosia Avenue, and this area ahead was what was known as Mill Plain, where that historic station was.

In this area was a Haymond Law sign saying something about if you go down, we’ll pick you up, which sounds like a prostitution ring more than the law firm it was advertising.

It was in this area we needed to cut to the right to get to Mariposa Taqueria.
While all of these other businesses were really easy to cut from the tracks over to them, this one was insane. There were large fences we couldn’t get over to the right, and even one of them adjacent to it had razor wire all around it!

We had to pass by the Taqueria place, and then another property, and we could cut out toward Rt 202 after that next to a larger building. We cut through the grass, then in front of a rent a car place to the right to reach this taco place.

One of the enticing things about this place was the fact that they offered nice outdoor seating, but the outdoor seating was closed at this time. So, we had to go and sit inside.

I was told the empanadas were to die for, so I had to try that as well as a taco thing.

It was pretty expensive; three tacos were like twelve dollars or something, but I didn’t realize it was only for three with the entrée I ordered.
The guy taking the orders and doing the serving brought two of the taco orders out on a single plate, which was supposed to be both mine and Diane’s. I ate all of them quick, because they were tiny, and didn’t realize that I was only supposed to have three.

When we realized the mistake, at first it looked like we were screwed, and although I offered to pay the extra for mine and we could wait for Diane to get hers, she had a sandwich with her she began to eat anyway.

I was kind of dissatisfied at the small portion, and the fact that the empanadas were kind of dry, as well as the confusion, but they made up for it because they brought Diane three more tacos on the house for the mistake. So that was pretty great!

The tacos were quite good, but I couldn’t tell the difference in taste between the six I had, despite the fact that Diane and I had each ordered quite different styles of tacos. I forget exactly what the differences were though.
While we sat there, John checked his legs out, and they were all broken out with a crazy rash. He was having some sort of allergic reaction to the yellow jackets that we hadn’t expected. I had given him some of my strong beer as a blood thinner, hoping that it would help. 

He then had Benadryl that someone had, and I think that seemed to work. We were all pretty concerned for him though, because it was crazy to break out that bad. Taking this break at the place seemed to help him a bit and it got a little better.
Polly showed up to say hello just as we were getting finished eating, just enough to say hello before she headed off to do a square dancing thing.
When we were finished, we made our way back around the way we had come to get back to the tracks, around the car rental place and behind the next building.

As we continued ahead, we crossed the Still River yet again, although it was getting much smaller at this point. We then made our way to the underpass beneath Rt 202. 

Somewhere near this underpass as I understand was where the Mill Plain Station used to stand.

The hike changed up quite a bit from this point. We transitioned from the suburban Danbury area to pretty much being in the woods. Any worry we had about anyone bothering us earlier on was not going to be a problem out here.

The lovely wetlands of the Still River were in view to the north, with the Farrington Woods beyond, which is sort of a public park area. I’d love to explore it, but there would not be the time on this trip.

There was a large log over the tracks out in this section, so I figured it had been quite a long time since any trains were along the stretch. 

I suppose the transformer deliveries would have been to the east of this point, so this section probably hasn’t seen any service.
To the right through the trees, sometimes with some nice but somewhat obscured views, we could see Sanfords Pond.
It had been raining just a bit ever since we left the taco place, so we had to either use umbrellas or deal with it. It was still kind of hot out, so it wasn’t too big a deal.
Just a little bit after the first pond, there was a road overpass that leads to the Farrington Woods parking lot, just barely to the east of the NY/CT state line. 

I decided we would head to that point and wait for everyone to catch up. Greg and I were in the very front at this point.

This was the spot where the trail section started. The set of tracks on the left had been removed, but the one on the right was still in place. Division Post signs were placed directly under the bridge that read “State Line” although Google maps seems to disagree and says the state line is a bit to the west. There were barriers over the tracks with a stop sign on it.
The pavement of the trail ended literally at the signs beneath the bridge.

I don’t really know for certain the history of this line after the early years, and up until 1974 when the Poughkeepsie Bridge burned and made the line less important. 

What I do understand is that there is a change in ownership or at least operator control at the state line. The modern Housatonic Railroad has the Connecticut side, and I guess Metro North has the stuff on the NY side. The Housatonic Railroad supposedly has trackage rights over the Metro North tracks, but they don’t want anyone using it for any reason, so they put the barricade up and even removed a section of rail immediately over the other side of the bridge. 

This has gone so far as to end up in court, and from there, I keep hearing conflicting stories as to what is going to happen on the line.

Some say that the mayor of Danbury is pushing for another study to connect the old Maybrook Line to the Harlem Valley Line. There is still a connector track on the north side of Brewster that would achieve that, and it would shorten the distance commuting to New York City. Also, the Harlem Valley Line is the longest disconnected trunk in the entire Metro North system, which can’t be a good thing.
The problem is, if this were reactivated for commuter service, the sections of trail were built too close to the tracks and would require either widening or probably widening and placement of barriers.

There are also stories I’m told that the trail would be extended into Danbury along the line, since it is not that far. 

Apparently there was already a study done on the line, and it was found not to be worth it in the end of it, but there’s no denying the cutting of a corner it would achieve.
I would personally love to see this used for passenger service, as well as the trail extended, but it’s not looking too likely and both contingents seem to be fighting one another as they tend to do everywhere.
Greg and I waited, and soon the others arrived. John had hit yet another yellow jacket’s nest in this last stretch and got stung again! 

He was not having any luck this time. I think the ladies also got stung at that last one too.

Fortunately, from this point on, we would have mostly a much easier time on paved trail. We let them take a little break rather than move on ahead from here.

The bridge seemed also to be a divide between watersheds. To the east the Still River and associated ponds and wetlands flows to the east. Beyond the state line, everything flows into the Croton River.

There was an access path down from the highway, Rt 202, to our left to reach the trail, and then we were in seclusion again for a while.

Just ahead on the right, we came into clear view of Haines Pond, which was quite beautiful. 

The water levels on the ponds and reservoirs through this area were somewhat low from the drought conditions, and it seems as though the tracks sometimes go under water through this area. This is another of the problems with reactivation in this area I understand, the fact that it is all so close to water and could flood over.

There were some businesses on the left as we approached Joes Hill Road. In this area, for the first time we passed other hikers (besides the homeless people earlier).

Just before the road, we crossed over the tributary that flows out of Haines Pond, and just after the road we crossed over it again.

Just beyond the second crossing, the line begins to parallel the East Branch Reservoir, and the most scenic section of the entire hike.

For many miles, the tracks and trail would remain along or very close to the waters of the East Branch Reservoir. I had wondered if the original New York and New England Railroad had to be reroute in the late 1800s when the reservoir was first dammed, but it appears it was already high enough, and it just turned into a causeway over some of the reservoir in some sections.

When the trail and tracks did turn away for a short while, it was very surprising the stone wall that was put in place. 

There were very major drains in place along the section of trail, above and beyond anything we usually see on rail trails.

We walked along this section, and I got on the wall some of the way, and looked for four leaf clovers to pass out to the group (I found some).

I wanted to take a swim pretty badly; the reservoir and the trail were not busy at all, and in fact the water was really low. It was tough to get down to it at the first spot I jumped in, but I managed and it felt just great. I didn’t hang out long though, because no one else wanted to make the crazy descent down to the water.

We followed the tracks through a cut, and passed an old spare rail holder, and we eventually found a good spot with an easy descent where we could all go down by the water. 

I wanted for John to be able to get in to help with how his legs were breaking out. I think this was a good, therapeutic stop for that.

These stings were not like the ones that I’d been getting bombarded with every week; they were weaker, more like normal yellow jackets. Mine started to heal and itch pretty fast instead of the horrible persistent pain of the last few incidents I’d had.

Only John and I went in, which is kind of typical it seems. There are a lot of late season swims that just end up being only the two of us.

We continued ahead on the trail, and there were some great views. We could see the structure at the dam in the distance, where the East Branch of the Croton River spills out.

The East Branch Reservoir was put into service in 1891 as part of the New York City water supply system. It holds 5.2 billion gallons of water. Prior to the reservoir, there was a settlement called Milltown here, as well as another one on the north side from where we were standing, called Sodom.

The last stretch of track along the reservoir had the greatest views of all of them.

As we got closer to Brewster, there was a black chain link fence on the right side that separated the tracks from the trail, where there had been none before. 

We then approached the mess of bridges coming into town.

We first passed beneath the on and off ramp for Interstate 684, then beneath 684 itself, then we crossed over top of Route 202, and then not too far after that we passed beneath Interstate 84.

Ahead of this, we headed to the left and crossed Rt 202, East Main Street again. Immediately on the other side, the trail turned to the left down steps to get to the road level.

Just ahead of this point, the railroad crossed a deck truss bridge over the East Branch of the Croton River, but for some reason that was not included when the trail was developed. 

There are trail sections on either side, but nothing over the bridge. I suppose it’s probably because of the amount of clearance between the two tracks over the structure, but I can’t be sure.

I should have tried to go across it. There was a spot earlier on where there was a knocked down section of the black chain link fence I could easily have walked over. We even saw a big group of Latino guys walking over there toward the bridge prior. It was just that when we got to the end of the trail section and the stairway down, there was no good way over.
We could have climbed the fence to some degree, but I was still feeling weak from my lyme disease issues.

Once we got down from the railroad grade, we cut into the parking lot of Lia Honda Dealership and walked down toward the river through their lot. 

This brought us to a spot where we had a great view of the aforementioned truss bridge.

From here, we turned left and followed along the East Branch of the Croton River. We were able to follow it by stepping down from a wall and along walkways behind buildings out to a parking lot behind a business off of Rt 202.
We turned right on Main Street and crossed the Borden Bridge. There was an historic marker at the modern bridge that this was the site of the bridge during the Civil War that Gail Borden Jr.’s company shipped condensed milk to Union Army troops. We had a nice view of the river from the bridge, and then we turned right, uphill on Peacable Hill Road.

As we headed a little further up, we reached the steps that lead back up to the rail trail. 

It seemed like a kind of sick joke that the bicycle route sign pointed to the steps, as if they expect someone to ride the bicycle up the steps. These steps don’t even have the little trough to put a bike tire in to push it up the stairs more easily. I really wouldn’t have a problem with it, but the way the world is now, I can’t believe they had that there. Even worse, when I posted it with humorous commentary on Metrotrails, I ended up getting some really snarky responses from people who took the silliness of it way too seriously.

We continued west on the trail, and passed above Wells Park. At that point, I had already hiked the rest of the line. 

The last time we had been hiking out there, we had taken a side path down into Wells Park, and we finished the hike down at the lower part of town at another lot.
We continued walking the line through a good cut, and then out to a point where the Empire State Trail comes in from the left on a ramp, from adjacent to Kobacker’s Market. This was where we would turn off to head down. The Empire State Trail follows the Maybrook Line north from this point, and we’d already done all of that.

When we got down below, I decided to go into Kobacker’s Market to get some sort of snack. 

I think it was some sort of chocolate chip cookie thing, but I can’t quite remember. I shared them with everyone so they went pretty fast.
The market was pretty nice, and had a lot to pick from. I don’t remember what else I got when we went in, but most of the group waited over under a tree outside.

When we were ready to go, I decided we could try to take a chance on getting through directly from almost across from the trail. The first time we had hiked into Brewster, it had gotten dark, and we cut across the active rail yard. 

It didn’t go well being out in the dark in that mess, and I didn’t want to go through that again, but I figured we had so much daylight remaining that we might be alright, and it seemed like there was a clear path going directly to where we needed to be, almost directly across from the trail. I actually thought that maybe this was intended for the trail.

We walked into this sort of cut swath of woods, which led out toward the Harlem Valley Line tracks. It had started to get a bit weedy before we reached a sort of machine turn around. What looked really clear on Google maps was no longer clear now. I pushed ahead and waited for the others at the last clearing. Just before reaching the tracks, we hit a wall of very dense vegetation. I was expecting it to be much more open.

When everyone was there, I told them I was going to check it out to see how bad it was, and if we could get through. I started bullying through the mess of dense weeds, and it was really bad. 

I think my grunts and the pain of it all made it obvious to the others that this wasn’t going to work. At some point, they all turned back to take the signed Empire State Trail road walk around the outside, which is down Main Street to Rt 6 to Putnam Avenue.

I was really frustrated trying to push through this mess, and I emerged with great force onto the edge of the Harlem Valley Line. There were four tracks in a row there, red lights everywhere, and the access road to the site just barely beyond them. 

The distance out to Putnam Avenue was so short and I was feeling so fatigued, and was in a bit of a panic, so I dashed across all of the tracks when nothing was coming, taking care not to trip on any third rails, and then power walked very firmly out the entrance road to Putnam Ave. 

I then just continued on directly across onto the Putnam Trailway.

This was the New York Central Putnam Division, or “Old Put” we had hiked before, but I’d never seen this bit in the daylight. I only went onto the trail a bit ahead and away from the road as not to be obvious that I was standing there. No one came out of the rail yard to chase me or see what I was doing.
There are still tracks in place along the Putnam Division at this point, but only as an industrial spur to one business not far away.

I was able to get in touch with John to tell him what I’d done, and when I confirmed that they had gone around, I started very slowly meandering the short remaining distance back to the west.

The Empire State Trail sign where the rail bed reaches Putnam Ave, if coming from the west, looks like it is pointing visitors to walk into the railroad yard. Posting this online, I confirmed that several people made that mistake and did in fact walk into the rail yard.

I just meandered peacefully to the west for a bit. There was lovely swamp lands on the right, and the tracks on the left until they abruptly ended. The trail then moved up to hit the old rail bed and continued to the west. Pretty soon, I reached the crossing of Putnam Avenue again.

The others were pretty far behind me, so I made my way up and across Route 6 to the Mobil Mart to get myself an iced tea or something, so I could be awake for the ride home.
We had overall done pretty well on timing. From that lot, it wasn’t long before the others appeared in the distance, and we all headed the short distance up Putnam to where we were parked.
John had driven us to the start in Danbury, and so I took him back to his car at the end, from which point it was pretty easy to get on the big highways to head home.

It had been a pretty good day, overall relaxing, and nice to have connected all of these sections through to Danbury. We had at least done all of the Maybrook Line in New York at this point, and maybe I’ll get around to tracing the remainder of it in Connecticut one of these days as well. There’s just always so much more to do.