The New York Central Railroad (reporting mark NYC), known simply as the New York Central in its publicity, is a railroad operating in the Northeastern United States.
Headquartered in New York, the railroad serves most of the Northeast, including extensive trackage in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Massachusetts, plus additional trackage in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec.The railroad primarily connects greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the midwest along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit.
NYC's Grand Central Terminal in New York City is one of its best known extant landmarks.In 1968 the NYC merges with its former rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad, to form Penn Central (the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad joined in 1969).
That company goes bankrupt in 1970 and is taken over by the federal government and merged into Conrail in 1976.
Conrail is broken up in 1998, and portions of its system are transferred to the newly formed New York Central Lines LLC, a subsidiary leased to and eventually absorbed by CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Those companies' lines include the original New York Central main line, but outside that area it includes lines that were never part of the New York Central system.
CSXis able to take one of the most important main lines in the nation, which runs from New York City and Boston to Cleveland, Ohio, as part of the Water Level Route, while Norfolk Southern gains the Cleveland, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois portion of the line called the Chicago line.At the end of 1925, the New York Central System operates 11,584 miles of road and 26,395 miles of track; at the end of 1967 the mileages are 9,696 and 18,454.
