This is the Ridgefield village passenger train station that functioned on Prospect Street from 1870 until 1925.
The main building (left) still stands, virtually unchanged, as a warehouse on the site of the Ridgefield Supply Company, almost opposite the lower end of Bailey Avenue. In 2008, plans were underway to move it and turn it into a youth arts center.
The German-printed postcard, postmarked 1908, shows carriages either picking up passengers for a train that had just arrived, or delivering them to a train about to depart. The train rolled down the five miles to Branchville, where it connected with the Danbury and Norwalk line, and then to the main line into the City.
Over its half century of operation, the passenger line served commuters as well as tourists and other travelers. Before Ridgefield had a high school in the 1920s, students would take the train to the high school in Norwalk. The line also provided freight service, bringing in coal, lumber, and other supplies while shipping out milk, hats, shirts, and other items produced here in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
While bus service to Branchville replaced the passenger trains in 1925, freight service into the village continued until around 1961 when the last train pulled into Ridgefield Supply. Much of the trail bed became the path of the Connecticut Light and Power Company's main transmission line into town. That path is now the pedestrian rail-trail.
In this view, Prospect Street is in the foreground. The camera is looking east-northeast from Prospect Street, west of Bailey Avenue. The white house in the background to the right is today the East Ridge Cafe.
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