Long Island Rail Road in the context of "AirTrain JFK"

The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is an electrified railroad line in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States. Owned primarily by Amtrak, it runs from Boston in the north to Washington, D.C., in the south, with major stops in Providence, New Haven, Stamford, New York City, Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. The NEC is roughly paralleled by Interstate 95 for most of its length. Carrying more than 2,200 trains a day, it is the busiest passenger rail line in the United States by ridership and service frequency.

The corridor is used by many Amtrak trains, including the high-speed Acela (formerly Acela Express), intercity trains, and several long-distance trains. Most of the corridor also has frequent commuter rail service, operated by the MBTA (Keolis), CT Rail, Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, and MARC. While large through freights have not run on the NEC since the early 1980s, some sections still carry smaller local freights operated by CSX, Norfolk Southern, CSAO, Providence and Worcester, New York and Atlantic, and Canadian Pacific. CSX and NS partly own their routes.

A single-track railway is a railway where trains traveling in both directions share the same track. Single track is usually found on lesser-used rail lines, often branch lines, where the level of traffic is not high enough to justify the cost of constructing and maintaining a second track.

Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area. It also serves the Long Island Rail Road through Grand Central Madison, a 16-acre (65,000 m) addition to the station located underneath the Metro-North tracks, built from 2007 to 2023. The terminal also connects to the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street station. The terminal is the third-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station and Toronto Union Station.

The distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art. Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most-visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting place, and is especially featured in films and television. Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, a food hall, and a grocery marketplace. The building is also noted for its library, event hall, tennis club, control center and offices for the railroad, and sub-basement power station.

Pennsylvania Station (also known as New York Penn Station or simply Penn Station) is the main intercity railroad station in New York City and the busiest transportation facility in the Western Hemisphere, serving more than 600,000 passengers per weekday as of 2019. The station is located beneath Madison Square Garden in the block bounded by Seventh and Eighth Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets and in the James A. Farley Building, with additional exits to nearby streets, in Midtown Manhattan. It is close to several popular Manhattan locations, including Herald Square, the Empire State Building, Koreatown, and Macy's Herald Square.

Penn Station has 21 tracks fed by seven tunnels, including its two North River Tunnels, four East River Tunnels, and one Empire Connection tunnel. It is at the center of the Northeast Corridor, a passenger rail line that connects New York City with Boston to its north and Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. to its south, along with various intermediate stations. Intercity trains are operated by Amtrak, which owns the station, while commuter rail services are operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and NJ Transit (NJT). Connections are available within the complex to the New York City Subway and buses.

Barnum Island is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in Nassau County, New York, United States. The population was 2,590 at the 2020 census. It occupies the eastern portion of an island situated between Long Island and Long Beach. That island, previously known in its entirety as Hog Island, consists entirely of the communities of Barnum Island and Island Park.

Barnum Island is an unincorporated area of the Town of Hempstead. Most of Barnum Island is separated from the Village of Island Park by the LIRR's Long Beach Branch rail line to Long Beach.

Commuter rail services in the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica provide common carrier passenger transportation along railway tracks, with scheduled service on fixed routes on a non-reservation basis, primarily for short-distance (local) travel between a central business district and adjacent suburbs and regional travel between cities of a conurbation. It does not include rapid transit or light rail service.

The New York and Atlantic Railway (NY&A) (reporting mark NYA) is a short line railroad on Long Island, within the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York. It was formed in 1997 to provide freight service over the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road, a public commuter rail agency which had decided to privatize its freight operations. A subsidiary of the Anacostia Rail Holdings Company, NY&A operates exclusively on Long Island and is connected to the U.S. mainland via CSX's Fremont Secondary over the Hell Gate Bridge. It also interchanges with New York New Jersey Rail's car float at the 65th Street Yard and US Rail of New York in Yaphank, New York. Its primary freight yard is Fresh Pond Junction in Queens. It has another yard, Pine Aire Yard, in northern Bay Shore, New York. The NY&A officially took over Long Island Rail Road's freight operations on May 11, 1997, with an initial franchise for 20 years.

The Central Branch is a rail line owned and operated by the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) in the U.S. state of New York, extending from BETH Interlocking (40°44′02″N 73°28′12″W / 40.734°N 73.470°W / 40.734; -73.470) just east of Bethpage station to Belmont Junction (40°41′46″N 73°20′28″W / 40.696°N 73.341°W / 40.696; -73.341) just west of Babylon station. It was built in 1873 as part of the Babylon Extension of the Central Railroad of Long Island (CRRLI), which was owned by Alexander Turney Stewart. The branch was mostly unused following the 1876 merger of the CRRLI and the LIRR, but in 1925 it was rebuilt and reconfigured to connect Bethpage and Babylon stations.