Station Size/Grand Station Revival - Food for thought

[mtuandrew]

Les - are there plans (concepts, a civic push) to reconnect the through tracks at Denver?

The common factor here seems to be that Amtrak's footprint is far, far smaller than that of its predecessor passenger services. The huge legacy terminals that acted as airport equivalents are generally too large (except for perhaps half a dozen, like WUS and LAUPT) and the yards were orders of magnitude too large. Unfortunately, the yards are now redeveloped, too small, or rededicated to freight.

My point is, Amtrak doesn't need ultra-grand buildings as much as it needs the support network of people, machinery, platforms, commissaries, ground power and remote yard space, like Tadman's example of Central Station. The goal should be to get the train platformed, baggage loaded and unloaded, bathrooms drained & refilled, locomotives fueled, and food & beverage restocked within 10 minutes of passenger loading at hubs, so the station becomes that much less important as part of the journey.

[Frode]

Boston South Station was almost lost. Portions of both wings were demolished and the number of tracks reduced from 28 to 10. Demolition of the main headhouse was prevented at the last minute. Three tracks were later added back for a total of 13 currently. An office building and post office facility were built on the demolished side where the 18 tracks were, effectively preventing further future expansion. Of course, it's now at capacity between Amtrak and MBTA commuter rail and there have been discussions on how to increase track capacity, mostly involving moving the post office facility, which have gone nowhere at this point.

A full history is here: http://www.south-station.net/station-history/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gilbert B Norman]

Off topic of sorts; anyone else beyond Messrs. Nelligan, Weaver, and myself recall that there was once a Roman Catholic chapel, Our Lady of the Railways, located within South Station?

[bdawe]

Through tracks at Denver would require either tearing down several blocks of what is now more Downtown or extensive tunneling underneath the new trainshed and underground busloop beneath it

[Tadman]

Agreed, there is no chance that tracks south of Denver Union Station will ever happen (other than light rail). Pepsi Center stands in the way.

[Noel Weaver]

Off topic of sorts; anyone else beyond Messrs. Nelligan, Weaver, and myself recall that there was once a Roman Catholic chapel, Our Lady of the Railways, located within South Station?

While I would like to give my beloved New Haven credit for this, I believe it originated with the New York Central, I think they had a few other stations with some short of a chapel in a few other locations.
Noel Weaver

[Ridgefielder]

Two other things to note is that the grand head houses of grand stations were necessary to provide work-space for the armies of clerks that railroads once needed before CTC and computers. The other that a lot of these grand stations that stand underused and poorly sited were sited relatively late. Thus built after the window where 'build it and send lots of trains to it and they will come' was a successful business model. Here in Vancouver, the Hill System and the Canadian Northern filled in an enormous amount of real estate from False Creek when they decided to make a big entry in to Vancouver, complete with two separate, handsome terminals for the Canadian Northern and another for GN and Northern Pacific next door, trying to draw some of the core of Vancouver over towards themselves. They completed this project in the middle of the First World War, Canadian Northern went bankrupt, NP skipped town, and outside the yards, the great mass of reclaimed land grew weeds for decades (and much of it still does).

When Commodore Vanderbilt opened the Grand Central Depot in 1871, it was 20-odd blocks north of the uptown business center of New York. Manhattan's center of gravity shifted accordingly. I think you had a lot of civic leaders in the 1910-1930 era-- during the last great surge of station building-- think "if it worked there, it will work here." The result was a bunch of grand stations in locations that were even then peripheral. Neither Michigan Central Station nor Buffalo Central Terminal were built in the existing central business district. If the cities HAD grown out toward the stations, there's a chance they might still be in use. Even Cincinnati Union Terminal is somewhat out of the way, and lost train service for a time (like St. Paul Union Depot). The stations that have survived are the ones that serve the CBD well- not just Boston South or Washington Union but Toronto Union, Montreal Central, Baltimore Penn, etc.

[JimBoylan]

The belief in the horizontal expansion of cities' business districts was so great that the New Haven RR's relation, the New York, West Chester & Boston, built its New York terminal in the South Bronx, expecting the workplaces of its passengers to move to meet it.

I do remember Catholic masses being said in Boston's South Station in 1971 and possibly later, but heard that when the long time pastor died, there was no more ecclesiastical interest in continuing the practice.

[ExCon90]

I think that in Buffalo and Detroit the route alignments were at least as important in the decision to put the stations where they did in order to avoid backing or taking a circuitous route.

[Ridgefielder]

This thread prompted me to do a little poking around on the web. What surprised me was the realization of how much we still have. The top 10 US cities by population are NY, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Santa Fe, Dallas and San Jose. All of these have preserved at least one of their grand pre-WWII stations. Of the 9 of these cities with Amtrak service, 8 still use the prewar station (I'm throwing New York in there because GCT is busier now than it was in 1913 & it seemed silly to exclude it on the basis of not being the Amtrak station)

The next 14 cities by size are Austin, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, Fort Worth, Charlotte, Detroit, El Paso, Seattle, Denver, Washington, Memphis, Boston and Nashville. I'm not familiar with Austin and can't figure out if it ever had a station on the scale of those other places. For the rest, San Francisco, Columbus and Charlotte have demolished their stations but all the other cities retain at least one-- in Indianapolis, El Paso, Seattle, Denver, Washington, Memphis and Boston they still serve Amtrak.

I think we are perhaps too focused on both the ones we have lost (NY Penn of course, but also Portland (ME) Union, Minneapolis Great Northern, Chicago Central & Grand Central, etc.) And Detroit is a special case: the city lost 63% of its population between 1950 and today. It's not just Michigan Central Station that's empty and derelict- it's blocks and blocks of houses, churches, schools and stores as well.

[bdawe]

While Third & Townsend Depot in San Francisco was torn down in 1971, arguably it was historically the secondary 'train' station in San Francisco, with the primary entryway into the city being the still extant and rather grand Ferry Building. The Ferry Building was listed in timetables as the mile zero of rail services of the ATSF, WP, Sacramento Northern, and SP services through Oakland, Sacramento, Portland, Ogden, and through the San Joaquin Valley, with an individual ferry run corresponding to many train arrivals at the Oakland Mole. Third & Townsend served only the Coast Line and branches in Santa Cruz and Monterey.

[ThinkNarrow]

Off topic of sorts; anyone else beyond Messrs. Nelligan, Weaver, and myself recall that there was once a Roman Catholic chapel, Our Lady of the Railways, located within South Station?

I do. There is even a picture and some historical information on line:http://blog.mass.gov/transportation/sou ... st-in-u-s/
-John

[Ocala Mike]

Ridgefielder must be testing us to see if we are reading his posts. He posted a list of the ten largest US cities, and unaccountably gave us 11, the outlier being Santa Fe.

Perhaps this city of around 70,000 has a special place in his heart. Well played!

[Ridgefielder]

Ridgefielder must be testing us to see if we are reading his posts. He posted a list of the ten largest US cities, and unaccountably gave us 11, the outlier being Santa Fe.

Perhaps this city of around 70,000 has a special place in his heart. Well played!

Hahaha completely a typo I assure you!

[Desertdweller]

MBTA:

I did not know the CB&Q Omaha station has been re-purposed, but am glad to hear that it is. When I visited the UP station (now the Durham Museum), the consensus was that the CB&Q terminal was beyond saving.

mtuandrew:

Denver Union Station was built as a through station, but I don't think it was ever operated as one. Trains entered and left either from the north end or the south end (like Chicago Union Station). Like CUS, it was physically possible to run trains through the station, but this was not done in operation.
The rail crossings of Cherry Creek (the south edge of the property) have been cut and the area south of the creek has been built over in heavy urban development.
The discontinuance of the Santa Fe LaJunta Local ended the last train into the station from the south. All remaining trains operated in/out from the north, and turned on a loop north of the station. A temporary AMTRAK station was built north of DUS near Coors Field. At one point, all station tracks were torn up. The Denver Light Rail loops around the station, with a stop located between the site of the terminal tracks and the approach tracks to the Denver and Salt Lake Terminal.
As late as the early 1960's, DUT hosted 20 train pairs. 1958 was the first year Stapleton Airport saw more passengers than DUT. Denver was a true regional rail hub, and should be one again, in my opinion.

Les