The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest, along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Rochester and Syracuse.

[7] On May 7, 1844, the railroad was authorized to carry freight with some restrictions, and on May 12, 1847, the ban was fully dropped, but the company still had to pay the equivalent in canal tolls to the state.

The Syracuse and Utica Railroad was chartered on May 11, 1836, and similarly had to pay the state for any freight displaced from the canal.

Trains could head toward Grand Central Depot, built by NYC and opened in 1871, or to the freight facilities at Port Morris.

The NYC assumed control of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie and Boston and Albany Railroads in 1887 and 1900, respectively, with both roads remaining as independently-operating subsidiaries.

The Harmon Shops were particularly important as locomotive power was switched out from steam to electric at that point as trains approached New York City.

[13] The generally level topography of the NYC system had a character distinctively different from the mountainous terrain of its archrival, the Pennsylvania Railroad.

This influenced a great deal about the line, from advertising to locomotive design, built around its flagship New York-Chicago Water Level Route.

Steam locomotives of the New York Central Railroad were optimized for speed on that flat raceway of a main line, rather than slow mountain lugging.

The cars, which contained roomettes, double bedrooms and drawing rooms, provided through sleeper service between New York City and Los Angeles or San Francisco (Oakland Pier).

[17][18] Despite having some of the most modern steam locomotives anywhere, NYC's difficult financial position caused it to convert to more-economical diesel-electric power rapidly.

These problems were coupled with even more-formidable forms of competition, such as airline service in the 1950s that began to deprive NYC of its long-distance passenger trade.

[21] In June 1954, management of the New York Central System lost a proxy fight in 1954 to Robert Ralph Young and the Alleghany Corporation he led.

[22] Alleghany Corporation was a real estate and railroad empire, built by the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland in the 1920s, that had controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Nickel Plate Road.

In 1959, Perlman was able to reduce operating deficits by $7.7 million, which nominally raised NYC stock to $1.29 per share, producing dividends of an amount not seen since the end of the war.

Notable was the use of Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) systems on many of the NYC lines, which reduced the four-track mainline to two tracks.

[citation needed] Perlman's cuts resulted in the curtailing of many of the railroad's services; commuter lines around New York were particularly affected.

Ridding itself of most of its commuter service proved impossible due to the heavy use of these lines around metro New York, where governments mandated that the railroad still operate.

[citation needed] Many long-distance and regional passenger trains were either discontinued or downgraded in service, with coaches replacing Pullman, parlor, and sleeping cars on routes in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The railroad's branch-line service off the Empire Corridor in upstate New York was also gradually discontinued, the last being its Adirondack Division line between Utica and Lake Placid, on April 24, 1965.

Merger talks between the two roads were discussed as early as 1955; however, this was delayed due to a number of factors: among them, interference by the Interstate Commerce Commission, objections from operating unions, concerns from competing railroads and the inability of the two companies themselves to formulate a merger plan, thus delaying progress for over a decade.

[26][27] The two companies' competing corporate cultures, union interests and incompatible operating and computer systems sabotaged any hope for a success.

Additionally, in an effort to look profitable, the board of directors authorized the use of the railroad's reserve cash to pay dividends to company stockholders.

[27] Penn Central marked the last hope of privately funded passenger rail service in the United States.

[28] Amtrak would eventually assume ownership of the Northeast Corridor, a mostly-electrified route between Boston and Washington, D.C., inherited primarily from the PRR and New Haven systems.

Penn Central and the other railroads were still obligated to operate their commuter services for the next five years while in bankruptcy, eventually turning them over to the newly formed Conrail in 1976.

There was some hope that Penn Central, and the other Northeastern railroads, could be restructured toward profitability once their burdensome passenger deficits were unloaded.

Conrail, officially the Consolidated Rail Corporation, created by the U.S. government to salvage Penn Central and the other bankrupt railroads' freight business, beginning its operations on April 1, 1976.

[27] As mentioned, Conrail assumed control of Penn Central's commuter lines throughout the Lower Hudson Valley of New York, Connecticut, and in and around Boston.

Conrail would go on to achieve profitability by the 1990s and was sought by several other large railroads in a continuing trend of mergers, eventually having its assets absorbed by CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999.