In my home town, Birmingham, Michigan, the old Grand Trunk staion is now a micro brewery and restaurant. Good Beer OK food mid to hi end prices. the nearby RIP track is now being taken up and condo's built. Unfortunately they face away from the GTW/CN mainline that runs from Detroit to Durand.
In Washington DC the old Union Station is....a train station. 4 railroads use it (Amtrak, MARC, VRE, and WMATA). It is also a mall with restaurants and shops. Very busy place.
In Alexandria, VA the old depot is a VRE and Amtrak Station.
In Manassas, VA the old station is a VRE station. There is also a bit of history shown off inside.
Falls Church, VA has a model railroad club, mini museum, and shop inside. No tracks though.
grayfox1119 wrote:In Palmer, Ma, which is in the south central part of the state, the old stone Depot is now the Steamer Resturant. It is located directly along side the Diamond where the Vt central crosses the old Boston & Albany Main line, now CSX. It is also a Hot Spot for camera action.
Dick,
The depot is "The Steaming Tender". It really is quite a place. The restoration is magnificent right down to the restrooms.
Great food and reasonably priced. Go there after the Big E show in Springfield, Ma.
Bob Buck of Tucker's Hobbies in Warren, Ma was instramental in it's restoration.
Modeling B&O- Chessie Bob K. www.ssmrc.org
Well, the one I thought I had posted to this thread is now - a vacant lot. I was unable to figure out how to save it.
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Texas Zepher wrote: Well, the one I thought I had posted to this thread is now - a vacant lot. I was unable to figure out how to save it.
Sad to see them go, isn't it. The neat old B&O depot in my home town of Defiance OH was torn down last year :( Quite a few years ago, I watched the old Wabash depot that was then being used as storage for grain elevator, burn to the ground.
On a happier note, the Sandusky OH depot (where I lived for about 18 years, until labout 4 years ago) was saved and turned into a transportation hub...central dispatch point for the local commuter buses and ambulances.
Reality...an interesting concept with no successful applications, that should always be accompanied by a "Do not try this at home" warning.
Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
"Oooh...ahhhh...that's how this all starts...but then there's running...and screaming..."
Hello,
There are two old depots in my town. One of them thankgoodness is being used for what is was built to be. CSX is the occupant. One interesting thing is that CSX is as about as cheap as they come and a poor Corporate citizen. They let the historic depot which is smack dab in the center of town get in such a state of disrepair that our then mayor (who is a three rail enthusiasist) got the Town to help pay for it's exterior repairs. Maybe CSX isn't gcheap but smart.
The second depot which was last used by the PRR is now the home of a community theater and the members put on plays in the "round"
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
This is one of my favorite old threads and its been inactive for about 9 months, so I thought it was about time to revive it. Share your old depot pics and stories with us.
Ron
Owner and superintendant of the N scale Texas Colorado & Western Railway, a protolanced representaion of the BNSF from Fort Worth, TX through Wichita Falls TX and into Colorado.
Check out the TC&WRy on at https://www.facebook.com/TCWRy
Check out my MRR How-To YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/RonsTrainsNThings
It's not MY old hometown station, but I recently traveled via Amtrak to Richmond VA. The Amtrak station was clean and comfortable but nothing special. As we toured the city, we found that the original Atlantic Coast Line's Broad Street Train Station is now the Science Museum of Virginia. It is a beautiful station, and largely unchanged. It even still has the tracks and loading platforms installed. They are used for static display of old trains. The right of way used by Amtrak is about 100 yards behind the museum. I cannot imagine why it is not still the train station. It is even in a better location than the current station.
http://www.smv.org/aboutus/history.asp
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
I beleive both of my town's depots are underwater.........
(Really, I'm not lying! The river was blocked, flooding about half of the town so the people of Boston could drink.)
Wow...old threads....
Like I said above, mine are underwater, but here's one that isn't in my town. It's now a bus company...
The Post Office (former NKP depot) in Ingalls, Indiana.
The IC depot in Carbondale, Illinois is now a museum.
The BIG IC depot in my home town of Centralia, Illinois we town down!
majortom
Rangerover wrote:Here in Elkins West Virginia, the rail yard was removed including a quite large round house and turntable. They started dismantling it in 1982. The old train station became a museum and welcome station for Elkins. Now they replaced the railroad bridge over the Tygart River, laid new track and trans are running again, mostly tour trains because of the new Mountain Theater. Occasionally some freight come to the yard. The train station is a train station again and museum. They have plans to put some of the yard back including the roundhouse and turntable, really exciting stuff!
Let me help you out with some visuals...
Elkins Depot, built by the Western Maryland in 1908. I was there in 2007 before the tracks were re-laid. The bridge was almost completed.
Here on Delmarva, there's a good number of stations remaining, with all but a few "re-purposed". In Cambridge, the old PRR station is now a realtor's office, Hurlock has two stations, one relocated from a few miles up the line and fixed up for a community center. The other is the original "union station" if you will, where the BC&A crossed the Dorchester & Delaware, which has more or less been left to rot. It's still there, and there are rumblings of a tourist line restoring it, but we're not holding our breath.
In Federalsburg, the old PRR station now serves as the offices of the Maryland and Delaware, which now operates the line
And in Seaford DE, NS uses the former PRR station for it's MOW department.
There's a scad of others, including many that have been relocated and are now being used as residences.
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
Lebanon, Ohio - The original depot was torn down in the 50's with passenger service having ended in the 30's. From the photos I've seen it was in pretty bad shape when finally torn down.
The station land was later purchased by the Lebanon Garden Club from Penn Central. A replica depot was built on the site but I don't think it looks much like the original. As far as I know they use it as a place to meet. We also have an excursion train in town that used the depot to sell tickets at one time, but they outgrew the space and now sell tickets in an old hardware store across the street.
In my home town of Princeton , IN . it is tourism office and local museum .
In the town I live in now , Wilmington , Il the station is in limbo and will probably be torn down .
The big Union Station (CPR) here in Regina, Saskatchewan was taken over by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Bands and is now a large Casino.
There is a stationary exhibit of a steam loco outside and a passenger car that is up against the building and they use it (one side missing) for a stage area in the restaurant part of the facility.
Johnboy out...................
from Saskatchewan, in the Great White North..
We have met the enemy, and he is us............ (Pogo)
wm3798
Hey thanks for posting the pics of Elkins. I got to learn to do that! Hope you enjoyed your visit and "Welcome Home" if and when you return again! Love it Here and can't wait till they start building the yard and roundhouse, I think I read that they very well may return some real passenger service!
Hey if your ever in Elkins again let me know. I'm in the process of putting my "creation" back together, I moved and five minutes away from the station. One of my best friends operates the tour train out of Belington, nice ride! jdbres@verizon.net. Jim
Sawyer Berry
Clemson University c/o 2018
Building a protolanced industrial park layout
In Butler PA: the PRR freight and passenger depots are long gone. The B&O depot is even longer gone. I have no hard evidence there even was one anyhow, except for a reference in a book about a different railroad. The Bessemer & Lake Erie passenger depot has been gone for at least 60 years, but the old freight depot is now a cold storage facility and the new freight depot (built in the 50s I think) is still there, empty. Curiously, the B&LE depots were closer to the B&O tracks. The new station actually sat between the B&O main and part of the PRR wye that doubled as the interchange with the B&LE and B&O yards. Rather complex little area. The PRR signal tower that controlled the diamonds where the PRR wye crossed the B&O main is still there too. The once massive Pullman Standard plant (which local legend holds was the largest structure ever built before the Pentagon) is now completely gone, after being whittled away over the years.
Out in my other home of State College PA, the original Bellefonte Central station vanished some 70 years ago at least. If theres anything left, its buried under the foundation of the Hammond building on the Penn State campus. The second station is still there, now functioning as the bus terminal. The PRR station in nearby Lemont is either a resturant or a hobby shop. I forget which. Could have been both.
I don't get back there often, but I believe the station is Clarksburg, WV is still being used. West of town, the line becomes a rails-to-trails. I used to board there and ride over the mountains (or vice versa).
When I moved to Tennessee in the early '70s, there was a beautiful old station in Johnson City that was later demolished. There are still lots of tracks through there. The old Clinchfield yard was some 20 miles south in Erwin, now CSX.
The station master's office and ticket sales window is closed. replaced with a vending machine on the outside (which accepts coins and notes and gives change, or ATM cards). Conductor on the train also sells tickets, and accepts both cash and ATM cards. Or people order subscription season cards over the internet and gets them in the mail to their homes.
Local control panel (in the locked ticket sales office) is set in inactive mode, as all tracks in the region are being controlled from area central dispatch 20 miles away.
The old LCL freight room in the basement is just being used for odds and ends storage for the railroad, AFAIK. The station master's upstairs apartment is still an apartment, but now it is just rented out to someone.
Then again, our depot isn't all that old, really - the RR line through our town wasn't built until the early 1860s, and the station stop wasn't created until 1892. The present depot wasn't built around 1915 or so, and has been modified since. And it is a small town.
This is what it looked like in 1919:
This is what it looks like today:
Some more pictures (by me) from a regular day's commute to town through our smalltown station:
I still miss the days when I first moved to this area (around 1978 or so), where there still was a stationmaster/agent at the station, and one could drop by the stationmaster's office for a cup of coffee and a chat before the morning train, watching the trains come closer on the control board, until the buzzer was tripped on the incoming train signal, and it was time to announce on the loudspeaker that the inbound (or outbound) train would shortly arrive on track 1 (or track 2).
Oh well - it is more efficient the way we run things now, and we don't run trains for the fun of it - that is just an added benefit for those of us that are fond of the trains :-)
A guy named Roy Olsen has a few online photo safaris along various stretches of RR around her - here is a link to a photo safari along "our" line (pictures from april 2007), showing the mix of old stations and new(ish) trains of various kinds:
http://trips.rool.no/kongsvingerbanen_300407
Edit: I browsed a bit more around on Roy Olsen's web pages. What a nice combination of fairly current railfanning photos and a trip down nostalgia lane over here in Norway!
Main page: http://trips.rool.no/trains
I found some shots from the area where my dad grew up as well - even pictures of the RR station where he lived in the upstair's station master's office when his dad, my grandpa, worked as a station master - Valebø station down by Skien - third picture from the top on this page: http://trips.rool.no/bratsbergb_y1_tjerndalen. There is quite a bit of contrast between rather smallish and pedestrian Y1 rail motor cars that ply this branch line and the more modern class 73 tilting EMU.
Here are some shots from Oslo Central station on a bad snow storm that disrupted train traffic and caused quite a few cancellations: http://trips.rool.no/oslo_s_i_sno
Anyways - just wanted to share the main link to his railfanning page, in case anyone should be interested.
Enjoy, Stein