Maybrook: The Switching Yard That Fed New England

Maybrook was the grand switchboard of northeastern railroading. Several railroads converged at Maybrook Yard, whose line was finished in eighteen eighty-nine: the Erie, the Lehigh and Hudson River, the Lehigh and New England, the New York Ontario and Western, and the New York Central, all passing freight to the New Haven, which came to own the yard.

The yard's role was to bridge the freight networks of the Midwest and the coal regions of Pennsylvania with the ports and cities of southern New England. At its peak the yard employed over fifteen hundred workers. Incorporated as a village in nineteen twenty-six, Maybrook never grew large, but for decades the economic life of the Hudson Valley and New England ran on a schedule set partly by the trains sorted here.