I felt this would be a neat gallery to share with those of us with an interest in transport. A mix of vintage train stations and parking lots with vehicles of yore. And of course, the architecture. Regardless of all being hubs of modern transport, each station is a reflection of the fads and preferences of its construction period. From Victorian to Spanish Neo-Colonial, to pure mid-century modernism.
One item to remember is that a few of these postcards come from an age when the railroad was still a favored mode for long distance travel. If I’m to trust Google (why doubt it this time?), it wasn’t until 1955 that more people traveled by plane than by train in the US. As we know, train travel would soon become a rarity.
Amazingly, most of these still exist in this age of speed and change. As for the lead pic, it is Union Station, in Portland OR.
Harrisburg Railroad Station, PA.
Santa Fe Depot, San Bernardino, CA.
Northern Philadelphia Railroad Station, PA.
Union Pacific Depot, Cheyenne, WI.
Union Station, Burlington, IA.
Union Station, Seattle, WA.
Norfolk and Western Train Station, Roanoke, VA.
Union Station, Los Angeles, CA.
Thanks for the tour. Beautiful architecture.
Just lovely .
I remember riding the B&M into Boston on weekends to visit pops in the very early 1960’s . they’d run the regular commuter trains completely empty, we could move around if we wished .
-Nate
Was that into North Station? … which is technically still there, except not mostly subsumed by the new Garden (aka Fleet Center, which replace the old Boston Garden in the mid 1990s).
The Kalamazoo train station was built in 1887. Still in use as an Amtrak station, as well as the depot for Greyhound and Indian Trails bus service. (pic snatched from the Wiki entry)
Postcard view of the same station, when it was new.
Even the “modern” things that station has seen, are long gone now.
Impressive railway stations. They really tried to make a statement back then.
“As we know, train travel would soon become a rarity.”
Amazing, that. Here it is a much needed form of transport (Netherlands).
When we lived in Austria in the ’50s we had no car. We went everywhere by train, and then connected to post buses to get into the more remote places. I loved riding on the trains back then.
Here in the “USA” it is as well. (much needed)
North Philadelphia station has fallen on hard times. It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad because PRR’s track layout made it expedient for its east-west trains to bypass Center City Philadelphia and Broad Street Station, and the backup maneuver required to serve that station. The PRR was in competition for New York business with the New York Central, so the time saved, over an hour, was significant. It was the only Philadelphia stop for the PRR’s famous Broadway Limited, and for many lesser trains as well.
Today Amtrak, which owns the station, has no rail competition and North Philadelphia station sees only a few Amtrak trains stop there each day. SEPTA Regional Rail does stop there, for those brave enough…the neighborhood is bad and the platform dirty and decrepit, used by transients for shelter in between infrequent visits by Amtrak Police. There is no ticketing facility. The station building itself is leased to a store selling secondhand, outdated, surplus and remaindered merchandise.
I commuted via rail in Philadelphia for about a year in the 1990s, and my commute took me past the North Philadelphia station. It was still impressive, even in its then-deteriorated condition and the run-down area. Even the small train stations in Philadelphia’s close-in suburbs were impressive-looking, and were often designed by the well-known local architects of the day, such as Frank Furness and Horace Trumbauer.
I think the Reading and Pennsylvania Railroads had quite a competition for a while, and this extended to railroad station design. I’ve always been partial to the Reading Railroad, since that was the line that ran across the street from our house where I grew up. Our house’s original owner was a Reading employee, and he put a Reading Railroad vent cover somewhere on the outside of the house.
Some of these are familiar; Union Station in Portland, of course, as well as the one in LA.
We used to go to Penn Station in Baltimore quite often to pick up my dad when he would go to NY. The NE corridor is of course heavily used and the only place that trains play a significant role like they do in Europe.
The Portland station is the oldest in Amtrak’s system, dating from 1896. It’s also a beauty inside.
Whenever I visit a new city, the train station is high on my list of places to see – if it still stands.My favorite has to be Cincinnatti’s Union Terminal, styled like a huge Streamline Moderne table radio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Union_Terminal#:~:text=Cincinnati%20Union%20Terminal%20is%20an,through%20Cincinnati%20three%20times%20weekly.
We almost lost Cincinnati Union. Amtrak did not use the station for many years, instead preferring a nondescript shack, River Road Station, under a freeway, accessed by a backup move past junkyards. Civic activism saved the magnificent station, and constructive reuse. It is now nearly all a museum and events venue. Amtrak is relegated to a small corner to serve a train that runs three days a week in each direction, and that is only because the route that Amtrak wanted to use was abandoned by the freight railroad that owned it.
I live in southern Ontario and a neighbour has a son who lives in Portland. Several years ago she started to take the train instead of flying when she visits. She drives to Port Huron, gets a train connecting in Chicago. She loves it, but her son and his family fly when they come in the summer. I think it takes 2 days, which might be why the family flies. I have no idea of the relative costs, but the Portland station is beautiful.
Interesting class difference. Most have business coupes, wagons, a homemade A pickup. Roanoke has a ’59 Eldorado and a Lincoln Cosmopolitan.
Former train station in downtown Ottawa.
Trains to Montreal and New York, ran beside the Rideau Canal.
The NFB filmed the short movie “The Railroadder” with Buster Keaton just before they removed the tracks from downtown Ottawa.
That “Burlington IA”, station looked rather “sleek/ mo dern” for the time the pic was (apparently) taken.
The “Los Angeles” one looks like a repurposed church, or castle. In any case, it’s a eye catching structure.
“Harrisburg PA”, station looks uncharacteristically tidy.
The last grand railroad station built in the US, Los Angeles Union Station is in the Mission style. That is why it looks like a church.
I recently took a trip to Seattle from Union Station in Portland. The station is very nice and my trip was a pleasant joy. This is the station today.
This post brought back some fond memories. I’ve actually been in almost all of these stations, or at least been a passenger in a train making a stop there. As a kid our family vacations in 1967 and 1969 involved transcontinental rail journeys. In 1967 we took rail legs from New York to Montreal, Montreal to Calgary, Jasper to Vancouver, Vancouver to Seattle, and Seattle to New York via Chicago. 1969 had us travelling by rail from Denver to Portland, and Oakland to New York via Chicago. As an adult I’ve been up and down the Northeast corridor numerous times and once went to Toronto by train.
From a train you really get a sense of the vastness of North America and varied terrain and climates. You can see the great natural beauty, and rumble past the back lots of industry and the lower income houses that often abut the tracks.
Our small town station fell out of use mid-century and was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1998. A portion was nicely rebuilt and serves as a small community center in a city park, appropriately named Depot Park, with public restrooms (the only part I’ve been in) and adjacent soccer fields, playground and skate/bike park. The tracks still run right by the depot, and are active, seasonally used by a tourist train that runs in daytime in summer, and a colorfully lighted Christmas train that runs well into darkness in the holiday season. We live about a half mile away and can hear the train whistles and crossing bells, and occasionally the rumble of the diesel electric locomotives. There are a lot of level crossings but though the trains run slowly, they’re only a few cars long so traffic delays aren’t bad.
So many of these great old train stations are still here, you just need to know where to look. The ones that come easily to mind are Denver’s Union Station, Washington DC’s Union Station, Chicago’s Union Station, the station in Los Angeles, and my local Boston’s South Station. And of course NYC’s Grand Central. In relation to that, I want to see the new Moynihan Train Hall (Amtrak’s new NYC home).
The small town I recently moved to, Maryborough Victoria, (Australia) to has an interesting station. The unproven rumour is, that it was a mistake, and that it was meant for a much larger town, even the state capital of Melbourne.
Mark Twain visited in 1895 and described the town as a railway station with a town attached.
It was closed for a few years, and then restored and now has a service to Ballarat, where you can catch another train to Melbourne.
For the benefit of the (vast majority) of CC readers in North America, Mark Twain, although it seems improbable, visited here in 1895 for a lecture tour. From memory, the then 60-y.o. old man was broke. He’d invested his all in an excellent, advanced, but over-complex printing machine that was not taken on by anybody, so he needed to tour ANYWHERE to make some money. His various observations of the considerable strangeness of this place were so sharp that they’ve have entered the language.
Maryborough, the place of jonco43’s absurdly big station, has a population of – drumroll – 7,600 people (and one, I guess now!) It was once much larger (goldrush times) but NOT ever big enough justifying this beautiful city-sized folly.
Thanks justy, for the story behind Mr Twains visit. and putting it all in context.
My local station here near Glasgow – built in 1840 according to Wiki.
For UK train station car spotting the Disused Stations site http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/ has a lot of photos of old stations with cars and busses outside.
Here a French site about the train stations located in Quebec. https://patrimoineduquebec.com/GaresduQuebec/repertoire-des-gares/
Thank you for sharing this link! Many beautiful stations.
Another great (essentially) non-car post.
Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Aus, though everyday-familiar to me, is still a remarkable old pile. It’s so big it actually has a full ballroom in the roof!