Hadlyme Station stood at a location in Chester where all three of the town's train stations—Chester, North Chester, and Hadlyme—would once have been visible looking south. The building seen there today is the third to stand on the site and functioned as a flagstop station, where scheduled trains stopped only when flagged or when passengers requested a stop. The second station on the site was built in 1903 after the original 1880s station burned, and before 1918 it stood with the Connecticut River behind it while William Gillette's large home across the river was still under construction. That second station building survives as a private home about 300 feet west up the road. The unpaved Kings Highway, now Ferry Road, once ran diagonally across the foreground there. Original New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad plans recorded the Hadlyme station site. In March 1968, the last freight train on the Valley line passed north by the site; less than a year later Penn Central Railroad absorbed the line and shed extraneous routes and operations, but within three years the line was saved and reopened as the present-day Valley Railroad. River crossing at Chester and Hadlyme also evolved over time: after nearly a century of push barges and sail-powered ferries, the steam-powered Middlesex and, in 1914, the Cheslyme were introduced, later followed by a gas-powered tug and barge combination until the current ferry entered service in 1949.