Richmond Main Street Station

History

Richmond's Main Street Station in the downtown area was built in 1901 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL) and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O). Seaboard had introduced service to Richmond, and C&O had consolidated the former Virginia Central Railroad and the Richmond and Allegheny Railroad, which had previously maintained separate stations.

The ornate Main Street Station was designed by the Philadelphia firm of Wilson, Harris, and Richards in the Second Renaissance Revival style. Since its 1901 construction, the building's roof has featured Conosera tile produced by Ludowici. In 1959, Seaboard shifted its Richmond passenger service to Broad Street Station (now the Science Museum of Virginia), ending service to the north platform and across the James River. The C&O maintained offices in the upper floors, and its passenger service continued at Main Street Station until Amtrak took over in 1971.

Major long distance passenger train services in the mid and late 1960s included:

• Chesapeake and Ohio trains west to Louisville, Cincinnati and Detroit:
  • Fast Flying Virginian
  • George Washington
  • Sportsman

In 1970, Main Street Station and its trainshed, one of the last surviving trainsheds of its type in the nation, were added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 1976 it was designated a National Historic Landmark.

Amtrak took over most intercity passenger train service in the United States on May 1, 1971, including trains to Main Street Station. In 1972, Hurricane Agnes caused the James River to flood the station. The damage was so severe that in 1975, Amtrak moved its Richmond stops to Richmond Staples Mill Road, a much smaller suburban station in Henrico County, five miles north of downtown. To make matters worse, the station was damaged by fires in 1976 and 1983.

Service restoration

Main Street Station reopened to Amtrak service on December 18, 2003, following renovations.

In 2018, the station became a stop on the GRTC Bus Rapid Transit's Broad and Main Street Line. There are also plans for Main Street Station to become an intermodal station with Richmond's city bus services operated by GRTC, a public service company owned jointly by the City of Richmond and Chesterfield County.

Local officials hoped to increase the number of trains stopping at Main Street Station by extending services that otherwise terminate at Staples Mill station in suburban Henrico County. The completion of a bypass around Acca Yard in March 2019 was a step in this direction, although the first additional service that it enabled—a second Northeast Regional round trip to Norfolk—did not serve Main Street Station.

On September 27, 2021, two Amtrak trains—one northbound in the morning and the other southbound in the evening—were extended from Staples Mill to Main Street Station as the first part of Virginia's multi-billion dollar rail expansion program.

Proposed future

The 2017 Draft Environmental Impact Report of the DC2RVA project recommended routing all trains that serve Staples Mill station through Main Street Station, while maintaining full service to Staples Mill. Other considered alternatives had involved closing one of the two stations, or replacing both with a single station at Boulevard or Broad Street.

Main Street Station is located on the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor (SEHSR), a passenger rail transportation project planned to connect with the existing high speed rail corridor from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., known as the Northeast Corridor (served by Amtrak's Acela Express and Northeast Regional services and many commuter railroads) and extend similar high speed passenger rail services south through Richmond and Petersburg in Virginia through Raleigh and Charlotte in North Carolina. Since first established in 1992, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has since extended the corridor to Atlanta and Macon, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Birmingham, Alabama.

References

References

1. "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources.
2. {{NRISref. 2008a
3. "Virginia Service".
4. (June 9, 1985). "Station's new roof in good hands". Times-Dispatch.
5. ''Official Guide of the Railways'' October 1967, 'Chesapeake and Ohio Railway'
6. Dennis M. Zembala and Eric DeLony. (August 2, 1976). ["National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Seaboard Airline/Chesapeake & Ohio Railroads: Main Street Station & Trainshed / New Union Station"]({{NHLS url). National Park Service}} and {{NHLS url.
7. [http://www.rmaonline.org/mainst/mainsthistory.html The History of Main Street Station (Richmond Metropolitan Authority)] {{webarchive. link. (November 1, 2011)
8. Heidi Schwartz. (August 2005). "Richmond's Rail Revival". Today's Facility Manager.
9. "RICHMOND Main Street Station VIRGINIA (RVM)". TrainWeb.
10. "GRTC boss John Lewis has big plans for transit system {{!}} Richmond Times-Dispatch".
11. Suarez Rojas, C.. (March 5, 2019). "State transportation officials announce completion of bypass designed to alleviate Acca Yard bottleneck". Richmond Times-Dispatch.
12. Lazo, Luz. (September 27, 2021). "Virginia expands Amtrak Service to downtown Richmond as part of $3.7 billion rail program". The Washington Post.
13. (September 2017). "Washington, D.C. to Richmond Southeast High Speed Rail Project". Federal Railroad Administration and Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.