The Empire Corridor is a passenger rail corridor in New York State running between Penn Station in New York City and . Major cities on the route include Poughkeepsie, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. Much of the corridor was once part of the New York Central Railroad's main line. Amtrak's Empire Service and Maple Leaf serve the entire length of the Empire Corridor, with the Maple Leaf continuing northwest to . The Lake Shore Limited follows most of the corridor from New York City, diverging west to Chicago at Buffalo–Depew station. The Berkshire Flyer takes the corridor to before diverging east to , while the Adirondack and Ethan Allen Express travel one stop further to before diverging north to and , respectively. Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line merges with the Empire Corridor in Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx, just south of , providing commuter rail service between Poughkeepsie, New York and Grand Central Terminal. The line is electrified by both overhead catenary and top-running third rail on the Amtrak-owned segment between Penn Station and 41st Street, and by under-running third rail on the Metro-North segment, from the merge with the Hudson Line to . The Amtrak-owned section between 41st Street and the merge with the Hudson Line is unpowered and can only be served by diesel or dual-mode trains. The corridor is also one of ten federally designated high-speed rail corridors in the United States. If the proposed high-speed service were built on the corridor, trains traveling between Buffalo and New York City would travel at speeds of up to . In the 1890s, the Empire State Express between New York City and Buffalo was about 1 hour faster than Amtrak's service in 2013. On September 14, 1891, the Empire State Express covered the between New York City and Buffalo in 7 hours and 6 minutes (including stops), averaging , with a top speed of . Ownership The Empire Corridor is largely owned by CSX Transportation (CSX), which owns most of the trackage between Niagara Falls and Poughkeepsie. Amtrak owns trackage rights for most of the Hudson line section north of Poughkeepsie to its rail yard in Albany. South of Poughkeepsie, the Empire Corridor is coextensive with Metro-North's trackage until it forks-off between Metro-North's Riverdale and Spuyten Duyvil stations in the Bronx, to cross the Harlem River over the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge and make the Empire Connection to Penn Station.