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Empire Service

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Empire Service

The Empire Service is an inter-city rail service operated by Amtrak within the state of New York in the United States. The brand name originated with the New York Central Railroad in 1967. Trains on the line provide frequent daily service along the 460-mile (740 km) Empire Corridor between New York City and Niagara Falls via Albany, the state capital.

During fiscal year 2018, the Empire Service carried 1,150,498 passengers on the line between New York City and Albany, while services between Albany and points west, including the Maple Leaf and Lake Shore Limited, carried an additional 366,696. Ticket revenue on the New York City–Albany section in FY2016 was $49,361,545, an increase of 1.4% from FY2015, while revenue on the Albany–Toronto route was $22,143,803.

Approximately hourly weekday service is available on the southern portion of the line between New York Penn Station and Albany–Rensselaer. As of the April 2024 timetable, the route operates nine round trips on most days – seven between New York City and Albany, and two between New York City and Niagara Falls.

The corridor is served by four additional Amtrak trains each day:

Downstate, in the Hudson Valley, the portion of the route from Poughkeepsie southward is shared with the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line, and sees frequent commuter service, with connections to the Empire Service at Poughkeepsie, Croton-Harmon, and Yonkers.

The Empire Service is one of four New York-based train routes that Amtrak operates with funding from the New York State Department of Transportation with the other three routes being the Adirondack, Maple Leaf, and Ethan Allen Express.

Today's Empire Service is the descendant of numerous routes dating to 1869, when Cornelius Vanderbilt merged his Hudson River Railroad (forerunner of today's Metro-North Hudson Line) with the New York Central Railroad (NYC), thus linking New York City with Albany.

Its route is largely coextensive with what was once the NYC's main line, which was the eastern portion of the "Water Level Route" from New York City to Chicago. The Buffalo-Niagara Falls leg was formerly part of an NYC subsidiary, the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad, but passenger service was dropped in 1961.

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