They hired an image consulting firm to come up with "popular" names for its constituent agencies, and the SIRT's passenger operation from St. George to Tottenville was dubbed "MTA Staten Island Railway," recalling the pre-SIRT days of Vanderbilt. However, the legal name of the agency remains Staten Island Rapid Transit Operating Authority, so, in a sense, the "SIRT" still lives
     The year 2001 saw the first expansion in SIRT passenger trackage since steam days, when a spur and new station, "Ball Park," opened west of St. George, in what had been the SIRT's freight yard, to serve the Staten Island Yankees minor league ball club. Service only operates on game days, and doesn't appear on the public timetable.

he destruction of the Port Authority's World Trade Center on September 11th and current uncertainties of the economy may impact this project, but the line's economic necessity and inherent usefulness speak well for its future.

Passengers Today:
MTA Staten Island Railway
In 1993, the MTA decided that its operating agencies needed more user-friendly names.

Nature was returning to the Mount Loretto Branch when this 1965 picture was taken.

Steam service did not quite end with electrification in 1925. This rare photo, showing a typical SIRT camelback engine pulling a train of its electric coaches, is not a fantrip or emergency operation. It is a Sunday excursion taking visitors to the children's home on the non-electrified Mount Loretto Branch. This photo was inadverterntly "flipped" (train shown coming from left) in the original SIRT book of 1965.

©1965 Silver Leaf Rapid Transit. ©2001 Paul Matus. ©2001 The Composing Stack Inc.