(rshsdepot) Greensboro, NC

["Bernie Wagenblast" <brwagenblast_@_comcast.net>]

From the Greensboro News Record.

Bernie Wagenblast



Trains Coming Back to Depot

GREENSBORO -- (Sept. 8) It has been a long wait between trains downtown.
After a 26-year absence, Amtrak trains will return next month to the J. 
Douglas Galyon Depot , city and state officials say.

State and federal governments have spent $12 million to make the station 
suitable again for trains. The first arrival, in the wee hours, will be the 
southbound Amtrak Crescent from New York to Meridian, Miss.

The Crescent normally goes on to its namesake city, New Orleans. But since 
Hurricane Katrina hit, service has stopped at Atlanta. It will extend to 
Mississippi this weekend.

Amtrak spokesman Clifford Black hopes the line can go back to New Orleans by 
the beginning of next month if damage to the terminal there isnt severe.

After daybreak Oct. 1, the westbound Piedmont passenger train from Raleigh 
and the eastbound Carolinian to New York will pull into the station that was 
the largest, most elaborate one in North Carolina when it opened in 1927.

The northbound Amtrak Crescent was the last to depart the station when 
Southern Railway --now Norfolk Southern -- closed the block- long complex in 
1979 and donated it to Greensboro.

By then, the era when more than 40 passenger trains used the station daily 
had long ended. The Crescent was the stations only train.

The city and state will wait three weeks after the opening to hold a 
dedication ceremony; it is planned for Oct. 21. The next day a public open 
house will be held.

Since the closing of the station, Amtrak has made do with a tiny one-room 
depot in the Pomona freight yard of west Greensboro.

Downtown will be a vast improvement.

Passengers will wait in a roomy, concourse with a high, vaulted ceiling, a 
mural painted nearly eight decades ago that depicts Southern Railways 
passenger routes and an old train arrival- departure board. Original wooden 
passenger benches have been saved and put back, supplemented by 
reproductions.

Because tracks are above the station, passengers will enter a long tunnel 
under the tracks extended during renovation.

The tunnel will have two exits.

The first goes up to a new 1,250-foot platform for Crescent passengers. In 
the old days, passengers had to climb steps from tunnel to platform; now, 
they also will have a choice of ramp, escalators or elevator.

A second with the same conveniences will elevate passengers to a new 
850-foot platform .

A new tunnel will carry baggage between the trains and the station.

The city believes the station, in its first year, will top the total of 
58,274 who boarded at Pomona in 2004.

Greensboros boardings were way below those in Charlotte -- 107,896 -- and in 
Raleigh -- 110,203.

Those stations dwarfed Pomona, but the downtown Greensboro station is larger 
than theirs.

City officials and Julie Hegele Jarema with the state Department of 
Transportation expect an increase in passengers.

The downtown station is convenient and nicer; more people are riding trains, 
especially after the recent upsurge in gasoline prices. More trains may be 
using the station.

The state hopes to have a total of five Raleigh-to-Charlotte trains within 
four to five years and eight in 10 years. It also wants to start service to 
Asheville and Wilmington.

The renovation for trains began after the completion in 2003 of a $19.2 
million first phase using state, federal and local money. It converted 
former baggage buildings to waiting rooms for Greensboro Transit Authority 
bus passengers and riders of PART buses to Winston- Salem and High Point.

Greyhound bus lines moved next door into the renovated former Railroad 
Express Agency building.

Sheds in front of the waiting rooms keep passengers dry as they board buses.

Amtrak originally planned to use the smaller waiting room that served black 
passengers during the era of strict racial segregation.

But the state decided the former white concourse would be better because of 
its size and beauty.

Michael Cramer of the citys Department of Transportation says he hopes the 
city can persuade a restaurant to lease the old black waiting room.

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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