Railroad development in the Greycourt area began in 1836, when the Hudson & Delaware Railroad was chartered to build from Newburgh to Chesterville, now known as Greycourt, with plans to extend to Pennsylvania coal fields, but lack of funds led the New York & Erie Railroad to take up the project. The New York & Erie built its main line west through Chesterville in 1841, and by the end of 1849 the Newburgh Branch was completed, giving Orange County a direct rail link to the Hudson River. On April 1, 1862, the Warwick Valley Railroad completed a 10-mile line from Warwick to the Erie's Newburgh Branch in Greycourt; after beginning as an Erie branch, it became independent in 1880 and in 1882 joined other lines to form the Lehigh & Hudson River Railway. By 1889, the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge across the Hudson River provided a faster connection to New England, and the Lehigh & Hudson River soon expanded south into Pennsylvania and north past Greycourt into Maybrook, where freight was gathered for movement across the bridge. Its main role became that of a bridge line, carrying freight from other railroads and forwarding it to Maybrook. In 1960, declining profits led the Erie Railroad to merge with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, and on May 8, 1974, the burning of the Poughkeepsie Bridge dealt a crippling blow. By 1976, falling freight revenue forced the Lehigh & Hudson River, the Erie-Lackawanna, and four other railroads into Conrail. Trains continued through Greycourt until 1983, when the Erie Mainline was abandoned. Today, trains on the former Lehigh & Hudson River line still use the siding in Greycourt for storage and local farm deliveries, but little remains of the place's former importance as a rail center.