19th century The Staten Island Rail Road was incorporated on August 2, 1851, after
Perth Amboy and Staten Island residents petitioned for a
Tottenville-to-
Stapleton rail line. The railroad was financed with a loan from
Cornelius Vanderbilt, the sole Staten Island-to-Manhattan ferry operator on the
East Shore, his first involvement in a railroad. The line was completed to Tottenville on June 2, 1860. Under the leadership of Vanderbilt's brother, Jacob H. Vanderbilt, the Staten Island Rail Road took over several independent ferries. The Staten Island Railway and ferry line made a modest profit until the explosion of the ferry
Westfield at Whitehall Street Terminal on July 30, 1871. By July 1872, the railroad and ferry were in
receivership. On September 17, 1872, the company was sold to
George Law in
foreclosure. The following April 1, the Staten Island Rail Road was transferred to the Staten Island Railway Company. By 1880 the railway was barely operational, and New York State sued (through
Attorney General Hamilton Ward) to dissolve the company in May of that year.
Erastus Wiman, one of the island's most prominent residents, organized the Staten Island Rapid Transit Company (SIRT) on March 25, 1880, and partnered with the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) to build a large rail terminal on the island and centralize the six-to-eight ferry landings. , between Staten Island and New Jersey Construction of the
Vanderbilt's Landing-to-
Tompkinsville portion of the
North Shore Branch began on March 17, 1884, and the line opened for passenger service on August 1 of that year. The lighthouse just above Tompkinsville impeded the line's extension to St. George but, after the SIRT lobbied for an
act of Congress, construction of a two-track, tunnel under the lighthouse began in 1885 for about $190,000. The SIR was leased to the B&O for 99 years in 1885. The North Shore Branch opened for service on February 23, 1886, to
Elm Park. In 1893, the
South Beach Branch was extended from
Arrochar to a new terminal at
South Beach. The new lines opened by the B&O were known as the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railway, and the original line (from
Clifton to Tottenville) was called the Staten Island Railway. In 1886, Congress passed a law authorizing the construction of a
swing bridge over Arthur Kill, after three years of effort by Wiman. The bridge was completed three days early, on June 13, 1888, at 3 p.m. The Arthur Kill Bridge was the world's largest drawbridge when it opened, and there were no fatalities in its construction. When the Arthur Kill Bridge was completed, the
United States War Department was unsuccessfully pressured by the
Lehigh Valley and
Pennsylvania Railroads to have the newly built bridge replaced with a bridge with a different design; according to the railroads, it was an obstruction to navigation of the large numbers of coal barges past Holland Hook on Arthur Kill. On October 25, 1905, New York City took ownership of the ferry and terminals and evicted the B&O from the Whitehall Street terminal. The
St. George Terminal was then built by the city for $2,318,720, . In anticipation of a
tunnel under
the Narrows to
Brooklyn and a connection there with the
BMT Fourth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, the SIRT electrified its lines with
third rail power distribution and cars similar to those of the
Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT). The first electric train was operated on the
South Beach Branch between
South Beach and
Fort Wadsworth on May 30, 1925, and the other branches were electrified by November of that year. Electrification did not greatly increase traffic, and the tunnel was never built. During the 1920s, a branch line along Staten Island's West Shore was built to haul building materials for the
Outerbridge Crossing. The Port Richmond–Tower Hill viaduct, the nation's largest grade-crossing-elimination project, was completed on February 25, 1937. The viaduct, more than a mile long, spanned eight grade crossings on the SIRT's
North Shore Branch and was the final part of a $6 million grade-crossing-elimination project on the island which eliminated thirty-four crossings on its north and south shores. Freight and
World War II traffic helped pay some of the SIRT's accumulated debt, and the line was briefly profitable in the 1940s. All
East Coast military-hospital trains were handled by the SIRT during the war, and some trains stopped at Staten Island's
Arlington station to transfer wounded soldiers to a large military hospital. The need to transport war
materiel, POW trains and troops made the stretch of the Baltimore & New York Railway between Cranford Junction and Arthur Kill extremely busy. The B&O also operated special trains for important officials, such as
Winston Churchill. On June 25, 1946, a fire destroyed the St. George Terminal; three people were killed, twenty-two were injured and damage totaled $22 million. Normal service was not restored until July 13, 1946, and a request for bids to build a temporary terminal was issued on August 21 of that year. On February 10, 1948, a replacement terminal was promised by Mayor
William O'Dwyer. The new $23 million terminal opened on June 8, 1951, with ferry, bus and rail service in one building; portions of the new terminal were phased into service earlier. Ridership decreased from 12.3 million in 1947 to 4.4 million in 1949 as passengers switched from the rail line to city-operated buses due to a bus-fare reduction. In September 1948, about half of weekday trains were cut, night trains after 1:29 a.m. were cancelled, and thirty percent of the company's employees were
laid off. After backlash, service was slightly increased. On September 22, the
Interstate Commerce Commission allowed the SIRT to abandon the ferry it had operated for 88 years between
Tottenville and
Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and the ferry operation was transferred to Sunrise Ferries of
Elizabeth, New Jersey on October 16. SIRT discontinued passenger service on the North Shore Branch and the South Beach Branch at midnight on March 31, 1953, due to competition from city-operated buses; the South Beach Branch was abandoned shortly afterwards, and the North Shore Branch continued to carry freight. a large city subsidy allowed passenger service on the branch to continue. The prefabricated, 2,000-ton bridge was floated into place.-->Operation of the Tottenville line was turned over to the Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority (a division of the state's
Metropolitan Transportation Authority) on July 1, 1971, and the line was purchased by the city of New York. As part of the agreement, freight on the line would continue to be handled by the B&O under the Staten Island Railroad. Between 1971 and 1973, a project began to extend the high-level platforms at six stations. A station-rebuilding program began in 1985, and the line's R44s were overhauled starting in 1987. The B&O became part of the larger
Chessie System in a merger with the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), and the island's freight operation was renamed the Staten Island Railroad Corporation in 1971. In 1973, the
Jersey Central's car float yard was closed; however, the B&O's car-float operation was later brought back to Staten Island at Saint George Yard, after having ended in September 1976. This car-float operation was taken over by the New York Dock Railway in September 1979, and ended the following year. The NYS&W subsequently retained the Staten Island's freight operations, which served only ten customers by that time, and they had hopes of attracting more to boost profitability on the line. The North Shore Branch and the Arthur Kill Bridge were then taken over by Chessie's successor,
CSX Transportation (CSX). The line and bridge were sold again in 1994 to the
New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), followed by a decade of false starts. and that year the
Dongan Hills station became accessible, making it compliant with the
Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
MetroCards were accepted for fare payment at the St. George station beginning on March 31, 1994, and the station became the 50th MTA rapid transit station to accept them. The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) restored the line's original name on April 2 of that year as the MTA Staten Island Railway (SIR). On July 4, 1997, the MTA eliminated fares for travel between
Tompkinsville and
Tottenville as part of the year's "One City, One Fare" fare reductions. United Transportation Union Local 1440, the union representing SIR employees, was concerned about the fare reduction in part because of an expected increase in ridership. No turnstiles were installed at the other stations on the line, and passengers at St. George began paying when entering and exiting; fares had previously been collected on board by the conductor. The removal of fares was blamed for an immediate spike in crime along the line. Three afternoon express trains were added to the schedule on April 7, 1999, nearly doubling the previous express service. The express trains skipped stops between St. George and Great Kills. A several-hundred-foot section of the easternmost portion of the North Shore Branch was reopened for passenger service to the
Richmond County Bank Ballpark, home of the
Staten Island Yankees minor-league baseball team, on June 24, 2001; the service was discontinued on June 18, 2010. A new station building at
Tompkinsville opened on January 20, 2010, with
turnstiles installed to prevent passengers from exiting (free of charge) at Tompkinsville and walking the short distance to the St. George ferry terminal. Although the Metropolitan Transportation Authority initially planned to order
R179s for the Staten Island Railway, it was later decided to overhaul
R46s to replace the R44s. However, the R46 overhaul plan was also dropped, and 75
R211S cars were ordered to replace the R44s. The first R211S cars entered service in October 2024, fully replacing the R44s by September 2025. == Current use ==