Whats The Difference Between Penn Station And Moynihan Train Hall

Penn Station is the original, mostly underground rail complex on the east side of 8th Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets; Moynihan Train Hall is a separate building directly across the avenue at 421 8th Avenue, built inside the old Farley Post Office, that now serves Amtrak and LIRR passengers. They function as one station complex with two public faces, and the difference matters most overnight: Moynihan Train Hall is open 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM daily, and between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM Amtrak and LIRR services move back across the avenue to Penn Station. Walk into the wrong one with a suitcase and you can lose the hour you were planning to spend bag-free.

The two-official-sources problem starts immediately, and it is worth being precise about it. Moynihan Train Hall's own visitor page says luggage storage is provided by Amtrak "for all passengers, regardless of the railroad operator that you're traveling with", and directs you to the Amtrak Customer Service desk. Amtrak's own baggage page says temporary bag storage is available to both Amtrak customers with a valid ticket and the general public with valid photo ID. Those two sentences do not say exactly the same thing about who qualifies, and neither operator has resolved the gap. The safe reading is the narrower one: if you hold an Amtrak ticket, you are unambiguously covered, and if you do not, you may be covered, but the only way to know is to ask at the desk.

For everyone else, the practical answer is that the station complex sits inside a neighbourhood dense with staffed bag drops. There are 27 storage points within 800 metres of the Penn Station anchor, rated 4.84 across 3,583 reviews, at a typical rate of $4.90 per bag per day plus a $1.99 per-bag checkout fee. None of them is a locker; every one is a staffed counter in a shop, cafe or hotel lobby. If your plan is to drop a bag and see the city, the surrounding blocks give you far more choice than the single counter inside.

Where Is Moynihan Train Hall And How Do You Actually Walk In?

Moynihan Train Hall occupies the former James A. Farley Post Office building at 421 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, on the west side of the avenue; its recommended passenger and taxi entry is the 31st Street midblock between 8th and 9th Avenues, at 351 West 31st Street. Penn Station's entrances are on the east side of 8th Avenue and along 7th Avenue. The two buildings face each other across eight lanes of traffic, and the walk between them takes a couple of minutes at street level, longer with a heavy suitcase and a red light.

The hall's own getting-here page publishes the hours plainly: open to the public daily from 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM, with a note that overnight, from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM, Amtrak and LIRR services are only available at Penn Station across 8th Avenue. That single sentence answers a question most travellers never think to ask until they are standing outside a locked door at 2:00 AM. If your train leaves before 5:00 AM, you are a Penn Station passenger that night, whatever your ticket says about the Train Hall.

One caution worth carrying with you: the operator's own page prints two different ZIP codes for the same building, 10001 in the directions block and 10199 in the footer, so do not put much faith in any single address you find for it. The 31st Street midblock entrance is the useful fact, and even that is an entrance, not a service counter. Where the Amtrak bag storage desk physically sits inside the complex is not published anywhere, and no official source gives its hours as separate from the checked baggage window. If someone tells you it is "next to" a particular landmark, they are guessing.

The building itself is worth the detour even without a train to catch. The old mail sorting hall became a light-flooded passenger concourse with a soaring ceiling, and it is the closest thing New York has to the grand terminal the city lost when the original Penn Station was demolished. Penn Station, by contrast, is the low-ceilinged, sign-dense complex that grew in the wreckage, and its reputation is exactly what you would expect of a station rebuilt underneath a sports arena. For a longer treatment of the rail side, the Amtrak baggage and bag storage guide covers checked baggage, Red Cap service and the storage counter in detail.

Which Building Has The Luggage Storage?

The Amtrak bag storage counter serves the complex from the Moynihan side, at $20 per item per 24 hours for Amtrak customers with a valid ticket and $30 per item per 24 hours for the general public with valid photo ID. For items stored longer than 24 hours, the applicable rate is charged at the beginning of each additional 24-hour period. That makes it the one true left-luggage service inside a Manhattan transport hub, and it is a staffed counter, not a locker bank. No locker bank is published anywhere in either building.

The price gap between the two categories is real money. A general public traveller storing two bags for one day pays $60; an Amtrak customer pays $40 for the same. If you are taking a train anyway, book the train first and carry the ticket to the desk. The counter also has published service windows around it: checked baggage at New York Penn runs 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM every day, the ticket office matches it, and passenger assistance runs 24 hours. The storage counter's own hours, as distinct from checked baggage, are not separately published, so treat the 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM window as the practical planning range and confirm at the desk.

Here is the comparison in one place:

Around the complex, the private network is far larger than the single counter. The 27 points within 800 metres of the Penn Station anchor publish hours on 25 listings and a rating on 26 of them, and the aggregate sits at 4.84 across 3,583 reviews. The typical rate is $4.90 per bag per day plus the $1.99 checkout fee, which for one bag and one day comes to $6.89 all in. That is cheaper than the Amtrak counter's general public rate for a single bag, though the counter's price includes the difference of being inside the station itself. If you are weighing the two, the honest comparison is $6.89 at a shop counter a few minutes' walk away versus $30 inside the complex with photo ID.

Do Amtrak And LIRR Passengers Really Split Between The Two Buildings?

Yes, they do, but the split follows the clock rather than the ticket. Moynihan serves both Amtrak and LIRR passengers from 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM, so the building a passenger uses depends on the hour, not the railroad, yet the arrangement shifts depending on the hour, so a passenger's assigned building depends more on when they travel than on which railroad they ride. Between 5:00 AM and 1:00 AM, Amtrak and LIRR use Moynihan Train Hall, and the hall's own page says so twice; between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, both move to Penn Station east of 8th Avenue, so overnight riders never get the newer building. The hall's page also carries its luggage sentence unchanged: storage is provided by Amtrak for all passengers regardless of the railroad operator you are travelling with, arranged at the Amtrak Customer Service desk.

That "regardless of the railroad operator" phrasing is what makes the Train Hall the better door for a Long Island Rail Road passenger with a bag. You do not need an Amtrak ticket to ask at the Amtrak desk, at least according to the building's own page. Amtrak's sitewide page goes further and extends storage to the general public with photo ID. The disagreement between the two official pages has persisted through every re-read of both, and the honest advice is to arrive expecting either answer: bring photo ID, bring your ticket if you have one, and if the desk declines you, the 27 surrounding points are a short walk. The wider set of guides lives on Luggage Storage Lockers in New York City.

The LIRR rule deserves a plain reading, because most people storing a bag at Penn are changing to or from a LIRR train. The timetable, effective March 23, 2026, says luggage should go in the overhead racks and not take up seat space or block aisles or doorways, that luggage may not be left unattended, and that bags and containers are subject to random search by MTA police. That is the railroad telling you, in its own words, why the storage counter and the surrounding bag drops exist. A suitcase parked on a train seat is not a style choice; it is against the published rule.

The tunnel work is the other 2026 fact worth knowing. Amtrak's newsroom lists the East River Tunnel rehabilitation as its major New York project, with the first phase complete and train service restored in one of the tubes. No source publishes a delay figure for passengers, and none is needed: the honest version is simply that the railroad is rebuilding infrastructure under the river your train uses, so allow more time than the timetable alone suggests, especially collecting a stored bag before a departure.

Which Entrance Should You Choose With A Suitcase?

Take the 31st Street midblock entrance between 8th and 9th Avenues if you are heading to Moynihan Train Hall, and take an 8th Avenue or 7th Avenue entrance for Penn Station; between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, the choice is made for you, because the Train Hall is shut. The midblock entrance is the one the hall's own page names for passengers and taxis, and it avoids dragging a bag across the avenue's traffic. It is an entrance to the building, not the location of any service desk, a distinction the official pages never bridge.

The decision is mostly about what you are doing next. If you are storing a bag with Amtrak, the Train Hall side puts you in the building where the Customer Service desk lives. If you are dropping a bag at one of the surrounding shop counters, the whole neighbourhood is your lobby, and the nearest point may be on either side of the avenue. If you are catching a late-night or pre-dawn train, Penn Station's entrances are the only ones that matter. And if you are arriving from the subway with a heavy case, the MTA's own rider guide has advice that reads like it was written for exactly this moment: do not travel with more than you can carry on your own, and avoid rush hour if you are transporting something big.

Rush hour is not a joke at Penn. The complex handles Amtrak, LIRR and NJ Transit under one roof, and the evening surge fills the corridors wall to wall. A traveller who walks into the wrong building at 5:30 PM with a rolling suitcase does not just lose time; they lose the option of moving quickly at all. The surrounding bag drops exist precisely for this pattern, and their published hours, 25 of the 27 near Penn list them, are the number to check before you commit to a plan. For the narrower question of whether the station itself has lockers, the answer is no, and the are there lockers at Penn Station piece covers what exists instead.

One more comparison belongs here, because the two buildings sit in a corridor with a third hub a few blocks south. The Port Authority Bus Terminal publishes no storage of its own, the Port Authority says so flatly on its terminal page and in its FAQ, but the blocks around it carry 36 storage points within 800 metres, rated 4.79 across 2,126 reviews, at the same typical $4.90 per bag per day plus the $1.99 checkout fee. A bus passenger heading north from the terminal toward Penn can drop a bag near either hub and walk between them in about fifteen minutes. The two networks overlap in the middle of Manhattan, and the price is the same on both sides.

The World Trade Center side of the trio is the outlier, and it is worth knowing why. Only 4 storage points sit within 800 metres of the World Trade Center anchor, rated 4.72 across 201 reviews, all four publishing hours, at the typical $4.90 rate plus the $1.99 fee. Downtown is thin on bag drops compared with Midtown, and the 9/11 Memorial's own rules, no baggage larger than 19 by 17 by 8 inches onto the Memorial, make storage a hard requirement rather than a convenience for that visit. Anyone building a day that runs from a Penn Station arrival down to Lower Manhattan should drop the bag in Midtown, not downtown.

The last practical point is the one people forget: the storage counter inside the station and the shop counters around it answer to different clocks. Amtrak's checked baggage window runs 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM, the Train Hall closes at 1:00 AM, and the surrounding points each publish their own hours, with two of the 27 near Penn not listing any at all. A bag dropped at a shop that closes at 7:00 PM cannot be collected at 9:00 PM. Check the hours on the listing before you book, the same way you would check a hotel's front desk hours, because the only universal number in this neighbourhood is the 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM hall, and it is a building's hours, not a storage service's.

Common Questions About Penn Station And Moynihan Train Hall

whats the difference between penn station and moynihan train hall?

Penn Station is the original underground complex east of 8th Avenue; Moynihan Train Hall is a separate building across the avenue at 421 8th Avenue, inside the former Farley Post Office, serving Amtrak and LIRR from 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM. Overnight, from 1:00 AM to 5:00 AM, Amtrak and LIRR services move back to Penn Station.

Can I store luggage at Moynihan Train Hall?

Yes, through Amtrak's bag storage counter, reached via the Amtrak Customer Service desk. Amtrak publishes rates of $20 per item per 24 hours for customers with a valid ticket and $30 per item per 24 hours for the general public with valid photo ID. Moynihan's own page says storage is for all passengers regardless of the railroad operator.

Is Moynihan Train Hall open all night?

No. The hall publishes public hours of 5:00 AM to 1:00 AM daily. Between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, Amtrak and LIRR services operate from Penn Station across 8th Avenue instead.

Do I need an Amtrak ticket to use the bag storage?

Amtrak's own page says no: temporary bag storage is available to the general public with valid photo ID, at $30 per item per 24 hours. Moynihan's page says storage is for all passengers regardless of operator. The two official pages do not fully agree, so bring photo ID and a ticket if you have one.

Are there lockers at either building?

No. The Amtrak counter is a staffed left-luggage desk, not a locker bank, and no locker bank is published anywhere in the complex. The 27 storage points within 800 metres of the Penn Station anchor are also all staffed counters, at a typical $4.90 per bag per day plus a $1.99 checkout fee.

Which entrance should I use with a suitcase?

For Moynihan Train Hall, use the 31st Street midblock entrance between 8th and 9th Avenues, which the hall's own page names for passengers and taxis. For Penn Station, use the 7th Avenue or 8th Avenue entrances. Between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, only the Penn Station side is open.