Cannondale station

File:WiltonCTCannondaleRRstaHouse09162007.jpg

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 helped build 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.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

In its early years, the line had no more than 390 passengers a day using the service, and an average of 34 passengers per train. L. Peter Cornwall, a railroad historian, estimated that perhaps no more than a dozen people used Cannondale in its early years. Although there may have only 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. 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 in the station house closed on March 31, 2010.{{cite news|last=Tuohy|first=Laurel|url=http://wilton.patch.com/articles/cannondale-to-get-new-coffeeshop-by-july|title=Cannondale To Get New Coffeeshop by July?|work=Wilton Patch|date=May 24, 2010|access-date=April 17, 2012}}

The station has a two-car-long high-level side platform west of the single track.{{Cite web|url=https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2647944/Operations-Metro-North-Railroad-Track-Charts.pdf|title=Metro-North Railroad Track & Structures Department Track Charts Maintenance Program Interlocking Diagrams & Yard Diagrams 2015|date=2015|publisher=Metro-North Railroad|access-date=January 28, 2019}}{{Rp|26}} The station has 140 free public parking spaces, all of which are managed by the Town of Wilton. [http://www.ct.gov/dotinfo/lib/dotinfo/ctgov/FinalParkingReport.pdf "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] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070712022905/http://www.ct.gov/dotinfo/lib/dotinfo/ctgov/FinalParkingReport.pdf |date= July 12, 2007 }}

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• [https://www.google.com/maps/@41.216504,-73.4265889,3a,75y,2.52h,94.2t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1su12gvLQz6gxav8QW7D38ew!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en Station on Google Maps Street View]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20061118052033/http://www.ct.gov/dotinfo/lib/dotinfo/ctgov/Cannondale.pdf Connecticut Department of Transportation, "Condition Inspection Cannondale Station" report, August 2002]

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