by Railfan & Railroad staff
MTA Metro-North Railroad unveiled their sixth heritage unit this morning at the maintenance shop in North White Plains, New York. Metro-North P32AC-DM 222 wears the classic green and yellow worn by New York, New Haven & Hartford diesel and electric locomotives up until the mid-1950s. A significant portion of the former New Haven main line is operated by Metro-North on behalf of Connecticut Department of Transportation, including the New Canaan, Danbury, and Waterbury branches. The work was performed as part of scheduled maintenance, which was going to include a new coat of paint once body work was complete.
The New York, New Haven & Hartford can trace its roots back to 1848, building a main line between its namesake cities. The railroad continued to grow through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, backed by powerful banking interests of J.P. Morgan and the leadership of Charles Mellen, consolidating almost every other railroad in southern Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Facing considerable postwar competition from trucking and new highways, and saddled with tremendous debt and a costly passenger operation, New Haven entered its final bankruptcy in 1961. It was absorbed into Penn Central in 1969 as a condition of the merger between Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central. Connecticut Department of Transportation began subsidizing commuter rail services operated by PC (and later, Conrail), and in 1983, those services were contracted to Metro-North.
This latest heritage tribute from Metro-North is the sixth in a series celebrating the commuter railroad’s 40th anniversary in 2023. The first tribute unit (MN 208) was released in May 2023, celebrating Metro-North’s red, blue, and silver image of the 1980s and 1990s. This was followed up by a tribute to the Conrail era of operation from 1976 to 1983 released in November 2023. The third unit featured the distinctive “lightning stripe” design paying tribute to predecessor New York Central, original owner of the Hudson and Harlem lines until 1968. The fourth unit debuted in March 2024, and paid tribute to the MTA/Penn Central partnership of 1970, paving the way for improved commuter rail services. An Employee Tribute unit (MN 214) was released in July 2024.
A subsidiary of the MTA, Metro-North Railroad was created in 1983 to take over operation of the Harlem and Hudson lines in New York, contract operation of the New Haven Line for Connecticut DOT, and a portion of the Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines shared with NJ Transit operating out of Hoboken, N.J.
