Dover Plains station


The Dover Plains station is a commuter rail stop on the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, located in Dover Plains, New York. Trains leave for New York City every two hours, and about every 30 minutes during rush hour. It is from Grand Central Terminal and travel time there is approximately two hour, two minutes.
The 7.5-mile distance from Dover Plains to Harlem Valley–Wingdale, the next station to the south, is the longest between two stations on the Harlem Line.

History

Rail service in Dover Plains can be traced as far back as December 31, 1848 with the establishment of the New York and Harlem Railroad, which became part of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1864 and eventually taken over by the New York Central Railroad. Besides passenger service, freight service also originated and stopped at this location, in both directions north and south. It even contained a nearby railroad hotel.
As with most of the Harlem Line, the merger of New York Central with Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 transformed the station into a Penn Central Railroad station. Penn Central's continuous financial despair throughout the 1970s forced them to turn over their commuter service to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and abandon service north of Dover Plains, thus transforming it into a terminal station in 1972. Freight service north of Dover Plains was abandoned by Conrail on March 27, 1980. The ticket office was closed in September 1981. The line itself became part of Metro-North in 1983. The 1860-built NYCRR station house, now abandoned, more recently contained a bagel restaurant, and the former freight house also still exists. Dover Plains was a terminal station until 2000 when Metro-North expanded the line back to Wassaic.

Station layout

This station has one four-car-long high-level side platform to the west of the track.