page_title: Housatonic Railroad
section_title: New Haven's Berkshire Division: 1892–1969
hierarchical_section_title: Housatonic Railroad / History / New Haven's Berkshire Division: 1892–1969
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the New Haven's two remaining federally-mandated Berkshire Division trains at Pittsfield in October 1968, with a deadheading parlor car. Union Station was being demolished at this time; the New Haven had been using this site with a converted freight house since November 1960. When Penn Central took over in 1969, the weekend trains were converted to Budd RDCs. They were not taken over by Amtrak in 1971.
context_page_description: The Housatonic Railroad is a Class III railroad operating in southwestern New England. It was chartered in 1983 to operate a short section of ex-New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in northwestern Connecticut, and has since expanded north and south, as well as west into New York State.
  The Housatonic Railroad was also a company chartered in 1836 and leased by the New Haven in 1892. It followed much the same route as the current company, but did not run west into New York.
context_section_description: By the end of the New Haven's life, the Housatonic's original main line had been abandoned south of Botsford, where the old New Haven branch ran only east to Derby. The main line was also gone between Brookfield and Hawleyville, with traffic using the branch to Danbury and old New York and New England Railroad. The Danbury and Norwalk was still in use, but most branches, including the original main line to State Line, Massachusetts, were gone.
  On January 1, 1969 the New Haven was merged into Penn Central, which named the lines as follows:
  Pittsfield Branch: Berkshire Junction near Danbury north to Pittsfield
  Maybrook Branch: Derby Junction west via Danbury and other New Haven lines to Campbell Hall, New York
  Danbury Branch: Danbury and Norwalk Railroad
caption: Weekend New York-Pittsfield train on the New Haven's Berkshire Division, October 13, 1968
exif: {}