Train service at Great Notch originated with the introduction of the Caldwell Railway, a service that went from the community of Caldwell, New Jersey to the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway. Twelve trains a day served Caldwell, Verona and Overbrook Hospital. The station at Great Notch was deemed Caldwell Junction, inferring the junction between the two railways.^[9] The branch was extended the following year to the municipality of Essex Fells, where it connected with the Morristown & Erie Railroad after the latter was extended to that point in 1903.

The Great Notch station depot was built in 1905 for the New York & Greenwood Lake Railway, a subsidiary of the Erie Railroad. The station was built as a green-red "type five" frame structure. While the main building was 12' × 28' × 18' in size, the station also included an old boxcar used as a tool house. The box car was only 12' × 45' and served the station for several decades. The station (telegraph call "GA") was just west of the Great Notch interlocking signal tower (telegraph call "GN"), which was built in 1900 to serve the junction of the Greenwood Lake Railway and its Caldwell Branch, heading south (railroad westbound) for the communities of Cedar Grove, Verona, Caldwell and Essex Fells. The station also served a local yard for train storage for the branch line via a wye.^[8] At Essex Fells, connections could be made for train service to Morristown via the Morristown and Erie Railroad. The Caldwell Railroad diverged from the current New Jersey Transit line about 0.25 miles (0.40 km) west of the New Jersey Transit Great Notch station and followed its own route to Caldwell.^[14] The station at Great Notch was more than just a building for people at the railroad. The station had a large water tower next to GA Signal and a potbelly stove. The station was tended by a husband and wife combination, serving the locals their daily newspapers and their mail. Great Notch did not receive mail delivery until the mid-1950s.^[15]

By the early 1970s, the Great Notch station, which was falling into disrepair, received a new paint job, changed from the red-green-cream colors for the Erie Railroad to a new all red Erie Lackawanna paint scheme. The abandoned tool shed made out of the old wooden boxcar was also removed. Due to the removal of the tool boxcar, the propane tanks that heated the station building were also made visible.^[8] After the ending of the Erie Lackawanna Railroad in 1976,^[16] the Great Notch station lay abandoned. In June 1979, the State of New Jersey began to remove the tracks for the Caldwell Branch, which also lay abandoned at Great Notch.^[17] Currently, what was the track leading to the Caldwell Branch is a siding. On April 16, 1988, the newly rehabilitated station building was destroyed by fire. The burned out structure was razed on April 23. New Jersey Transit, who owned the station depot, replaced it with glass structures to seat 90 people.^[12]

During the construction of the Montclair Connection in 2001, the adjacent Great Notch Yard received a major upgrade, becoming a new state-of-the-art yard with new trains storage facilities.^[18]

The opening of the Montclair State University station in 2004 ^[19] and the Wayne Route 23 Transit Center's train platform in 2008^[20] made Great Notch one of three stations in Little Falls, and it did not have nearly the ridership of either of the two other stations. The opening of nearby Montclair State University Station pulled away commuters from Great Notch. The small parking lot facing the station had very little room for cars and a parking lot on the opposite side of the single tracked station was isolated from it by fencing. Further exacerbating the problem was that the small lot abutting Notch Road was not marked specifically for train passengers only. Great Notch had (and still has) a bus stop on the corner of Notch and Long Hill Roads that serves buses headed for Port Authority Bus Terminal, and commuters using the bus would park in the train station's parking lot (and still do, as it was never blocked off) and catch the bus up the street.

In January 2008, without knowledge of the township council, New Jersey Transit announced further and drastic service cuts at Great Notch. The only train to serve outbound customers was a train leaving for Hoboken Terminal in the morning, and two trains from Hoboken would serve the station at night.^[21]

The future of the 103-year-old station was placed into further jeopardy on August 12, 2008, when New Jersey Transit announced to the community of Little Falls that it might close the station as early as October 2008.^[22] A few days after the announcement, rebuttal by the community began to appear; a public hearing was announced for September 3 to work on plans for Great Notch.^[23] The service with only one inbound train (to Hoboken) and two outbound trains (from Hoboken) was canceled on April 1, 2009. On that day, New Jersey Transit announced it would add two more trains in each direction on April 16 as a "one-year trial" for station ridership. The town hoped to get the then 67-person a day average to 100 people using the station by April 1, 2010, when the trial was set to expire. The mayor of Little Falls, Michael DeFrancisci, urged people to use the station more.^[24] However, by December 2009, ridership had declined to nine riders per day.^[13]

On December 18, 2009, New Jersey Transit contacted Little Falls and said that the station would close in January 2010, three months before the year-long trial period was set to end. It cited continued low ridership, as on average of nine passengers a day boarded the train at Great Notch.^[7] On December 21, 2009, New Jersey Transit announced the closure, stating that "anemic" ridership continued at Great Notch, with an average of only nine riders a day, compared to 203 at the Little Falls station and 597 at the Montclair State University Station.^[13] The last train to depart Great Notch was the 6:51 pm train from Hoboken Terminal on January 15, 2010, leaving Great Notch at 7:41 pm.^[3]

• Caldwell Branch to Essex Fells

• Baxter, Raymond J.; Adams, Arthur G. (1999). Railroad Ferries of the Hudson: And Stories of a Deckhand. Fordham, New York: Fordham University Press. ISBN 9780823219544.
• Catlin, George L. (1873). Homes on the Montclair Railway, for New York Business Men. A Description of the Country Adjacent to the Montclair Railway, Between Jersey City and Greenwood Lake. New York, New York: Montclair Railway Company.
• Whittemore, Henry (1894). History of Montclair Township, State of New Jersey: Including the History of Families who Have Been Identified with Its Growth and Prosperity. New York, New York: The Suburban Publishing Company. Retrieved February 6, 2020.

• Overhead view of the station via Bing Maps^{[permanent dead link]}