(rshsdepot) Albany, OR

["J. Henry Priebe Jr." <root_@_net.bluemoon.net>]

http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/005/139xqmgn.asp
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Ceremony kicks off Oregon depot project

ALBANY, Ore. – A renovation project for the Amtrak station was kicked off
yesterday with a ceremony marking the start of construction to turn it into a
transportation center, according to a story in the Albany Democrat-Herald. A
regularly scheduled Amtrak Cascades passenger train symbolically brought local
officials into town for the event.

Tony Buscemi, head of Amtrak in Oregon, said Albany's is the last depot to be
renovated between Eugene and Portland. He thanked the public for their
ridership on Amtrak, and hoped some day to see eight trains a day between
Eugene and Portland. Now there are three in each direction. At the south end
of the depot site, workers were taking the roof off an old feed store, one of
the vacant buildings to be demolished for the depot renovation. About 70
people came to the depot for the ceremony.

The project calls for renovating the 1908 railroad depot and developing the
station site with about 90 spaces or paved parking, lighting, landscaping, and
two entrances - at Lyon Street and 12th Avenue. The second building on the
site, the former Railway Express Agency now housing an office of the Union
Pacific, will be fixed up so it can house the Amtrak ticket office while the
depot is remodeled. Oregon Dept. of Transportation has awarded a $6 million
construction contract to James W. Fowler, a Dallas, Ore. company. The project
is being planned as a "multimodal" transportation center, a hub to be used by
trains, buses, taxis, private cars, and people on bicycles and on foot.

Currently, the station serves mainly Amtrak trains - the two daily Coast
Starlights and four trains in the Cascades service - and buses. Officials hope
that Greyhound also will use the station. Freight railroad offices in the two
buildings on the depot site - the Union Pacific and the Portland & Western
(Willamette & Pacific) - will be relocated to new offices to be built on the
other side of the railroad yard.

Henry

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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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