Grasmere
Clifton (at the approximate location to today’s station) was previously called Vanderbilt’s Landing. It was the original ferry connection point and northern terminus of the railroad when it was built in 1860, service was extended north to Tompkinsville in 1885, reaching a new ferry terminal at St. George in 1886. The station was grade-separated in the 1932. The station is located on an elevated concrete embankment. From the platform there are impressive views of New York Bay, including the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. Just west below the station is Bay Street, which the southern end of the station platforms curve over and cross on a concrete viaduct.
Just east of the station is the Clifton Shops. Passengers are able to see some trains from the platform in the Staten Island Railway’s only maintenance faculty, although a new shop building was built between 2018 and 2023 (after the old building was damaged due to Superstorm Sandy) that is bigger and provides fewer opportunities to view the train yard with 4 long storage tracks and shops from the station platform. All access to the yard is via a single track north of the station at the Landing Interlocking (which also includes a crossover between tracks). Light train maintenance is performed at the shop with trains requiring heavy maintenance trucked over the Verrazano Bridge to the Coney Island shops.
For trains the station has two side platforms. Only the front three cars of St. George-bound trains open their doors. This is because of dangerous gaps from the curve of the platform at its southern end. For access, the St. George Platform has two entrances, one is via a staircase towards at the southern end of the platform with a staircase nestled between the train line and entrance to the Clifton Maintenance Shop. This is near the NE corner of Bay and Front Streets. This platform has an additional entrance at its northern end, here a staircase leads down to a fence prohibiting access to the nearby train yard, where a pedestrian tunnel leads under the tracks to Bay Street, across from its T-intersection with Norwood Avenue. The platform contains two very small pink with glass block shelter areas, one at this northern entrance and one towards the middle of this platform. As part of the building of the new shop the northern portion of this platform and the very southern portion got new a new full height (about 10 feet high) mesh fencing, similar to lots of new subway stops. The fencing is painted orange, matching the color scheme of the rest of the station.
The Tottenville-bound platform is more historic. It contained (until it was removed in 2021 and replaced by a conventional pink, cream and glass block shelter) a historic brick shelter/canopy structure in the middle of the platform. Three brick pillars held up structure with what resembled boarded up windows at one end of it, it covered a bench a trash can and a bus-style guide-a-ride sign for a map and timetable of the SIR. Next to this shelter is a glass blocked canopied section of platform next to this platform’s only exit, the exit is a canopied staircase that wends its way down via an intermediate landing to a final intermediate landing about seven steps up from the street. Here it splits into two staircases going opposite directions down to the east side of Bay Street, across from the T-intersection with Townsend Street. The exit is between the last and second to last car of a 4 car Tottenville-bound train.
Photos 1-55: June 22, 2015;
