For more than a century, the Belmont Special carried throngs of thoroughbred lovers, inveterate gamblers and people who just craved a festive day in the Belmont Park grandstand to the doorstep at one of the grand palaces of American horse racing.

Operated by the Long Island Rail Road, the train shuttled thousands of people from Manhattan and elsewhere, curling along a half-mile spur off the main line to the western entrance of the park. But this spring, the special is silent, severing a nostalgic link to the racing industry’s glory days and serving as a palpable signal of more drastic cuts to train and bus services.

The Belmont line is the first in a long list of service reductions planned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the railroad’s parent agency, as it struggles to close a growing budget gap. Many of the cuts are scheduled to begin next month, which, coupled with proposed fare increases, will mean a slew of hardships for bus, train and subway riders across the region unless Albany passes a financial rescue plan.

The Belmont Special has been losing ridership for years — a sign of a sharp decline in racing attendance across the nation. Railroad officials say that made it a logical choice to cut.

“We’re talking about 100 customers a day, on average,” said Joe Calderone, a railroad spokesman.

That average would be considerably smaller if not for the 20,000-plus who ride the train each June to see the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of racing’s Triple Crown. The railroad will continue service on that day, running 18 trains to the park.

On Saturday, race fans taking the train to see live races and the Kentucky Derby simulcast on big-screen televisions had to get off at Queens Village and take a shuttle bus the remaining half-mile to the park. Few seemed to mind, as women in spring Derby hats and some men in suits and others dressed more casually filed in, though it did not quite have the feel of riding a train straight to the track.

The buses were provided by the New York Racing Association, the track’s operator. The park’s spring racing season began on Wednesday, and already officials are seeing a small but clear falloff in attendance.

On Kentucky Derby day last year, for example, the train brought in 385 passengers to Belmont, said Kenneth T. Cook, vice president for security at the racing association. On Saturday, the shuttles carried just 96 people. Overall attendance at the park fell to 8,222 on Saturday, from 11,310 last year.

“Don’t forget, the Belmont Special was pretty convenient,” Mr. Cook said. “You got on at Penn Station, and it dropped you off right here.”

On weekdays, the train carried 30 to 35 people last year; so far this spring, the shuttle has carried 7 to 9 passengers a day, Mr. Cook said.

It is a far cry from when train service to Belmont began, on May 4, 1905, the day the park opened. Forty thousand people journeyed to see the inaugural running at the track, most traveling by train in a “pall of soft-coal smoke,” The New York Times said, adding that “when the trains were full the throng had to stand wherever it was when the gates closed until fresh trains could be run in.”

Racing association officials, who lobbied against the elimination of direct train service, estimate that the park will lose more than $5 million this year because of the cut, while the authority says it will save about $112,000.

A clear signal of the impact could be seen at the park’s western entrance near the train platform, which on Saturday was desolate.

“It’s different,” said Nora Martinez, a ticket seller, as she sat at a lonely turnstile at the west entrance. “There used to be long lines of people coming off the train. Now there’s nobody.”

Raymond Andujar, 70, has been going to the park since 1959, often by train. “In those years the train was completely full,” he said. “Lately, everything’s completely different; people don’t come anymore.”

Diane Smith, 68, and Cynthia Howard, 51, sell beer, wine and liquor at a concession inside the grandstand lobby. But on Saturday, they were mostly sitting around waiting for customers.

“I think it’s making a big difference,” Ms. Howard said of the lost train service. “Last year the line here was six deep, and four years ago it was 10 deep. Now there’s no people here.”