(rshsdepot) Hattiesburg, MS

[jdent1_@_optonline.net]

Article from hattiesburgamerican.com
Article published Dec 3, 2004
Depot upgrade kicks off
Three mayors later, project's end in sight Facility to offer rail, taxi and bus service

By Kevin Walters 
Discussing his next project, architect Larry Albert's eyes widen and he breaks into a wide grin - like a kid with a new model train.

In this case, Albert's excited about a whole train station.

And on what was a cold Thursday morning, hundreds of guests and three generations of Hattiesburg mayors crowded together at the Hattiesburg train depot to break ground on what will be the second and final phase of renovating the 94-year-old building. A new roof was added earlier this year.

Thursday's event was roughly 10 years in the making, beginning with former Mayor Bobby Chain, going through his successor, Ed Morgan, and finally breaking ground with current Mayor Johnny DuPree - all of whom helped gain federal and state financing.

"If anyone along the line had dropped the ball, we wouldn't be standing here today," DuPree said. "There's three administrations that picked this ball up and handed it off to the next and continued to work with it."

When work on the facility is completed in 1 1/2 years, the depot will be an intermodal facility that offers rail, taxi and city bus service. And it's hoped the $10 million transformation of the building will be a catalyst for downtown renovation, bringing in more people and more money.

"Every other town it's ever been done in has made a big difference," Albert said. "Who wants to come to a dilapidated old building to get on a train?"

Albert said he's thrilled about restoring the depot's Grand Hall complete with its terrazzo floor, Corinthian pilasters, along with overhauling the depot's cracked waiting platform and extending the canopies above it.

Richton resident Joseph Laurch, 42, wasn't at the depot to throw a shovelful of dirt.

Instead, Laurch, a train buff who wore his denim railroad engineer cap to the ceremony, used his day off from work to drive up from Richton and show support for the project.

"This is going to be great," Laurch said. "It's going to be great for the city."

Gil Carmichael, former federal railroad administrator under former President George H.W. Bush, said rail travel will grow out of necessity into the next decade because travel by truck and car is becoming increasingly time-consuming and expensive.

Hattiesburg already has a heavy-duty rail line running through the depot and that will help the city keep pace with demand. All that needs to be done to facilitate high-speed travel of 90 to 120 mph is to remove the crossings along the track and add the faster trains, Carmichael said.

"That railroad track out there is part of the solution for transportation in this country for this century," Carmichael said, pointing at the rail a few feet away from the platform. "We know now that the railroads aren't 1890 technology. They're 2090 technology."

Not mentioned Thursday was Greyhound bus lines not coming to the facility. The company said it won't leave its location at Interstate 59 and U.S. 49 because downtown is too far away to move.

But DuPree, who secured $300,000 for a study of downtown traffic congestion, maintains that possible changes in downtown such as possibly adding an overpass or an underpass through the downtown may one day attract the Greyhound bus lines into the downtown area.

He also said he wants to study moving the switching yard out of downtown for safety reasons.

In all the talk of the future, many people such as Patricia Dixon Olajide, 50, stood in the cold and remembered older days for the station when she would come to the station to meet an engineer.

"He was a friend of one of my neighbors and we would come here to meet him," Olajide said. "That was a highlight of our Sundays." 


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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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