For a century and for millions of people.

They were the gateway to the world, or at least in America.

They came by many formal titles, but everyone understood what they were.

The train station.

They came in all sizes for breathtaking works of grand architecture, employing hundreds of people to the most plain and humble frame building with 1 or 2 people doing multiple jobs.

They were everywhere.

There was a railroad.

At one time, Chicago had six major terminal stations serving two dozen railroad lines radiating to all points of the compass.

Whether in bustling cities, high in the mountains, or in the proverbial middle of nowhere, each was an essential hub of transportation, communication, and commerce.

Over the last two centuries, we built well over 100,000 of them throughout America, and we took them for granted.

Today, perhaps a thousand survive, still in use as transportation hubs or repurposed as everything from museums and restaurants to welcome centers and art schools.

Their architecture represents some of the best America had to offer.

As well as some of the holiest and most functional buildings ever built.

Train stations were the sites of every facet of American history from 1830.

Political movements.

Social change.

Boom and bust, and the lived lives of hundreds of millions of travelers.

Park.

Public square.

Front porch.

Connection to the outside world and record of North American progress in history.

Train stations offer insights available nowhere else.

Join us as we survey the remarkable story of these one of a kind buildings that meant so much to so many people in so many ways.

For such a long time.

You.

The railroad station was once an institution in American life, in small towns and big city alike.

In some places that still true.

Sometimes they were little more than chanties.

Usually they were of wood frame construction, and in bigger towns of masonry.

In pre automotive America, any place that was any place had a railroad and a hometown depot.

As Americans have begun to reconnect with their past.

They've often focused on these structures as touchstones and with good reason.

The depot amounted to a kind of diplomatic recognition, a legitimacy conferred by an outside entity.

The railroad that the town had a rightful role in the affairs of the nation.

As such, it was often more emblematic of civic self-esteem than City Hall itself, something that was true in small towns and big cities alike.

But there was something else about the hometown station that played out on a visceral and very personal level.

It was a point of departure and a place to return to.

It was the focus of juvenile wanderlust and the Portal to Adventure.

It was a place that would always be a part of you, no matter where you went or how long you were away, and whether you ever returned at all.

It was the place a farm kid could touch, the industrial age, the place to see and be seen.

The place to keep tabs on all the latest news, and the place from which the express wagon delivered the wonders of the Sears catalog.

And it was the place to be when the circus came to town.

It was often the only thing in a small town that even approximated the definition of urban.

People went to the Hometown Depot for all kinds of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with catching a train.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, the starting and rivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.

They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution regulates a whole country.

Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented?

Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage office?

There's something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place to do things.

Railroad fashion is now the byword.

If the small town depot bespoke the railroad industries reach into every little hamlet.

The big city station spoke of their power, their wealth and even their sense of civic responsibility.

Let's visit a few of them.

And in order to set the proper mood.

Few buildings are vast enough to hold the sound of time.

And there was a superb fitness in the fact that the one which held it better than all others should be a railroad station.

The big stations are often described as monuments, and there's a reason that word keeps cropping up.

Many of the great railroad station were products of what architectural historian Carol LV Meeks, as uncharitable, termed an age of megalomania.

A good case can be made, though, that the stations were fitting expressions of their times.

So let's try to put the stations in context a bit.

In the half century before the great stations were built, railroads had settled.

The continent had made land transportation faster than a horse for the first time in history, and had transformed the U.S. into an economic powerhouse, second only to Great Britain.

If railroads thought big, so did the country they served.

It should also be noted that the passenger rail travel experienced exponential growth in the last quarter of the 19th century, a trend the railroads expect to to continue.

They built big because they were building for the future.

Consider that New York's Grand Central was originally built in 1871 and enlarged twice in the succeeding 27 years, only to be completely replaced by the present terminal in 1913.

But the biggest stations weren't just an expression of architectural engineering, they were also expressions of social engineering.

Two.

It's impossible to talk about our grander stations without a sense of what America was like around the turn of the last century.

City beautiful architects embraced classical forms for two principal reasons.

First, almost all Americans, including the new arrivals, could point to classical influences in their own past.

Second, and perhaps most important, was the impact of the a cul de beaux art in Paris with the Columbian Exposition.

City beautiful burst upon the American consciousness.

That's the movement that gave us our railroad monuments.

Let's talk now about the monuments we have destroyed and the historic preservation movement.

If you had to pick an event that touched off this new consciousness, you might well point to the destruction in the 1960s of New York's Pennsylvania Station.

It was the biggest railroad station ever built anywhere, a place of stunning grandeur and the crowning achievement of one of America's greatest architects.

How did it get from this to this?

The 1950s and 60s were not good years for the American railroad industry, hamstrung by outdated regulation and hidebound management.

They watched their share of the nation's freight and passenger business erode, even as their competitors enjoyed the benefits of public subsidy.

Perhaps most galling of all, from the railroads point of view, the property taxes on their privately owned infrastructure were actually helping to pay for improved highways and airports.

Thus did the Pennsylvania Railroad, still the biggest transportation company in the country, decide in the late 50s that it could no longer justify the taxes and upkeep on its crown jewel?

New York's Penn Station, covering nine acres in midtown Manhattan, some of the most expensive real estate on Earth.

It was a practical waste of resources to an owner of declining fortunes.

It hadn't always been so.

While it's unlikely that any of the great stations ever earned their keep, from a purely financial standpoint, there was a time when the industry was willing to shoulder the costs.

In 1969, Penn Central announced its intention to build a 55 story building above Grand Central, completely destroying the waiting room and encroaching on the magnificent Grand Concourse.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission blocked the plan, and the constitutionality of the city's preservation statute was decided by the US Supreme Court in 1978.

Penn Central claimed that the commission had hampered its right to derive income from Grand Central, thus violating the Fifth Amendment provision that private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation.

it was a grand idea to save the trolley.

Still mourn the loss of, Penn Station.

And, in fact, what is happening there is as a result of the efforts of, former Senator Pat Moynihan, now deceased, is, that, the the same architect, did, the building right across the street, a full block just as, Penn Station was a full block.

Well, Mayor Koch could not have been more right.

this is just a no brainer.

Saving the station.

You know, these buildings, when they were built, they were intended to make us more noble.

I mean, that was a key part of the whole Beaux Arts city.

Beautiful ethic in many ways.

Grand Central Terminal was the third try for a train station at that site.

The first depot, for the following.

The Civil War was impressive.

New York was still finding its strength, still growing.

and filling out the second Grand Central Station was, kind of half hearted attempt to build a grand, permanent structure that was only up for a few years, constantly under renovation.

Ten years in the making, but well worth the wait.

February 1st, 1913 began a new chapter in American passenger railroading.

The Washington Post described the now new Grand Central Terminal this way.

The magnitude of the undertaking, especially the cost and the wonders of architecture and luxurious embellishment, will of themselves identify this building and its approaches as one of the phenomenal modern structures of the world.

Well, when you stand in the main concourse of the terminal and you look up at a, you know, a vaulted ceiling 150ft above your head, makes me think of a cathedral.

The magic of leaving Grand Central as well.

First of all, when you entered Grand Central, you knew you were in a palace.

It was not a railroad station.

It was just absolutely.

It is the most magnificent building I've ever seen, with 750,000 people passing through the terminal every day, and with roughly 650 weekday train arrivals and departures on 44 platforms, the question arises, how does the terminal function so well?

After a century of operation?

Well, you know, the interesting thing about the plan for ramps in the station instead of stairs is that it was controversial.

You know, there was a team of architects that worked on the building and, not all of them were on the same page with regard to, the ramps versus stairs.

And in the end, the ramps won out and, it is really one of Grand Central's distinguishing features.

Well, to my mind, one of the things that Grand Central Terminal symbolizes is the wonder of travel.

I mean, imagine coming here to catch a train, a long distance train, maybe even something as exclusive as the 20th Century limited with the carpet rolled out, the red carpet for passengers to walk the length of to board the train.

You know, New York is the most diverse city in the country.

you know, ethnically, religiously, you know, even architecturally in almost any way you can name New York has it all.

And as a result, there are probably relatively few things around which the entire city can rally and say, this belongs to us.

but Grand Central is is one of them.

Daniel Burnham's Washington Union Station of 1908 was one of the first of the major passenger terminals to undergo a renovation for historic re-use.

And like many stations since then, the first reuse was not successful.

In Washington's case, it was something called the National Visitor Center, which was conceived in the 1960s when hardly anyone wanted buildings like this.

Not only did everyone think it had outlived its purpose as a railroad station, but the ornamentation of Beaux art was downright embarrassing in the post-modern era.

But surprise, more passengers now take the train between New York and Washington, then fly DC built the Metro.

Virginia and Maryland both started commuter rail service.

And the folks who work in the nearby Capitol Hill office buildings now have a place to shop and eat lunch.

Union station is thriving once again.

The highlight of my grade school year was our annual trip by train from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C.. Washington Union Station was a transportation cathedral complete with vaulted ceilings, beautiful statuary, and huge rounded windows.

I couldn't help but let out a shout just to hear my voice echo across the main waiting room.

Much to my teacher's chagrin, it would have been beyond my wildest dreams to know that someday I'd not only be at the throttle of such trains as the Silver Meteor and Silver Star arriving and departing its complex trackage.

But before I retired, I'd occupy an office in the fourth floor executive suite, serving as Amtrak's company photographer during Amtrak's 40th anniversary celebration.

When I first came to work for Amtrak in 1986, the terminal building was anything but glorious.

With its boarded up entrances, travelers plied along wooden construction walkways illuminated by hanging light bulbs to reach a makeshift waiting room, lacking in any semblance of its original grandeur.

As the gateway to our nation's capital, however, by 1988, a grand reopening was held after Union Station had been restored to its original elegance by a developer who sought to transform it into a commercial complex featuring small shops, a food court.

It was hoped that it would serve as the centerpiece for a revitalized Capitol Hill community, with the resurgent popularity of American passenger rail service.

It's inevitable that Washington Union Station will remain a work in progress in order to meet those needs.

I hope that whatever modern technology is added to accommodate them, the station's original beauty and character will be reserved so that it indeed will remain the gateway to our nation's capital.

Philadelphia's 30th Street station is similar.

It has always had local and long distance trains, but now it also has restaurants and retail.

It has also become the catalyst for urban redevelopment.

When I think of railroad stations, I think of romance.

How many Hollywood movies depict the stirring scenes of tender reunions and departures of long distance lovers?

Think of the moment in Downton Abbey when Lady Mary says goodbye to Matthew Crawley amidst the smoke of a steam engine in a misty railway station.

The air is thick with the unspoken love they feel for each other as she sends him off to war, maybe never to see him again.

How many couples experienced that romance in a train station?

I know that I personally did.

When I finally met my husband to be at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.

After a long, lonely year of letter writing.

The place is so beautiful it makes my heart soar just thinking about it.

Railroad stations are places of profound memory and emotion.

The grand, older stations have the power to make our spirits soar.

Several years ago, my husband Peter and I caught a train at Grand Central in New York.

Amidst a swirl of commuters from the suburbs stood a bride resplendent in a sparkling wedding gown.

She looked perfectly in harmony with the beauty of her surroundings.

Indeed, railroad stations and romance go hand in hand.

Welcome to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, now officially named the William H. Gray III 30th Street station in honor of the late Congressman.

This beautiful train station is situated along the west bank of the school River, less than a mile from Center City Philadelphia, where I was born.

Growing up in the region, 30th Street became a very familiar and special place for me over the years.

Behind me is the east portico facing Center City.

Like its west side counterpart, the portico features ten massive Corinthian columns resembling a Greek temple not dedicated to the gods of ancient Greece, but to the trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad, its sole tenant until the railroad's unfortunate demise.

Turning the corner to the south facade, we see a fortress facing the busy Market Street thoroughfare and the former main post office facility.

A common pairing with the great train stations, the west portico mirrors the east, with new developments springing up nearby and new view playing opportunities.

The north side is all business, however, with less focus on architecture and more on the function of the station, which is trains.

Highly visible above the street are the suburban commuter trains, first for the Pennsylvania and now for Septa, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.

Now let's take a look inside.

My first memory of the interior occurred when I was nine.

My father brought me here to see the brand new Eero train in early 1956, when the flashy concept train was introduced to the public.

Dad worked in the textile industry, and his employer made the upholstery for the seats, as I recall.

I was overwhelmed by the station's interior and got dizzy when I looked up at the ceiling.

I am still overwhelmed every time I enter the Great Hall, especially riding the escalator up from the train platforms beneath the hall.

As the enormity of the interior is slowly revealed, 30th Street Station has aged very well as a functioning train station.

Amtrak now owns the station.

It's third busiest at the heart of the Northeast Corridor.

Notice how much daylight enters the Great Hall through the large cathedral style windows.

Art Deco touches are everywhere.

Just look at these chandeliers and other light fixtures, and the Pennsylvania Railroad's PRR Keystone logo can still be found prominently displayed inside the Great Hall is the Angel of the resurrection statue by Walker Hancock, honoring the 1307 fallen Pennsylvania Railroad employees of World War Two.

Also of interest is the 1895 relief panel by Austrian American sculptor Karl Bitar.

Titled Spirit of Transportation, it dimensionally depicts the evolution of human transport.

The Great Hall appears alive with the sound and rumble of trains coming and going beneath the floor.

Through the five pairs of stairs and escalators.

30th Street station in 1933 and its underground center city appendage suburban station in 1930, gradually replaced the 1881 Broad Street station.

Due to its inefficiencies and the hundreds of daily steam locomotives with their toxic smoke, these replacement stations were made possible by the Pennsylvania Railroad's aggressive electrification of its suburban and intercity routes.

Little remains of Broad Street station, just this sign marking its location across from iconic City Hall and the Spirit of Transportation panel, now at 30th Street.

I was in my teens before I ever rode a train out of 30th Street station, pulled by the famous Penguin electric locomotive.

Until then, I watched them go by from a vacant lot in Southwest Philadelphia.

Now I pass through 30th Street station countless times a year on Amtrak and Septa when visiting my family.

When I see the station, I know I'm home.

Kansas City Union Station is a little different.

It did stop being a railroad station, and in fact it was nearly demolished until area voters raised $260 million for its restoration.

And they did so for a very small town reason.

Union station was always the spiritual heart of Kansas City, just like many small town stations were.

It was filled with large stores and several restaurants.

So people went there all the time on missions that had nothing to do with catching a train.

But it was also the place where Kansas City and spontaneously converged to celebrate the end of World War Two and a ring in the New year.

The local version of Times Square.

More recently, some 800,000 area residents celebrated the Kansas City Royals 2015 World Series victory there since Penn Station's destruction.

Kansas City now has the second biggest station in the country, but it's not primarily a station.

It still has six trains a day, and it's now a transit hub.

Two.

It also has a science museum and restaurants.

But it was the taxpayers recognition of the station's importance in the life of the city that saved it.

It was the kind of rain any midwesterner knows and features.

Talks had fallen in the Kansas River Valley for most of May 1903.

Some places got an average year's rainfall in just ten days.

When the water reached Kansas City and the confluence with the Missouri River.

It had no place else to go.

The deluge backed up, inundating the city's West Bottoms, a basin surrounded by steep bluffs.

The river controls everything in Kansas City.

So in 1903, there was a significant flood that destroyed the historic Union Depot that was in down at the River market area.

So in 1906, the railroads came together in a union naming Union Station, and then decided where it should be located.

And they decided that it would be on the edge of Kansas City.

So the great city of Kansas City would be behind this magnet rail station.

So always it would sit on the front of Kansas City.

So in 1910, the 12 railroad companies came together to build this magnificent station.

It was the largest construction project in the Midwest at the time, and it was the third largest train station in the United States.

It took nearly five years, almost $6 million, but more importantly, nearly $50 million of infrastructure to get the trains to this location.

We know when you consider Union Station, its bowser, and it was a combination as we changed from the romantic times of construction to this magnificent monument.

Well, I think that, they understood that with Union Station being right in the center of the United States, that many people were going to come through here and they were going to change trains and so on.

And so at that time, you also had Fred Harvey that was coming into existence with the Harvey House and the Harvey Girls and so on.

And I think they wanted to make this a first class Union station so that all of the passengers could come here and see this beautiful building.

When you consider Kansas City and 150,000 people that lived in our community, it was a bold statement to create this magnificent monument that has over 850,000ft and 17 acres and operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Not only its agricultural center, but this was the second busiest, even today, freight transportation center in the United States, and has put Kansas City on the map.

It is the second largest station in existence today, second only to Grand Central and New York, and so many people come back here and see this.

Yeah, I think, 1917, I think there were actually more trains that went through here than any other time in history.

And I was in World War one.

And then in 1945, when World War Two was ending, that there were also a record number of, passengers that went through here, as they would come here and get off one train and go somewhere else.

So in World War two, in the 1940s, we peaked at transportation of well over 700,000 passengers through this station.

Anyone from Walt Disney to Walter Cronkite, to thousands and thousands and thousands of troops that left the Midwest to save our country in World War Two.

And so my father was a railroad workers.

we traveled out of here all over the country.

But even at that time, passenger service was beginning to decline at that point in time, because of the highway systems and the airlines.

So when the station was in terrible decline and it was asked to be torn down, the community gave a rally cry to say, no, this is our home.

This is in the center of our city.

There were significant business leaders and people that believe in the arts and so on that wanted to bring this beautiful building back.

To really represent the city of Kansas City.

And so anyway, in 1996, they passed a bi state tax, which was for four counties in Missouri and one in Kansas.

So this station was completely refurbished and became absolutely beautiful and became literally the icon of Kansas City.

My mother died when I was six years old, and my grandmother raised my brother and me, and my dad was a werewolf conductor, on the ad on the line all the time.

So she would come down here and take us on many trips.

So all those memories came back remembering that.

And so I wanted to be absolutely, totally dedicated to trying to help this station become more and more successful in the future.

Like most people in Kansas City.

I really, really like Union Station.

I don't know if beloved is too strong a word, but really, really like certainly isn't.

It is absolutely the most revered building, I should say, in Kansas City, no doubt.

And amazing that we got it restored.

It would have been a travesty against all humankind if it had not been restored.

279 rail miles east from Kansas City is another wonderful station located in Saint Louis, Missouri called Saint Louis Union Station.

This is one of the most ornate in America.

Linda Fike shares her memories.

I've always had a love of train stations, like most, who love either stations or the trains themselves.

My connection first began for I experience as a child.

In my case, it was the beautiful Art Deco station in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But my real passion for stations came when I heard the story of my dad's journey to Oklahoma in 1910.

He was a mere child from a small rural town south of Saint Louis, and he was taken to the Saint Louis station to board a train on the Frisco, I believe.

Leaving from the massive, relatively New York City train station, he would journey to the home of an ad who lived near Howard, Oklahoma.

The drama was that he was only seven years old, and he was on that train by himself.

His father had died unexpectedly, and there were five children left behind.

His mother arranged for extended family to help with the care of the children.

After hearing that story, I always wanted to see the station in Saint Louis, and I always assumed it was big and wondered how it had appeared and felt to that little seven year old boy who didn't know when, if ever, he'd see his family again.

Several years ago, I attended a rail history conference at the Saint Louis Union Station.

I visited many big city stations, once restored for many different purposes and in many different ways.

But here I was in for a real surprise.

To give you some background.

The station was opened on September 1st, 1894, by the Terminal Railroad Association of Saint Louis.

Given Saint Louis the central location in the United States and the completion of the Eads Bridge 20 years before, in 1874 over the formidable Mississippi River, Saint Louis was destined to receive a large number of rail passengers.

Such a large and complex station was more than warranted when architect Theodore Link planned the station.

He divided the space into three main areas a head house, a midway, and a spectacular 11.5 acre train shed, which was designed by civil engineer George Pegram.

The head house originally consisted of a hotel, a restaurant, passenger waiting rooms, and railroad ticketing offices.

It featured a gold leaf grand hall with a 65ft barrel vaulted ceiling featuring Romanesque arches and stained glass windows.

Out front.

An imposing clock tower rose to the height of 230ft, dominating the local area.

The Grand Hall measures 75 by 125ft, and it alone cost $6.5 million in the late 1890s.

Money.

Saint Louis is reputation as the gateway to the West was well-established by this time, and its train station needed to match that reputation.

Many considered the Grand Hall to be one of the most beautiful public lobbies in the country, and it was certainly one of the largest today.

In addition to functioning as a massive lobby for the hotel and conference center.

The Grand Hall is also a dramatic site for the hotel bar, a large and lovely location for guests and locals to gather with friends to emphasize the drama of the architecture.

An evening hourly light show illuminates the ceiling vaults with varieties of colors and projections of patterns and clouds between light, shows deep color highlights the dramatic hall behind the Grand Hall, the station's head house and midway are constructed of Indiana limestone.

The vast train shed, once covering 32 tracks, stood out as the largest roof span in the world at that time.

The train shed is now a large recreational area utilized by hotel guests, conference attendees, and members of the Saint Louis community.

When the Saint Louis station opened, it was the world's biggest and busiest railroad station.

Traffic peaked in the 1940s at 100,000 passengers a day, but by the 1960s and 70s, passenger train travel had dwindled to a trickle.

The last Amtrak train left the Saint Louis Union Station in 1978, moving its facilities to a smaller building directly behind the larger and older station.

It has recently been replaced by a larger, more dramatic and modernistic intercity train station that serves Amtrak's national and regional routes and Greyhound busses.

Rounding out its role in serving the greater Saint Louis community, the local Metrolink light rail runs its red and blue lines beneath Union Station.

Train.

When I first saw the Saint Louis station, it was in the 1970s and it hadn't been restored yet.

Then I got to see it again when it was in its full glory of restoration, even though it was no longer serving the current passenger trains in the Amtrak.

But now I've seen the station in the back going into the larger, newer station that's serving them now.

And it's a beautiful, beautiful station.

Finally, two last examples of a kind of historic reuse.

Denver Union Station is a thriving hub, but not quite in the way its designers had in mind.

Amtrak has only two trains a day here, but Denver has made a significant commitment to urbanism and mass transit in the last 20 years.

So there are dozens of commuter trains a day and constant light rail trains.

It's the center of LoDo, lower downtown, the most thriving district in Denver.

But the Denver Union Station was built in 1881.

The original central portion was destroyed by fire in 1894.

By 1912, the increased population and travelers outgrew the 1894 structure and rail yards.

Denver needed a bigger station with a larger waiting room.

Several plans for a larger depot were offered for consideration, including relocating and building, but Coors prohibited such relocations.

The least expensive proposal was to work with the original building at its current location.

At the time it was built, Union Station was the largest building west of Chicago during the first half of the 20th century.

It was the gateway to Denver and over 60 daily arriving and departing trains.

From 1881 into 1937.

The station accommodated both standard gauge and narrow gauge trains for a few months in 1936 37.

It was possible to see one of the new Art Deco stream liners sharing a platform across from an 1880 era narrow gauge steam train about to depart for SouthPark, Breckenridge and Glenville.

At that time, the United States was one of the world leaders in high speed trains, and 1930s 100mph over a long distance was an advanced engineering accomplishment.

Two of the fastest Burlington's Denver's ever university city of Denver, rivaled each other overnight.

Every night, over a thousand miles in enamored Chicago, his station was served by six major railroads the Burlington, the Colorado Southern League, Grand Rock Island, Santa Fe, and University.

Its trains included the California Zephyr, Denver Zephyr, Texas Zephyr, prospector, Yampa Valley male, Rio Grande Zephyr, Colorado Eagle, Rocky Mountain Rocket, City of Denver, City of Saint Louis, and many other lesser trains.

My own first personal experience with Union Station was in 1946, when my parents took their five year old on his first train ride all the way to Colorado Springs, including breakfast in the dining car.

Three years later, we traveled to school on the California Zephyr.

Less than 90 days after starting our little trip.

But since then, I visited many, many times.

It had to be a trip once the trains during the 1950s and 1960s.

Have a drink in the Colorful Caboose cocktail lounge.

Or just to see can about railroad information.

Since service to Denver International Airport started in 2015 and now sees over 100 trains each 24 hours and is once again a major entry into the city.

In addition, there are trains, the three other commuter rail lines Amtrak's California Zephyr.

And many local, regional and interstate busses.

Since the station's revival, there are now restaurants bars attracting visitors and residents from downtown Denver.

A boutique hotel, The Crawford, occupies a former upstairs office space.

The hotel idea for the station had an added economic advantage a lodging tax during the adaptive reuse design phase.

It was Dana Crawford, a Denver preservationist, who envisioned a hotel within the station and sold others on her big idea.

Tribal architects estimated that with the insertion of the mezzanine level and the additional dormers, they could create the number of rooms needed to make the hotel financially viable for its owner, Sage Hospitality.

The Crawford Hotel hosts 70,000 overnight guest each year, making it a great success.

One final thought.

The last occasion steam powered passenger trains departed Union Station in 1956. Who then could have foreseen that in the 21st century?

He was a big boy in 1844.

We occasionally occupy a stretch.

The 10th anniversary of its grand reopening is being planned for 2024, including renovation to the Crawford Hotel and the Great Hall.

It is believed that the station will remain the centerpiece of downtown Denver for the next hundred years.

Los Angeles Union Station is similar.

There are six daily long distance trains here, but California has made a bigger commitment to regional rail than any state in the country, with numerous trains up and down the coast every day.

In addition, local taxpayers have funded an extensive commuter train network, a subway, and a light rail line, all of which call Union Station home.

In the late 1970s, when I was a teenager growing up in the Los Angeles area, I bicycled from my home in Downey one afternoon to visit my Angeles Union Passenger Terminal.

The impressive waiting room was mostly empty and very little train activity was going on.

I roamed the empty halls and snuck trackside, hoping for a glimpse of a moving train.

I was rewarded by the sight of a single Amtrak FP 40, pulling several and fleet coaches one of six roundtrip San Diegans scheduled for the day that afternoon.

It was difficult to imagine I was standing in the last of America's great train stations, open to service on the eve of World War two.

This was a bustling terminal that once hosted a dazzling array of trains, including the Santa Fe's Chief and Super chief and San Diego's Southern Pacific Coast Daylight and Sunset Limited, and Union Pacific's Challenger and City of Los Angeles.

A little known fact is that when an open Los Angeles Union Station also became the largest railroad passenger terminal in the western U.S..

Designed by the father and son architect team of John and Donald Parkinson, the stunning facility was completed in 1939 for a reported $11 million, a sum that would represent hundreds of millions of dollars today.

Its groundbreaking design blended Spanish Colonial, Mission Revival and Art Deco architecture into something today commonly referred to as Mission Moderne.

Not surprisingly, with Hollywood close by, the new train station debuted with a lavish, star studded three day celebration attended by one half million people.

The festivities even included a pageant of historic and modern trains.

Prior to 1939, Los Angeles residents were served by separate downtown train stations, with the biggest of these, Central Station, serving the Southern Pacific and later also Union Pacific railroads.

Trains of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe called it a once lavish Victorian depot named La Grand, located across the Los Angeles River from downtown city elders as early as the 19 teens had been working to bring the railroads together, but it wasn't until the 1920s that city voters clearly announced they wanted a Union Station built.

More than a decade later.

It was finally completed.

America's first streamlined trains were young when the station debuted in World War II, who saw up to 100 trains daily moving in and out of Los Angeles Union Station.

Postwar train travel saw massive orders for new streamlined locomotives and passenger train sets, and the future looked bright.

But the growth of paved highways, interstate highways, and finally the introduction of jet airplanes was too much.

Traffic dwindled at the station, along with passengers moving through its cavernous spaces.

The low point came in the 1960s and early 1970s, as Amtrak was introduced.

Then in the early 1990s, everything changed.

Commuter rail operator Metrolink introduced dozens of new trains, and the first Los Angeles subway line was completed, linking the station with downtown.

The grand edifice itself was given a massive makeover, along with tracks and platforms.

Today, more trains arrive and depart daily than they did for all but the busiest wartime years.

Los Angeles Union Station has once again become a vibrant part of the City of Angels.

While some major stations have been featured in this program, there are more that certainly rank at the top of the list because of their historical significance and beauty.

Let's explore Cincinnati Union Terminal, an Art Deco jewel.

To understand Cincinnati Union Terminal, we need to turn the clock back to 1920.

Cincinnati's railroads were a real mess, with over 200 passenger trains on Cincinnati, seven railroads arriving and departing from five stations spread around the downtown area.

Prior to the terminal inception, Cincinnati was served by multiple railroad stations, which often made connecting between the different railroads that served Cincinnati.

The Baltimore and Ohio, the Chesapeake in Ohio, Louisville and Nashville, New York, central Pennsylvania, southern Norfolk, and Western make the connections daunting and inconvenient.

Now connecting copper there early and often was a frequent occurrence, since the city served as a major gateway between the northeast, Midwest, and the South.

One could only imagine the maze of trackage and crossings.

The smoke and the noise.

A new Union terminal was needed, and the Cot company was formed, with each railroad owning a one seventh share.

Construction was initiated in 1929, a few weeks before Black Monday, at a new location about two miles west of downtown, large enough to accommodate the two mile footprint of the terminal and its yards.

The bad news?

The selected site was in the Mill Creek Valley bottom lands well within the floodplain of the Ohio River.

The terminal was inaugurated on March 31st, 1933.

Not an auspicious time.

This was the depths of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Nevertheless, within a decade it would have its finest hour.

During the first half of the 1940s, handling the flood tide of traffic resulting from World War Two, CO2 was comprised of two main segments.

In front was the rotunda.

When built, the world's largest half dome, 180ft wide by 106ft high.

A fun fact if you stand at one end of the interior arch and whisper, someone at the other end can clearly understand you.

Stretching behind the rotunda was the concourse.

450ft long, spanning Scotty's 16 tracks.

The structure was unique, reflecting Art Deco throughout.

There was monumental artwork, particularly in the rotunda, in terms of gigantic mosaic murals.

These depicted both Cincinnati's history and display the city's pride in major industries that were prominent in the city at the time of the building's construction.

Curtis architecture was the most popular.

Art Deco was Scott, said to be one of the world's finest examples.

The front exterior was Indiana limestone with Art Deco detailing.

Amenities catered to the travelers every need, such as a central information booth, multiple ticket windows, a newsreel theater for lunch rooms, and a barbershop.

Coty's expansive architecture quickly earned Coty its nickname, the Temple of Transportation.

Many notable trains utilize the facility and early noteworthy example, and I believe, one of the first to actually utilize the station was the CNO George Washington.

This featured upgraded coaches that were termed Imperial Salon cars.

Although nationally famous Pan American and later its hummingbird streamliner arrived and departed from Soutine's platforms, as did the Norfolk and Western's pioneering and Pocahontas and the Southern Royal Palm, which connected the Midwest with Florida.

New York's Central Pennsylvania competed for business in New York City with, respectively, the Ohio State Limited and the Cincinnati Limited.

Sadly, city's traffic declined to near nothing when Amtrak was formed in 1971, and its long concourse was demolished in 1973 to clear space for a Southern Railway intermodal yard.

Suit survived near death for about 20 years until 1990, when Cincinnati's taxpayers funded it as the home of the Cincinnati Museum Center, including a natural history museum, a children's museum, and an Omnimax theater.

And Amtrak's Cardinal still calls it city's one remaining track.

Most model railroaders model memories.

In my case, it was childhood.

Train trips first made arriving relatives, and later trips to venture onto the platforms to steal a photo or two.

There was also a family connection.

My uncle Henry Chapman, assistant civil engineer in charge of cities construction.

The H0 scale model is scratch built from styrene sheet and strips from original architects elevations.

By sheer luck, the model's 1452 windows exactly matched the prototypes count.

There are compromises.

A full 16 track model would require a seven foot deep footprint.

The actual model model only covers eight tracks with no dome and a two foot footprint.

The model house accurately model consists of all seven primary trains, along with several of the secondary trains and locals.

The model and its trains continu 312 miles north from Cincinnati brings us to Chicago Union Station.

For more than a century and a half, Chicago has had the distinction of being a major passenger rail connection.

Point.

Passengers who were traveling east to west or north and south would often pass through Chicago.

I grew up in southwestern Michigan in the 50s and early 60s, and we took the train off and into Chicago, but it was always Central Station on the Illinois Central or LaSalle Street station on the New York Central.

I never got to Union Station until 1971 with the arrival of Amtrak.

And boy, what a revelation.

That was a spectacular space.

And I remember being so impressed with how this station, above all the others, really kind of exemplified the railroad capital.

When it opened in 1925, Chicago Union Station was the grandest terminal in a city known for its train stations.

It replaced an earlier structure, Union Depot, built in 1881.

As originally intended, Union Station would have been located on the city's lakefront, a station larger than any in America.

A massive installation to consolidate nearly all the passenger carriers serving the railroad capital.

Alas, local politics and the monstrous construction cost got in the way, so ultimately Union Station stayed on its original location on the west side of the Chicago River.

As such, it became one of six major terminals, and that meant passengers often had to change trains, which could be an adventure.

Generations of train riders got used to the idea of hopping off one train at Union, then rushing to catch a Parmalee limo for a yellow or checker cab to one of the other stations, often in Chicago's terrible weather, often with little time to spare.

Fortunately, the other stations weren't all that far away.

The closest was Northwestern Station, just two blocks north of Union on Canal Street, a grand structure befitting not only the trains of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, but also the trains it hosted for Union Pacific via their connection in Omaha.

The other four stations were roughly aligned with East west Roosevelt Road, a major artery that cuts across the south edge of downtown Chicago.

First there was gracious old Grand Central, also along the river, a small station whose most important occupant was Baltimore in Ohio.

Its grand arched train shed also hosted the trains of the saline, Pere Marquette, and Chicago Great Western.

Next came LaSalle Street, looking more like an office building than a train station, but LaSalle was home to the mighty New York Central and its famous 20th century limited, as well as the rockets of the not so mighty Rock Island.

Next in line came Dearborn Station, a comparatively ramshackle building that did serve the glamorous Santa Fe Railway and its legendary super chief.

Along with the lesser trains of Grand Trunk, Western Erie, Wabash and Chicago and eastern Illinois.

Finally, along the lakefront was Central Station headquarters of the Illinois Central, plus a few trains of the Michigan Central and Big Four.

Its biggest claim to fame was Ike's posh Panama Limited, the nightly all Pullman train to New Orleans.

That's a lot of stations, even for Chicago.

But even if it only served four railroads, Union Station was the most impressive of the lot.

Built on a monumental scale in the popular Beaux-Arts tradition and clad in Bedford, Indiana, limestone Union Station featured a majestic waiting room with an arched skylight ceiling 115ft above the floor.

The fact that Union Station today serves 130,000 passengers each day, including both Amtrak intercity passengers and metro commuters, shows just how brilliant those designers of 1925 really were.

After millions of dollars of improvements over the past 30 years, including 2018 renovation of the Great Hall, Chicago Union Station is poised to make more history.

If you travel west from Chicago on Amtrak's Empire Builder, the mountain scenery would keep your nose pressed against the window in the lounge car, taking in America's Great Western panorama.

The Empire Builder serves two major stations on the West Coast.

One is Portland, Oregon, and the other Seattle, Washington.

Let's take a brief look at each.

Construction of Portland Union Station in Oregon.

Begin in 1890 at a cost of $300,000, and opened on February 14th, 1896.

The signature piece of the structure is the 150ft tall Romanesque Revival clock tower.

The neon signs were added to the tower in 1948.

In the years prior to Amtrak assuming passenger operations in 1971, Union Pacific City of Portland provided service to Portland from Chicago through Utah.

The station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Today, the station hosts Amtrak's Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, and Cascade trains, and is a major transportation hub.

In the late summer of 1970, I took the trip of a lifetime.

It started with riding the Super Chief to Chicago.

There I caught the Empire builder for Seattle.

The Empire Builder was a wonderful train.

Well-run, beautifully maintained.

It featured two styles of dome cars, short dome coaches, and a full length dome for the use of sleeping car passengers.

The dining car had very tasty selections, served at an elegant setting.

The scenery was quite varied, from the plains of North Dakota and eastern Montana to the mountains of Glacier National Park.

After spending two nights on this marvelous train, I arrived the third morning at the King Street station in Seattle.

This once elegant station of 1906 presented a stark contrast to the train.

While the train was colorful, sleek, clean, and beautifully maintained, the station was downright shabby, almost derelict.

By 1970, the King Street station was not in good shape.

It had been modernized.

The beautiful carved plaster ceiling was covered with a false ceiling of acoustical tiles.

Fluorescent lighting shone on ugly chrome and vinyl chairs that had replaced traditional railroad style wooden benches.

The tour as a floor was cracked and dirty.

However, the exterior of the King Street station looked familiar to me.

Its 242ft tower was very similar to the tower on the Daniels and Fischer's department store in Denver.

My hometown.

Both towers were inspired by the bell tower at the Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy.

So in 2008, the BNSF railway sold the station to the city of Seattle for $10.

Restoration got off to a slow start.

In the end, the project's total cost ballooned from the original $29 million to $56 million, and the restoration took 15 years to complete.

Nevertheless, the results are spectacular.

What made the restored interior so striking was the removal of the acoustic tiles over here.

This revealed the original ornately carved plaster ceiling, which was repaired and restored.

Harsh fluorescent lights were replaced with fixtures more appropriate to the original period of construction.

Marble wall panels that had been missing were replaced.

The beautiful terrazzo floor was repaired and highly polished windows that had been boarded up for years were uncovered to allow natural light to enter the station again.

Today, the station now serves the Amtrak intercity trains.

The Cascade Regional passenger trains and the Sound Transit commuter trains.

Next to the depot is a station that connects to a transit tunnel and the link light rail system.

The first Hill Streetcar runs in front of the station.

King County Metro and the Sound Transit Express busses stop at the station.

In addition, it is served by several inner city bus lines.

These days, the King Street station is both busier and more beautiful than ever.

A recent trip to Seattle rekindled my memory of that first trip over 50 years ago.

I then encountered a shabby station that looked like its future was in doubt.

It's amazing what time, money, and dedication can do to preserve our rail heritage.

Another train that heads west from Chicago is the California Zephyr.

It calls at Omaha, Nebraska, the midpoint on its journey to California.

Years ago, Omaha was served by two passenger stations.

One was the Burlington and now a TV station, and the other was the Union Pacific.

If you were to tell me 30 years ago that Omaha was former Union Station and the Burlington station across the tracks would be thriving centers of Omaha's downtown landscape.

I might not have believed you, but here we are in front of what is now the Durham Museum.

And I couldn't be happier to admit I would have been very wrong.

This beautiful and unique Art Deco station opened on January 15th, 1931.

Let's go inside and I'll show you what made this train station a real showcase for the Union Pacific and for Omaha.

As its name implies, Union Station was a train station that served many railroads coming and going at all times of the day.

The Burlington Railroad had its station just on the other side of the tracks.

The two stations were joined together by an overhead walkway.

Together, dozens of trains headed east and west each day by almost ten different railroads.

Sadly, the last Union Pacific train rolled out of Union Station here just one day after Amtrak took over passenger service in the majority of the United States.

My father Bill credit bill, was there to watch the city of Los Angeles.

Train number 104 rolling east out of the station.

But he was also there at the station for many years after that.

Dad was part of the team that assisted in the donation of the station by the end Pacific to the City of Omaha in 1973.

He then served on the first board of directors of what was then called the Western Heritage Museum.

One of his favorite personal contributions to the museum was his donation of two of his private cars.

One stayed for permit display and the other found a new home in Illinois.

Union station has always been a part of my life.

I remember going down there often as a child, to either watch trains with my father, or to pick up or drop him off as a passenger himself.

I loved how big it was and how beautifully different its architecture was from other buildings I knew of in Omaha.

And I loved that long walkway over to the Burlington station.

Later during college, I chose to do an internship for my degree in geography.

A few years after college, dad moved back to Omaha and was working for the Union Pacific Museum.

They had moved their offices from their headquarters on Dodge Street to the Durham Museum.

I would often go down to visit down again.

It was home.

His office was there until the Union Pacific Museum would move in to bigger and better quarters in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and by then the museum had changed its name from the Western Heritage Museum to the Durham Museum.

Perhaps my single biggest memory of Union Station, however, is my own wedding.

On a snowy night in November of 2014, I was marrying the editor of trains magazine, Jim Wren.

With so much train history between us and with my father's first private train car on permanent display.

There was really only one real choice of where to get married, and that was on the platform of my dad's car.

The Cornhusker Club.

In 2016, the former Union Station building was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Today, the Durham Museum and its former companion station Across the tracks continue to be major hubs of activity for Omaha.

And every time I visit the museum, it's still feels like home.

Another station that was very busy with Union Pacific's Dreamliners is Cheyenne, Wyoming.

An important stop on the transcontinental line.

Think Wyoming.

And you think of the Cowboy State with wide open spaces, constant wind, rodeos.

And the route of the transcontinental railroad.

You mentioned the transcontinental railroad.

And sounds echo of big boys and challenger.

was hauling mile long freight trains over Sherman Hill.

A large shop maintenance facility near the Cheyenne depot kept these massive machines in good order for their trek over the Continental Divide, as well as eastward Union Pacific Northern type engines sped first class passenger trains from the Midwest to the West Coast.

New passenger diesels operated the city trains and others to points east and west in later years.

Gas turbines and Centennial diesels ruled the high iron, taking over where steam locomotives had dominated for so many years.

All of these passed by the Cheyenne Union Pacific Depot, designed in 1885.

The depot is a major western example of Richardson and Romanesque architecture.

It has been called the grandest depot between Omaha, Nebraska and Ogden, Utah.

The building stone came from a quarry near Fort Collins, Colorado, completed in 1887.

The depot was located directly down the street from and facing the Wyoming State Capitol building.

This location represents the importance of the Cheyenne Union Pacific Depot to the city and the state.

In fact, the depot serves as a grand symbol for the city of Cheyenne and is thought of as the crown jewel of downtown.

These days, the building houses the Cheyenne Depot Museum, the Chamber of Commerce, and a brewpub.

Amtrak's San Francisco Zephyr was the last passenger train to make a regular stop here.

In 1979.

From 2001 to 2006, the city of Cheyenne spent $6.5 million for renovations to the depot and the construction of a plaza in front of the building.

It hosts a variety of music and outdoor events that bring the community together.

Although no passenger trains now pass by the railroad depot, it is still a part of the city's civic life.

For folks in the Deep South, the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad operated their Gulf Coast rebel trains to mobile, Alabama.

When passengers got off the train, they were greeted by a beautiful Spanish Mission style station.

I have been a lifelong rail enthusiast, starting at a very young age.

Eventually picking up a camera and embarking on a lifetime of rail photography, both in the Midwest where I grew up and later in the northeast.

Up to contemporary times, when exploring the railroad world and passing through towns, I always searched out railroad stations, whether they be small in size or impressively large urban structures.

But recently, a visit to mobile, Alabama revealed a real gem that thankfully has been restored to its original beauty.

I was so impressed with the structure that I wanted to learn more about it, and here's what I discovered.

This elegant terminal was designed and mission Spanish Revival style for the Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

It was completed in 1907 at a total cost of $575,000.

In 1940, the railroad merged with the Gulf, Mobile and Northern to become the Grand O the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad.

The last German o a passenger trains into the mobile terminal were the Gulf Coast Rebels, which made their last runs in late 1958.

The railroad terminal continued to serve as Chairman O's offices until 1986, when it was abandoned for 15 years of suffered continued neglect.

Amazingly, in the year 2001, a city of mobile and a private company invested more than $18 million to restore this local landmark.

Today, the gym and old building houses the city's multi-modal system and a variety of offices.

Its beauty has been restored, and indeed it once again has become a true gem of the great stations of America.

Few railroad stations in the South were as busy as Jacksonville Terminal.

Why was the terminal so active?

Everyone's trains converged on Jacksonville coastline and seaboard trains bound for Miami would be turned over to Flagler, Florida East Coast Railway.

But Coast Line and Seaboard also came to have extensive networks throughout Central Florida and the Gulf Coast.

And most trains bound for those points went through Jacksonville, too.

Like the middle of an hourglass.

But it wasn't just whole trains.

Individual cars were also part of the reshuffle.

A direct sleeping car from Chicago to Tampa might come south in a Miami bound train, like the Dixieland.

They would schedule a whole bunch of trains to come in at once from New York, from Chicago, from Detroit, from Atlanta.

They would all come into Jacksonville within a few minutes of each other.

And then for the next half hour or so.

Switch engines would pull the trains apart, and they wouldn't reshuffle the cars until all the trains going south were ready.

And in the afternoon they would do the same thing.

So generally, the mornings were busiest for southbound trains, the evenings busiest for northbound trains.

During the 1920s, as many as 180 trains a day were scheduled in and out of here.

A postcard from the 1920s, Florida's heyday as a retreat for the wealthy may have put it best.

More millionaires were said to have passed through Jacksonville Terminal than any station in America.

When most people imagine a railroad station, they generally think of the major ones like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Los Angeles.

But what about the other ones?

You.

Incorporating a hotel and a railroad station has gained popularity in the last few years.

Forward thinking people have recognized that saving and restoring these temples of transportation makes good business sense.

Some station hotels that come to mind are located in Indianapolis, Indiana and Nashville, Tennessee.

In this program, we focus on three examples of station hotels.

Denver Union Station, Saint Louis Union Station, and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Station in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

A visit to Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania, wouldn't be complete without a short walk over to the beautiful old Lackawanna Station.

The entrance into their lobby is an architectural and interior design delight.

My visit was back in 1999, and from current online photos, they've maintained their early 20th century architectural charm.

Constructed in 1908 as a station and office building, this beautiful French Renaissance structure cost $600,000.

Through the years, it has hosted the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Premier train, the Phoebe Snow, which traveled from Hoboken, new Jersey to Buffalo, New York.

Other DL w trains stopped at the station as well.

The last train, the Erie Lackawanna, is the Chicago Lake City's left to Scranton station on January 6th, 1970.

The building was shuttered and neglected for several years.

Rather than falling to the wrecking ball.

The Scranton station was restored at a cost of $13 million and reopened as a hotel in 1983.

This gorgeous building retains its original clocks, doors, fountains, and ceilings.

The grand lobby offers a visual feast, a mosaic tile floor, Sienna marble walls, and a barrel vaulted ceiling made of Tiffany glass.

What a beautiful treasure from the past.

Now called the Lackawanna Station Hotel, it is part of the Radisson chain.

Thanks.

Go to all those people who believed in saving part of American transportation history, so that we could marvel at the craftsmanship that spoke of another time in America.

The historic Utica Station was opened by the New York Central Railroad in 1914.

It became a Union station in 1915, when the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western and the New York, Ontario and Western railroads moved into the facility.

This classically inspired Beaux-Arts structure cost $1 million.

Inside, more than 30 marble columns support a high vaulted ceiling.

Sitting on terrazzo flooring are 12 wooden benches that are heated by steam pipes and vents.

The station is located within historic downtown Utica, and today functions as an intermodal center that serves Amtrak and the Adirondack Railroad, as well as intercity and city bus passengers.

We're in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, with the Cornwall and Lebanon Railroad station built in 1886.

As you can see, the architectural style is a fancy Victorian type.

The thing to remember about this station is that it wasn't built by a major railroad, but by a 20 mile long short line.

The station is built of brick and brownstone, with, as you can see, touches of ornamental ironwork.

And that's fitting, because the station and the railroad were built by millionaire Robert Coleman.

He was known as the Iron King of Pennsylvania.

He had iron mines, iron furnaces, and his railroad carried the iron to market.

Robert Coleman lost his fortune in the panic of 1893.

His railroad and the station fell into the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The last passenger train left in 1929, and after that the building was turned into a fruit company office, a bus station, and a dress factory.

Threatened with demolition in the 1970s, it was rescued by an insurance agency, which restored it and brought it back to its former glory.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the company bought it and spent two years to restore it.

Many railroad stations have come back to life, and other uses such as hotels, restaurants, museums, libraries, even police station.

The architecture of this station seems to be far more ornate than it used to be, and there's a reason for that.

Railroad stations were considered to be a source of pride.

They were the gateway, the front door of the community to the outside world.

The Pueblo depot is very special place to me as a youngster.

I rode the train to Pueblo many times to visit family.

My uncles, the Missouri Pacific engineer.

My father was a Rio Grande Trainmen.

Many railroaders, including my dad, stayed in rooms in the upper floors.

The caretaker of these rooms was a comical lady named Jeanie.

She was said to have spent her entire career thereafter coming to Pueblo from Italy.

The Porter car was the ultimate friendly and helpful redcap, as they were called.

The architecture was impressive.

I like Victorian places and the depot is a fine example.

There was the impressive staircase to the upper floors and a beautiful stained glass to the woodwork and floor tiles were fine examples of the great 90s era.

Always a fun place to be and appreciate.

I wish I had a time machine.

Could see the depot when it was new.

Here's a brief description of the depot in the early days in the late 1880s, Pueblo Union Depot was constructed in the Richardson and Romanesque style.

The Denver and Rio Grande was the first railroad to occupy the Pueblo Union Depot.

Three other railroads, Fort Santa Fe, Colorado on Santa.

And Missouri Pacific.

1992 the Pueblo Union people served over 18,000 passengers and 51 trains a day.

However, about 80 years later, passenger service ended with the last run of a two car Santa Fe train being operated between Denver and a Hunter, Colorado, while stopping in Pueblo, one of the major cities on the line.

In the 1990s, a renovation of the depot created a large banquet hall and host 200 events a year and can accommodate 500 people.

Upstairs, the third floor of the depot has been converted into ten loft apartments.

Pueblo is lucky to have had citizens who are committed to saving a treasured piece of their city's history.

As well as a piece of railroad history.

The Pueblo Union Depot.

Let's take a look at Winter Park, Florida.

It's less than 24 hours from New York by train, making for a comfortable overnight trip.

It beats the heck out of flying.

No crowded and confusing Orlando International.

No chaotic LaGuardia.

Just a straight shot.

Right from Winter Park to Midtown Manhattan and the Winter Park station, of course, is the current one.

Its retro design takes cues from stations of 100 years ago, especially in the South.

It has Georgian symmetry, but its ornamentation evokes the Carpenter Gothic style.

And like the best railroad stations, it exhibits a sense of place.

I grew up in Rochester, New York, and remember boarding a train from the old railroad station.

The main part of the building was closed and passengers were required to wait downstairs in a cold, damp tunnel before getting on the train.

Not a pleasant experience at all.

Those were in the late New York Central days, when a person wondered what the future of rail passenger service would look like, or if there would even be any passenger service at all.

So in 1967, the New York Central instituted what was called Empire Service.

It was tailored to provide minimal service to meet only the passengers basic needs.

In 1971, Amtrak began to rejuvenate the passenger experience in what is still called Empire Service by offering more frequent trains, new equipment and either upgraded stations along the line or newly built ones.

For example, in New York State, the new passenger facility in Rochester has been built on.

The exact location is the old station in the state of Florida.

The Brightline network has constructed new state of the art rail passenger facilities for the Miami West Palm Beach line, with an extension to Orlando.

While many people treasure the old massive railroad stations.

Even the smaller ones provide service for all the same reasons they have for nearly 200 years.

They offer a pathway to adventure and open the door to new travel experiences.

There's no way to provide anything like a comprehensive look at the variety of America's stations, or what they have meant to their communities, to our shared sense of history and our shared sense of place.

This program offers just a glimpse of many different types of railroad stations.

Large or small?

Big city or suburban?

Farm town or small community?

America's railroad stations have one thing in common.

They're key to a sense of place in a less jaded time than our own.

They were the gateway to adventure.

And to some of us, they still are.