The Empire Corridor is a 461 mi passenger rail corridor in New York State running between Penn Station in New York City and Niagara Falls, New York. Major cities on the route include Poughkeepsie, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. Much of the corridor was once part of the New York Central Railroad's main line. Amtrak's Empire Service and Maple Leaf serve the entire length of the Empire Corridor, with the Maple Leaf continuing northwest to Toronto. The Lake Shore Limited follows most of the corridor from New York City, diverging west to Chicago at the Buffalo–Depew station. The Berkshire Flyer takes the corridor to Albany–Rensselaer, before diverging east to Pittsfield, while the Adirondack and Ethan Allen Express travel one stop further to Schenectady, before diverging north to Montreal and Burlington, respectively. Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line merges with the Empire Corridor in Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx, just south of Riverdale, providing commuter rail service between Poughkeepsie, New York and Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The line is electrified by both overhead catenary and top-running third rail on the Amtrak-owned segment between Penn Station and 41st Street, as well as by under-running third rail on the Metro-North segment, from the merge with the Hudson Line to Croton–Harmon. The Amtrak-owned section between 41st Street and the merge with the Hudson Line is unpowered, and can only be served by diesel or dual-mode trains. The corridor is also one of ten federally designated high-speed rail corridors in the United States. If the proposed high-speed service were to be built on the corridor, trains traveling between Buffalo and New York City could travel at speeds of up to 125 mph. In the 1890s, the Empire State Express between New York City and Buffalo was about 1 hour faster than Amtrak's service in 2013. On September 14, 1891, the Empire State Express covered the 436 mi between New York City and Buffalo in 7 hours and 6 minutes (including stops), averaging 61.4 mph, with a top speed of 82 mph.

Ownership

The Empire Corridor is largely owned by CSX Transportation (CSX), which owns most of the trackage between Niagara Falls and Poughkeepsie. Amtrak owns trackage rights for most of the Hudson line section north of Poughkeepsie to its rail yard in Albany. South of Poughkeepsie, the Empire Corridor is coextensive with Metro-North's trackage until it forks-off between Metro-North's Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil stations in the Bronx, to cross the Harlem River over the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge and make the Empire Connection to Penn Station. Amtrak owns the trackage after that fork, the West Side Line. The corridor had been part of the main line of the New York Central Railroad; it was the eastern leg of the NYC's famed "Water Level Route" to Chicago. The corridor passed to Penn Central in 1968 upon the NYC's merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad, and passed to Conrail in 1976. In a series of purchases in the 1980s and 1990s, Amtrak bought the Bronx–Manhattan segment, Metro-North acquired the Poughkeepsie–Bronx segment, and CSX acquired the remainder when it split Conrail's assets with Norfolk Southern, in 1999. On October 18, 2011, Amtrak and CSX announced an agreement for Amtrak to lease, operate and maintain the CSX-owned trackage between Poughkeepsie and Schenectady. Amtrak officially assumed control of the line on December 1, 2012. Later, Amtrak bought the segment between Schenectady and Hoffmans from CSX.

Current services

The busiest segment of the Empire Corridor is between New York City and Albany with twelve trains per day.

Amtrak

The following trains operate along the varied segments of the corridor:

Commuter rail

Freight service

Freight service is provided by CSX Transportation.

Stations

All stations are in the state of New York.