Supplement to CLASSIC TRAINS Magazine 618104 Great Train Stations
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Great Train Stations Supplement to CLASSIC TRAINS magazine 618104 Great train stations MERICA’S great railroad passenger terminals were special in several ways. The grandest A examples combined big-time railroad- ing and high-style architecture. The railroads that built the stations and the communities in which they were located saw them as oppor- tunities to make a good impression. As portals to the outside world, stations were scenes of elaborate civic welcomes and countless pri- vate farewells. The 14 stations pictured in these pages dis- play the many aspects of depot life during the middle decades of the 20th century—the “golden years of railroading.” In each issue of CLASSIC TRAINS magazine, a page is devoted to a distinctive station, big or small, usually a terminal. Most have been demolished, or no longer host passengers, but all felt the pulse of a nation and its trains. © Kalmbach Publishing Co., P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187. Any publication, reproduction, or use without express permission in writ- ing of any text, illustration, or photographic content in any manner is prohibited. Published as a supplement to CLASSIC TRAINS magazine. On the cover: Grand Central Station, Chicago Two graceful and enduring architectural forms—the arch and its three- dimensional variant, the dome—are seen in this late-1960’s view of Baltimore & Ohio’s Capitol Limited at Grand Central Station in Chicago. Overhead, the 119-by-555-foot trainshed is formed of 15 steel arches, each describing a perfect semi-circle. At track level, E8 1447 wears B&O’s herald, with its likeness of the U.S. Capitol dome. Grand Central was filled with architectural riches, but it came down anyway, in 1970. R ANNY R OUTT, WASHINGTON E VENING S TAR Washington Union Station When Washington Union Station opened in 1907, its immense concourse was said to be the largest room in the world. Measuring 130 feet wide by 760 feet long, the space was designed to accom- modate the crowds that thronged to the capital for presidential inaugurations—25,000 at once, if necessary. It’s doubtful that WUS’s blue-ribbon panel of designers foresaw a day like Saturday, December 23, 1944, when conservative estimates counted 100,000 in the station. Police were called when trains began leaving with passengers hanging from the steps. By 4:30 p.m. the place was packed, and passengers were scaling the high fence between the concourse and tracks. Several railroads stopped selling tickets, and finally the station was closed until order could be restored. Already burdened by wartime traffic, Union Station was swamped by the holiday rush. A SSOCIATION OF A MERICAN R AILROADS GREAT TRAIN STATIONS 3 A LBERT FARROW King Street and Union Stations, Seattle Behind Northern Pacific 4-8-4 2603, train 408 trails back toward Union Station and the Seattle skyline on a fine day in August 1949. But the Portland-bound train is not departing the Beaux Arts edifice, built for Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road in 1911. Train 408 is in fact leaving tall-towered King Street Station, put up in 1906 for NP and Great Northern. Good neighbors for 90 years—NP, GN, and UP cooperated on the Portland service—both King Street and Union are still with us. New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal New Orleans railroad employees and patrons enjoyed what in 1954 was a rare pleasure: a brand-new passenger depot. Decades after the luster had worn off union stations in other cities, New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal arose to replace five depots and eliminate 144 grade crossings, bringing the 44 daily trains of eight railroads into a single 12-track facility. Though still in use by Amtrak, NOUPT— with its clean lines, imported marble, and sturdy telephones—would see fewer and fewer people in the coming years. J AMES G. LA VAKE 4 classictrainsmag.com R ICHARD S TEINHEIMER Pacific Electric terminal, Los Angeles Hub of the vast Pacific Electric system was the terminal at 6th and Main streets in downtown Los Angeles. A nine-story office building—largest in L.A. when it was built in 1905—housed the PE head- quarters; behind it, the Big Red Cars shuttled in and out of its elevated tracks to the likes of Long Beach, San Bernardino, and Pasadena. In this March 1953 view, PE is riding a long decline; 8 years later, the last cars would run, and the Main Street terminal would fall silent. GREAT TRAIN STATIONS 5 Tampa Union Station We’re on Florida’s west coast, high atop a gas-company storage tank, looking down on Tampa Union Station in the 1930’s. Although the compact termi- nal’s five stub-end tracks are quiet, Atlantic Coast Line trains occupy the two through tracks on its west side, while to the east, Seaboard Air Line 0-6-0 1123 jockeys four freight cars. Built in 1912, the station fell on hard times in the 1970’s but has since been restored by a local preservation group. TAMPA C HAMBER OF C OMMERCE Englewood Union Station Chicago’s plethora of railroad terminals tended to disperse passenger trains, not gather them. A unique point of convergence for great trains of the East and West was Englewood Union Station on the city’s south side. At right, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Broadway Limited and New York Central’s 20th Century begin their fabled side-by-side dash toward Indiana on June 2, 1946. Snow-dusted December 26, 1947 (lower right), finds a Rock Island com- muter train and the La Salle Street Station- bound Golden State just north of the PRR dia- monds. Representing Englewood’s fourth road are two Alco PA’s on the Nickel Plate Limited, also bound for La Salle Street, in July ’48. B OB B ORCHERDING 8 classictrainsmag.com E. A. BEHR R OBERT M ILNER GREAT TRAIN STATIONS 9 T HOMAS J. MILLS New Haven station, Provincetown, Mass. Way out on the tip of Cape Cod, at Provincetown, Mass., we’re looking down on an extremity of the New Haven Railroad. NH dropped regular passenger service here in 1938, but was ordered by the state to run a single daily- except-Sunday round trip from Boston for the summer 1940 season. Sunday extras also operated that year, and this photo from atop the Pilgrim Memorial Monument shows a white-flagged Pacific ready to depart with a five-car train. The Cape Cod line was abandoned in 1960; by then an old caboose had replaced the New Haven’s buildings at Provincetown. 10 classictrainsmag.com R OCK I SLAND Rock Island station, Des Moines Certain public spaces—classroom, church, ballpark, all-night diner, to name a few—have special standing in America. Surely the railroad station is among them, and surely the Rock Island’s Des Moines (Iowa) depot, seen here in 1942, is a superb example of the breed. Beneath its arched ceiling, steam radiators hissed, the soda fountain/newsstand sold milk shakes for 15 cents (and magazines for a dime), loved ones embraced at train time, and solitary travelers whiled away the hours on the high-backed wooden benches. GREAT TRAIN STATIONS 11 S OUTHERN PACIFIC Southern Pacific terminal, San Francisco Savannah Union Station Two Southern Pacific hallmarks stand among the More than other regions, the South has suffered umbrella sheds at the road’s station at Third and the loss of its great passenger terminals. An early Townsend Streets, San Francisco. Just beyond the casualty was Savannah (Ga.) Union Station, used stream of passengers it brought up from the likes by the Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line, and of Millbrae, Burlingame, and Redwood City is a Southern (Central of Georgia and Savannah & commute train (SP eschewed the “r” for its San Atlanta had their own depots, located just to the Jose suburban service) headed by a handsome north). Union’s distinctive feature was its waiting 4-8-2. A few tracks over, the Morning Daylight room, whose octagonal shape united the building’s gets set for the run down the coast to Los Broad Street facade with its eight-track trainshed, Angeles. Built in 1914 a mile from downtown as a which lay at 45 degrees to each other. Built in temporary depot for the Panama-Pacific 1902, Union was replaced in 1962 by a joint ACL- Exposition, Third and Townsend hung on long after SAL depot west of town still used by Amtrak. CofG’s plans for a more centrally located station were nearby shops are a landmark, but Union is gone. dropped. The mission-style classic came down in 1976, replaced by new quarters a block to the south. 12 classictrainsmag.com J AMES G. LA VAKE Milwaukee Road station, Butte, Mont. Headed by a “Little Joe” electric, Milwaukee Road’s westbound Olympian Hiawatha stands at the company’s station in Butte, Mont. When the Milwaukee’s Pacific Extension reached the copper- mining town in 1908, it used the depot of local road Butte, Anaconda & Pacific. In 1917, shortly after electrifying across western Montana, the big road put up its own station, a handsome brick structure with tile roof, five-story clock tower, and a stub-end track layout that hosted BA&P trains as well. The Milwaukee replaced this classic with a new station on the main line in 1956, but this one, like Butte’s Northern Pacific-Union Pacific depot, survives in private ownership. R ICHARD S TEINHEIMER GREAT TRAIN STATIONS 13 J OHN C. STELLWAGEN Pennsylvania Station, New York This might be almost any early 20th-century public building in its prime.