Wilton is the one stop on the Danbury Branch with two tracks, with the station located on a passing siding. This siding ends just north of the station platform, with the two tracks extending about 900 feet south of the station before the line resumes as a single track.
For passengers, the station has a single narrow island platform between the two tracks. This 400 foot-long narrow island platform begins with an open-air ramp at its northern end. This entrance to the platform is via a pedestrian and vehicular (driveway) grade-crossing in the middle of the station’s parking lot (with parking spaces on both sides of the track). The platform is completely canopied with a non-descript black metal structure except for a very short distance at its southern end. A few Wilson name signs are on the middle of the platform along with two sets of black benches.
The station has a simple wooden station house built in 1939 that is painted red with a gabled, shingled roof. This station house is on the east side of the tracks, across from the ramp up to and the start of the high-level island platform. Inside the depot were previously private businesses but signs on the building when I visited in November 2023 still said the station building hours are Monday through Friday from 5:30am to 11:30 am except 7 major holidays. Outside the station house a single white domed shelter covers the station’s only TVM with tickets written on it, across the grade-crossing from the platform entrance.
The station is located along the banks of the Norwalk River, just east of the station. Ridgefield Road has a bridge over both the northern end of the platform (near the ramp to it) and the Norwalk River. This results in the concrete walls around the major portions of the station’s parking lots with 212 total spaces that extend back from the depot building. The rest of the parking lot extends north of the island platform (on both sides of the tracks). The only vehicular exit from the station is via Station Road. This street loops north up to Route 7 at a traffic light, passing a suburban office building, and an apartment complex. This traffic light provides the main station entrance, although cars can also approach the parking lot via a narrow one-way road between the tracks and berm of the embankment leading up to the Ridgefield Road bridge, cars enter basically via the driveway of a gas station.
Until 2023, these driveways provided the only pedestrian access to the station. This provided problematic because the closest town center that Wilton has (there is lots of surface parking) is located on the opposite side of the River and just south of the Ridgefield Road bridge. In Spring 2023 (with a ribbon cutting on June 15), a new pedestrian bridge opened across the Norwalk River to provide pedestrian access to the train station. This bridge ends at the station parking lot with a new crosswalk leading to the grade-crossing to the platform. The opposite end of the bridge leads to the Norwalk River Valley Trail, a mile long trail through Merwin Meadows Park that leads south to the northern end of the town center (under the opposite side of the Ridgefield Road Bridge from the station platform), and north to Wilton High School.
Photos 1-41: November 26, 2024 on a visit by car
Merritt 7 