Garrison Landing: Thirty-Eight Years Apart
Once again we are following New York Central's Water Level Route; the cement milepost tells us we are precisely fifty miles from Grand Central Terminal, in Garrison, New York.
In the contemporary image above we see a northbound Amtrak train (going away from us, with an additional locomotive on the tail end) after having sped through Garrison Landing.
The vintage photograph has a city-bound commuter train of Metro North (coming toward us) approaching Garrison through the short tunnel there just north of the station. The engineer is sitting in the end of the passenger car (or cab-car) on the south end of the train.
Metro North runs all trains to Grand Central Terminal with locomotives on the north end of their consists, so it's not always easy to tell which direction these trains are moving in still images. Additionally: Amtrak trains sometimes have locomotives on each end (as is the case above), which can further cloud how a viewer might perceive the direction of travel of their movements.
On the re-photography aspect: I couldn't match the angle here as the bridge on which I was standing had been moved significantly: to the north and higher as well.
Two images by Richard Koenig; taken in the fall of 1988 and May 31st 2026.
