Last Customer on the New Canaan Branch

Does anyone remember the name of the last New Canaan Branch customer? It was just north of the Springdale Station and would get an occasional boxcar (lumber or plywood I think). A local out of Oak Point served it as late as 1992. Thanks for any help.

Sure it was north of Springdale? I can go back there and take a look. There's an industrial park on the east side, and some smaller concerns on the west. If you head south, down by Viaduct Road, there's still some extant, discontinued siding.

Yes, it was just north of the station on the west side of the main, I think it was at a building that now says "Vantage Motors Inc" on Google Maps. I remember pulling an SP boxcar out of that siding sometime in late 1992, and never going back up there again, or ever hearing that they received anymore rail traffic after that.

I'll take a walk over today.

Looking at some old notes, I think the customer was named "Hatch & Bailey".

I did go take a look but no remnants.

The 1987 Conrail ZTS map I have shows a siding marked "Former Glenbrook Team Track" around MP 2 and two sidings at New Canaan - one labelled "Former New Canaan Team Track" (opposite the station) and one marked "New Canaan Fuel & Lumber" on the same side of the tracks as the station, but with the switch pointed back toward Stamford. Nothing else, so if there was a siding in the Springdale area that was in use in 1992, it would have had to have been added after 1987 (which seems unlikely). Are you sure it was 1992 when you pulled that boxcar, and not sometime earlier than that?

Looking at map, it must have been New Canaan Fuel & Lumber. I think the similar right hand curve at the two stations confused me, plus it was a long time ago (yikes). Thank you for helping identify it.

Hatch and Bailey - Conrail would go up to New Canaan, shove the car(s) in, run around in the station and come back to Stam

The lumberyard in New Canaan was there until the early '90s. I have vague memories of cars spotted there circa 1989 or so (my dad commuted from New Canaan from '86 until he retired in the early '00s). For a while after it closed it was a private parking lot - $3 a day, collected by an old man who sat at the Elm Street entrance in a folding lawn chair. The switch was right at the west end of the station platform-- as noted, you'd have to go forward to the bumper post of the platform track then shove in. The yard occupied most of the triangular lot bordered by Elm St., Grove St. and the tracks.

The switch lasted until the big project to jack the building up to be level with the high-level platforms-- late 90s/early '00s? About the same time the town acquired the lumberyard site and made it a regular commuter parking lot.