(rshsdepot) Greensboro, NC

[Bernie Wagenblast <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

Buses Go To Station By Summer ; The Next Step Will Be Trains, Which Won't Be
Too Far Behind.
Greensboro News Record

The buses are running maybe a year behind schedule, but the trains may
arrive a year or two early.
That's the way the schedule looks at the Greensboro Multi-modal
Transportation Center, arising from what was the Southern Railway passenger
station at East Washington and Church streets.

After almost 25 years of near emptiness, the building that once was North
Carolina's largest railroad station again will become a destination for
trains and, for the first time, buses serving places near and far.

Jim Westmoreland, the city's transportation director, says buses - local,
regional and long-distance - should begin serving the center by summer.

When Phase 1 - the bus phase - began in mid-2001, the city projected it
would be ready in 14 months. Because of wet weather and other factors, that
target has been changed to mid- or late-summer 2003. But Phase 2 has been
accelerated. Instead of taking two to four years after Phase 1, city and
state officials say completion may come in mid-2004.

The two-level center will span almost a block and a half of East Washington
Street.

On the upper level, a new structure has closed the gap that stood between
what was Southern Railway's baggage building and the former Railway Express
Agency building. REA was, during railroad's golden era, what FedEx and UPS
are to the air age.

The new structure is open-sided with a roof and contains bus parking bays.
The building connects to bus waiting rooms being created in the old baggage
and REA buildings.

Parking lots for the transportation center have been completed along East
Washington. A concrete-bunker in the hill beside the lots will include an
elevator to take people to waiting rooms above.

On the east side of the old station, air conditioning and heating equipment
has been installed. A protective structure will be built over the equipment.

Work also has begun on a road buses will use to reach the second level and
wind around the back of the station to the bus bays and waiting rooms.
Greensboro Transit Authority buses recently ran tests to make sure enough
space exists for buses to maneuver on the upper level, which borders
railroad tracks busy with freight trains.

Departing buses will use a road that will connect to South Davie Street.

Once Phase 1 is complete, GTA and regional buses no longer will bunch up
along South Davie Street. Passengers wait there in unheated, three-sided
glass shelters. The center's new waiting rooms will be air conditioned and
heated, with rest rooms and vending machines. The city hopes to attract
retail businesses to space near the waiting rooms. A room has been set aside
in the REA building the Carolina Model Railroad Club to set up its elaborate
model train layout. The club was a tenant in the old station after real
trains quit using it.

Greyhound will move there from a station on West Lee Street.

Through World War II, about 60 passenger trains arrived and departed daily
from the old train station, which opened in 1927. Some tracks were removed
and others shifted after the station closed and Southern Railway donated the
property to the city. Work has begun on realigning tracks to serve new
passenger platforms to be built during Phase 2, replacing those torn down in
the early 1980s.

During the station's last active years, only one passenger train - the
Amtrak Crescent - served Greensboro. Two more, the Carolinian and the
Piedmont, have since joined the Crescent. They stop at a one- room station
in Norfolk Southern's freight yard in western Greensboro.

To prepare for the return of the trains to the downtown station, crews have
unsealed and rehabilitated the first 25 feet of a tunnel that passengers
will again use to walk from the train waiting rooms on the lower level to
the trains above. A separate tunnel for baggage has been built. The rest of
the passenger tunnel will be finished in Phase 2.

One unresolved question is the future use of a large concourse that served
white rail passengers until the station was integrated in the early 1960s.
What was the black waiting room will become Amtrak's waiting room in the
center. An old sign that said "Colored Entrance" above the doors was donated
earlier this year to the Greensboro Historical Museum.

The old white waiting room, with its high vaulted ceiling, could become
rental space for conferences, receptions and parties. That was how it was
used in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I'm excited," says Westmoreland, the local transportation director. "We are
at the point where everything is coming together."

Contact Jim Schlosser at 373-7081 or jschlosser_@_news-record.com


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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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