As originally built, the station featured six island platforms with one alighting platform directly accessible from the station building, serving 12 tracks for New York Central Railroad trains; these were numbered 5 through 16 from south to north.
Postwar reductions in passenger traffic led to service cuts and the eventual bankruptcy of all three railroads, leaving only the mainline Water Level Route (the modern Amtrak Empire Corridor) with regular passenger service by the 1970s.