The Washington, Idaho and Montana Railway is a short-line railroad that runs between Bovill, Idaho and Palouse, Washington. It was built by the Potlatch Lumber Company as a logging railroad, but it also carried other freight, passengers, and mail.


Engine 1 of the railroad and a railroad depot are preserved in the Commercial Historic District of Potlatch, Idaho, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


Horseshoe Curve is a three-track railroad curve on Norfolk Southern Railway's Pittsburgh Line in Blair County, Pennsylvania. The curve itself is about long and in diameter; it was completed in 1854 by the Pennsylvania Railroad as a way to lessen the grade to the summit of the Allegheny Mountains. It eventually replaced the time-consuming Allegheny Portage Railroad, the only other route across the mountains for large vehicles.


The rail line has been important since its opening, and during World War II the Curve was targeted by Nazi Germany in 1942 as part of Operation Pastorius. The Curve was later owned and used by Pennsylvania Railroad successors Penn Central, Conrail, and Norfolk Southern respectively. Horseshoe Curve was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and it became a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark in 2004.


Horseshoe Curve has long been a tourist attraction; a trackside observation park was completed in 1879. The park was renovated and a visitor center built in the early 1990s. The Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona manages the center, which has exhibits pertaining to the curve.


Horseshoe Curve is on the Pittsburgh Line, the Norfolk Southern Railway Pittsburgh Division main line between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Westbound trains climb a maximum grade of 1.85 percent for from Altoona to Gallitzin; just west of the Gallitzin Tunnels trains pass the summit of the Allegheny Mountains, then descend for to Johnstown on a grade of 1.1 percent or less.


The curve is west of Altoona in Logan Township, Blair County, at railroad milepost 242. The Blair County Veterans Memorial Highway (SR 4008) follows the valley west from Altoona and tunnels under the curve. Horseshoe Curve bends around a dam and lake, the highest of three reservoirs along the valley which are owned by the Altoona Water Authority and supply water to the city. Horseshoe Curve spans two ravines formed by creeks: Kittanning Run on the north side of the valley, and Glenwhite Run on the south.


In 1834 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the Allegheny Portage Railroad across the Allegheny Mountains to connect Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as part of the Main Line of Public Works. The Portage Railroad was a series of canals and inclined planes and remained in use until the mid-19th century. The Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated in 1847 to build a railroad from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, replacing the cumbersome Portage Railroad.


Work on Horseshoe Curve began in 1850 and took over three years. It was done without heavy equipment, only men "with picks and shovels, horses and drags". The entire line, including Horseshoe Curve, opened on February 15, 1854. The total cost for of track between Altoona and Johnstown was $2,495,000 or $80,225 per mile ($49,850 /km). The remaining part of the mountain inside the curve was leveled in 1879 to allow the construction of a park and observation area—the first built for viewing trains. As demand for train travel increased, a third track was added to the curve in 1898 and a fourth was added two years later.


Horseshoe Curve was depicted in brochures, calendars and other promotional material; Pennsylvania Railroad stock certificates were printed with a vignette of it. The Pennsylvania pitted the scenery of Horseshoe Curve against rival New York Central Railroad's "Water Level Route" during the 1890s. A raised-relief, scale model of the curve was included as part of the Pennsylvania Railroad's exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Pennsylvania Railroad conductors were told to announce the Horseshoe Curve to daytime passengers—a tradition that continues aboard Amtrak trains. Additionally, the engineer will blow the horn and the conductor onboard the Amtrak trains that pass through the Curve will wave (or shine a phone flashlight if it is dark) to the Virtual Railfan camera stationed in the park.


During World War II PRR carried troops and materiel for the Allied war effort, and the Curve was under armed guard. The military intelligence arm of Nazi Germany, the "Abwehr", plotted to sabotage important industrial assets in the United States in a project code-named Operation Pastorius. In June 1942 four men were brought by submarine and landed on Long Island, planning to destroy such sites as the Curve, Hell Gate Bridge, Alcoa aluminum factories and locks on the Ohio River. The would-be saboteurs were quickly apprehended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after one, George John Dasch, turned himself in.


Starting in June 1990, the park at the Horseshoe Curve underwent a $5.8 million renovation funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and by the National Park Service through its "America's Industrial Heritage Project". The renovations were completed in April 1992 with the dedication of a new visitor center. In 1999 Conrail was divided between CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern, with the Horseshoe Curve being acquired by the latter. The Horseshoe Curve was lit up again with fireworks and rail-borne searchlights during its sesquicentennial in 2004 as an homage to the celebrations in 1954. It was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2004.


St. Louis Union Station is a National Historic Landmark train station in St. Louis, Missouri. At its 1894 opening, the station was the largest in the world that had tracks and passenger service areas all on one level. Traffic peaked at 100,000 people a day the 1940s. The last Amtrak passenger train left the station in 1978.


In the 1980s, it was renovated as a hotel, shopping center, and entertainment complex. The 2010s and 2020s saw more renovation and expansion of entertainment and office capacity.


An adjacent station serves the light-rail MetroLink Red and Blue Lines, which run under the station in the Union Station subway tunnel. The city's intercity train station sits a quarter-mile to the south, serving MetroLink, Amtrak, and Greyhound Bus.


The station was opened on September 1, 1894, by the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. The station was designed by Theodore Link, and included three main areas: the Headhouse and the Midway, and the Train Shed designed by civil engineer George H. Pegram. The headhouse originally housed a hotel, a restaurant, passenger waiting rooms and railroad ticketing offices. It featured a gold-leafed Grand Hall, Romanesque arches, a barrel-vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows. The clock tower is high.


Union Station's headhouse and midway are constructed of Indiana limestone and initially included 32 tracks under its vast trainshed terminating in the stub-end terminal. Its Grand Hall, which cost around $6.5 million and was about 75 by 125 feet large, was considered to be one of the most beautiful, public lobbies.


At its opening, it was the world's largest and busiest railroad station and its trainshed was the largest roof span in the world.


In 1903, Union Station was expanded to accommodate visitors to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. In the 1920s, it remained the largest American railroad terminal.


At its height, the station combined the St. Louis passenger services of 22 railroads, the most of any single terminal in the world. In the 1940s, it handled 100,000 passengers a day. The famous photograph of Harry S. Truman holding aloft the erroneous "Chicago Tribune" headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman", was shot at the station as Truman headed back to Washington, D.C., from Independence, Missouri, after the 1948 Presidential election.


The 1940s expansion added a new ticket counter designed as a half-circle and a mural by Louis Grell could be found atop the customer waiting area which depicted the history of St. Louis with an old fashion steam engine, two large steamboats and the Eads Bridge in the background.


The station was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970, as an important surviving example of large-scale railroad architecture from the late 19th century. It was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1981.


In August 1985, after a $150 million renovation designed by HOK, Union Station was reopened with a 539-room hotel, shopping mall, restaurants and food court. Federal historic rehabilitation tax credits were used to transform Union Station into one of the city's most visited attractions. The station rehabilitation by Conrad Schmitt Studios remains one of the largest adaptive re-use projects in the United States. The hotel is housed in the headhouse and part of the train shed, which also houses a lake and shopping, entertainment and dining establishments. Omni Hotels was the original hotel operator, followed by Hyatt Regency Hotel chain and Marriott Hotels.


St. Louis Union Station was the venue for the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship component of the FIRST Championship, hosted in St. Louis every April until 2017, after which it was moved to Detroit.


Today, the station is home to the St. Louis Aquarium. At 120,000 square feet, the aquarium is home to more than 13,000 animals representing over 250 species.


The station's train shed area features The St. Louis Wheel, a 200-foot-high, 42 gondola observation wheel.


Inside the station is The St. Louis Rope Course, a 90,000 cubic foot, 3-story indoor ropes and zip line course.


Union Station has two light show features: one in the train shed area, and another inside Union Station Hotel's lobby.


In January 2020, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. moved their global headquarters to downtown St. Louis inside the 68,000-square-foot Grand Central Building inside the Union Station complex. The company also opened their new Build-A-Bear Workshop Union Station headquarters store and also operates a Build-A-Bear Radio studio and other experiential elements at their new headquarters. Additionally, a ferris wheel, aquarium, and an abundance of restaurants have been added to Union Station in 2020.


MetroLink, the St. Louis rail mass transit system, serves Union Station from its station directly below the trainshed in the Union Station subway tunnel.


The St. Louis Union Station serves the Red Line and Blue Line.


It takes about 30 minutes to travel to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport's East and Main Terminals via the Metro Red Line.


Megabus previously provided express intercity bus service to Memphis, Tennessee, Kansas City, Missouri and Chicago from Union Station. Megabus moved to the Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center in December, 2014.


St. Louis Union Station has 24-hour taxi service at its north entrance on Market Street.


Approximate travel time by taxi, non-rush hour:


The city's major transportation hub station, Gateway Multimodal Transportation Center is located next to Union Station. It serves the city's rail system and regional bus system MetroBus, Greyhound, Amtrak and city taxi services.


In 1981, the disused Grand Hall was used in John Carpenter's movie "Escape from New York", during the film's gladiatorial fight.


The St. Charles Streetcar line is a historic streetcar line in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, as it has been in operation since 1835. It is operated by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA). Officially the St. Charles Streetcar line is internally designated as Route 12, and it runs along its namesake street, St. Charles Avenue. It is the busiest route in the RTA system as it is heavily used by local commuters and tourists. On most RTA maps and publications, it is denoted in green, which is also the color of the streetcars on this line.


The St. Charles line starts uptown, at South Carrollton Avenue and South Claiborne Avenue. It runs on South Carrollton Avenue through the Carrollton neighborhood towards the Mississippi River, then near the river levee turns on to St. Charles Avenue. It proceeds past entrances to Audubon Park, Tulane University and Loyola University New Orleans, continues through Uptown New Orleans including the Garden District, and ends at Canal Street in the New Orleans Central Business District at the edge of the French Quarter, a distance of . With the exception of Carondelet Street and the downtown portion of St. Charles where the line runs in the curbside lane, most of the line runs in the neutral ground (the median strip) with greenery between the tracks.


Planning for the line began in 1831, and work began as the New Orleans and Carrollton Rail Road in February 1833, the second railway in Greater New Orleans after the Pontchartrain Rail Road. Passenger and freight services by steam locomotives began on September 26, 1835, originally without a dedicated right-of-way (it ran on public streets), although one was eventually established in the "neutral ground" (the median). Service began as a suburban railroad, since Carrollton was at that time a separate city, while areas along the route were still mostly undeveloped. Two locomotives "New Orleans" and "Carrollton" were supplied from England by B. Hick and Sons.


While the city's first experiments with electric-powered cars were made in 1884 (in conjunction with the World Cotton Centennial World's Fair), electric streetcars were not considered sufficiently developed for widespread use until the following decade, and the line was electrified February 1, 1893. At the same time, it was extended from the corner of St. Charles and Carrollton Avenues out Carrollton to a new car barn at Willow Street.


In 1900, the St. Charles and Tulane streetcar lines were extended on Carrollton Avenue and connected together, resulting in a two-way belt line. Cars signed St. Charles left Canal Street on Baronne Street to Howard Avenue to St. Charles Avenue, thence all the way to Carrollton and out that avenue, returning to the central business district on Tulane Avenue. Streetcars leaving Canal Street on Tulane Avenue were signed Tulane, operating out to Carrollton Avenue, then turning riverward to St. Charles Avenue, passing Lee Circle to Howard Avenue, and finally down Baronne (later Carondelet) to Canal Street.


In 1922 the New Orleans & Carrollton Rail Road was merged into New Orleans Public Service Incorporated (NOPSI), which consolidated the city's various streetcar lines and electrical production.


In 1972 automatic fareboxes were introduced, and the job of a separate conductor was eliminated from the streetcars. The line still has one of the Ford, Bacon & Davis 1894 vintage cars in running condition. Although it is not used for passenger service, it stays busy with work operations such as track sanding. The rest of the line's cars date from 1923–24.


In 1973, preservationists successfully listed the St. Charles line on the National Register of Historic Places. But it is not possible to provide the historic cars with wheelchair access doors and lifts in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). For this reason, it has been the only service in the system not to have wheelchair access.


In 1983, the RTA was created to oversee public transportation in New Orleans. It assumed the operations of city bus lines and the St. Charles line from NOPSI, which has since folded into Entergy.


In 2005, service along the route was suspended due to damage from Hurricane Katrina and the floods from levee breaches. The small section from Canal Street to Lee Circle was the first part restored. The section continuing up to Napoleon Avenue was re-opened for service on November 11, 2007, and on December 23, 2007 was extended up to Carrollton Avenue, near the line's original terminus in 1833. The restoration of the line on the remaining section along Carrollton Avenue to Claiborne Avenue took place on June 22, 2008.


The St. Charles line was listed by the National Park Service as a National Historic Landmark in 2014. This recognizes it as a place that possesses "exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States," quoting the announcement from the Department of the Interior. It joins the San Francisco cable car system as one of only two moving streetcar National Historic Landmarks. (There are other moving landmarks, such as ships and trains.)


Following a lawsuit over access for wheelchair and other limited mobility patrons, RTA entered into a consent decree in 2017, agreeing to make six stops (each end, as well as Napoleon, Louisiana, Jackson, and a then-undetermined stop near Riverbend) ADA compliant. At least one wheelchair lift-equipped car was to be added to the line, but the historic Perley Thomas streetcars were not to be modified.


In 2020, to comply with the 2017 consent decree, RTA renovated three streetcars that had been originally built for Riverfront service with wheelchair accessible features, bringing the St. Charles streetcar line into compliance with the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This included repainting these cars from Riverfront red to the iconic St. Charles line green. The cars carry a wheelchair icon on their ends and sides. RTA also rebuilt car stops at six major intersections to allow wheelchair access. Wheelchair accessible service on St.Charles began on December 1, 2020.


The St. Charles Streetcar line operates frequent service 24 hours a day, with frequencies of every nine minutes in the daytime (after 7 a.m.), 18 minutes early morning (before 7 a.m.) and late night (10 p.m. to midnight), with 36 minute intervals in the night owl period (midnight to 6 a.m.).


The principal equipment of the line consists of 35 streetcars built in 1923-24 by the Perley Thomas Car Co. They have been rebuilt several times during their long service life.


The St. Clair Tunnel is the name for two separate rail tunnels which were built under the St. Clair River between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan. The original, opened in 1891 and used until it was replaced by a new larger tunnel in 1995, was the first full-size subaqueous tunnel built in North America. (By full-size it is meant that it allowed a railroad to run through it.) It is a National Historic Landmark of the United States, and has been designated a civil engineering landmark by both US and Canadian engineering bodies.


The first underwater rail tunnel in North America was opened by the St. Clair Tunnel Company in 1891. The company was a subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), which used the new route to connect with its subsidiary Chicago and Grand Trunk Railway, predecessor to the Grand Trunk Western Railroad (GTW). Before the tunnel's construction, Grand Trunk was forced to use time-consuming rail ferries to transfer cargo.


The tunnel was an engineering marvel in its day and designed by Joseph Hobson. The development of original techniques were achieved for excavating in a compressed air environment. The Beach tunnelling shield, designed by Alfred Ely Beach, was used to assist workmen in removing material from the route of the tunnel and left a continuous iron tube nearly long. Freight trains used the tunnel initially with the first passenger trains using it in 1892.


The tunnel measured from portal to portal. The actual width of the St. Clair River at this crossing is only . The tube had a diameter of and hosted a single standard gauge track. It was built at a cost of $2.7 million.


Steam locomotives were used in the early years to pull trains through the tunnel, however concerns about the potential dangers of suffocation should a train stall in the tunnel led to the installation of catenary wires for electric-powered locomotives by 1907. The first use of electric locomotives through the tunnel in regular service occurred on May 17, 1908. The locomotives were built by Baldwin-Westinghouse.


In 1923, the GTR was nationalized by Canada's federal government, which then merged the bankrupt railway into the recently formed Canadian National Railway. CN also assumed control of Grand Trunk Western as a subsidiary and the tunnel company and continued operations much as before.


The electric-powered locomotives were retired in 1958 and scrapped in 1959 after CN retired and scrapped its last steam-powered locomotives on trains passing through the tunnel. New diesel-powered locomotives did not cause the same problems with air quality in this relatively short tunnel.


After the Second World War, railways in North America started to see the dimensions of freight cars increase. Canadian National (identified as CN after 1960) was forced to rely upon rail ferries to carry freight cars, such as hicube boxcars, automobile carriers, certain intermodal cars and chemical tankers, which exceeded the limits of the tunnel's dimensions.


The tunnel was designated a Civil Engineering Landmark by both the Canadian and the American Societies of Civil Engineers in 1991.


The tunnel was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1993.


The construction of the tunnel has also been recognized as National Historic Event by Parks Canada since 1992, with a plaque at the site.


The second tunnel was built to handle intermodal rail cars with double-stacked shipping containers, which could not fit through the original tunnel or the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel in Detroit. By the early 1990s, CN had commissioned engineering studies for a replacement tunnel to be built adjacent to the existing St. Clair River tunnel. In 1992, new CN president Paul Tellier foresaw that CN would increase its traffic in the Toronto–Chicago corridor. The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was implemented in 1989 and discussions for a North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico discussions were underway at that time (NAFTA was implemented in 1994). It was only logical that import/export traffic on CN's corridor would increase dramatically.


In 1993, CN began construction of the newer and larger tunnel. Tellier declared at the ceremonies:


"[the] tunnel will give CN the efficiencies it needs to become a strong competitive force in North American transportation"


Unlike the first tunnel, which was hand dug from both ends, an earth boring machine called the "Excalibore" made by the Lovat Tunnel Equipment Inc. was used. It started on the Canadian side and dug its way to the U.S.


The tunnel opened later in 1994 whereupon freight and passenger trains stopped using the adjacent original tunnel, whose bore was sealed. The new tunnel was dedicated on May 5, 1995 and measures from portal to portal with a bore diameter of with a single standard gauge track. It could accommodate all freight cars currently in service in North America, thus the rail ferries were also retired in 1994 at the time of the tunnel's completion and opening for service.


On November 30, 2004, CN announced that the new St. Clair River tunnel would be named the Paul M. Tellier Tunnel in honour of the company's retired president, Paul Tellier, who foresaw the impact the tunnel would have on CN's eastern freight corridor. A sign now hangs over each tunnel portal with this name.


On June 28, 2019, train CN M383-28, hauling 100+ cars, had 40 cars derail in the tunnel, spilling 13,700 gallons of sulfuric acid and closing the tunnel for several days afterwards. The tunnel re-opened on July 10, 2019.


Dennison is a historic railway station located at 400 Center Street in Dennison, Ohio. The depot was built between 1884 and 1900, and the baggage room was built circa 1912. The station is located midway between Dennison and Uhrichsville, Ohio, and served both communities.


The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 8, 1976, as the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot and Baggage Room. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 17, 2011. It is now a local history museum.


The Thomas Viaduct spans the Patapsco River and Patapsco Valley between Relay, Maryland and Elkridge, Maryland, USA. It was commissioned by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O); built between July 4, 1833, and July 4, 1835; and named for Philip E. Thomas, the company's first president. It remains the world's oldest multiple arched stone railroad bridge.


At its completion, the Thomas Viaduct was the largest railroad bridge in the United States and the country's first multi-span masonry railroad bridge to be built on a curve. In 1964, it was designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 2010, the bridge was designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.


The viaduct is now owned and operated by CSX Transportation and still in use today, making it one of the oldest railroad bridges still in service.


This Roman-arch stone bridge is divided into eight spans. It was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, II, then B&O's assistant engineer and later its chief engineer. The main design problem to overcome was that of constructing such a large bridge on a curve. The design called for several variations in span and pier widths between the opposite sides of the structure. This problem was solved by having the lateral pier faces laid out on radial lines, making the piers essentially wedge-shaped and fitted to the 4-degree curve.


The viaduct was built by John McCartney of Ohio, who received the contract after completing the Patterson Viaduct. Caspar Wever, the railroad's chief of construction, supervised the work.


The span of the viaduct is long; the individual arches are roughly in span, with a height of from the water level to the base of the rail. The width at the top of the spandrel wall copings is . The bridge is constructed using a rough-dressed Maryland granite ashlar from Patapsco River quarries, known as Woodstock granite.


A wooden-floored walkway built for pedestrian and railway employee use is wide and supported by cast iron brackets and edged with ornamental cast iron railings. The viaduct contains of masonry and cost $142,236.51, equal to $ today.


When the Thomas Viaduct was completed, a obelisk with the names of the builder, directors of the railroad, the architect (engineer) and others associated with the viaduct was erected at the east end in Relay, by builder John McCartney. On one side the monument reads: "The Thomas Viaduct, Commenced July 4, 1833 Finished, July 4, 1835". He also celebrated the completed work by having his men kneel on the deck of the viaduct while mock "baptizing" them with a pint of whiskey.


Until after the American Civil War, the B&O was the only railroad into Washington, D.C., thus the Thomas Viaduct was essential for supply trains to reach the capital of the Union during that conflict. To prevent sabotage, the bridge was heavily guarded by Union troops stationed along its length.


From the 1880s to the 1950s, Thomas Viaduct carried B&O's famed "Royal Blue Line" passenger trains between New York and Washington. Until the late 1960s, the bridge also carried B&O passenger trains traveling to points west of Washington, such as the "Capital Limited" to Chicago and the "National Limited" to St. Louis.


With the advent of Amtrak on May 1, 1971, B&O ended its passenger train service, except for local Baltimore–Washington commuter trains. In 1986, CSX acquired the B&O and all of its trackage, including the Thomas Viaduct. Today, MARC's "Camden Line" train service runs daily trains over the Viaduct. "See" Capital Subdivision.


During design and construction, the Thomas Viaduct was nicknamed "Latrobe's Folly" after the designer Benjamin Latrobe II, because at the time many doubted that it could even support its own weight. Contrary to these predictions, the Thomas Viaduct survived the great flood of 1868 as well as Hurricane Agnes in 1972, two floods that wiped out the Patapsco Valley and destroyed nearly everything in their path; and to this day it continues to carry 300-ton (270 tonne) diesel locomotives passengers and heavy freight traffic.


The bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 28, 1964, and administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. In 2010, the bridge designated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.


In 2014 and 2015, the non-profit historic preservation organization Preservation Howard County placed the Viaduct on its list of the top 10 endangered historic places in Howard County. The Patapsco Heritage Greenway group announced plans to add handrails to the bridge in 2015.


The Carrollton Viaduct, located over the Gwynns Falls stream near Carroll Park in southwest Baltimore, Maryland, is the first stone masonry bridge built for railroad use in the United States for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, founded 1827, with construction beginning the following year and completed 1829. The bridge is named in honor of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), of Maryland, known for being the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, the only Roman Catholic in the Second Continental Congress (1775-1781), and wealthiest man in the Thirteen Colonies of the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).


In 1982 the viaduct was designated a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.


The bridge is currently one of the world's oldest railroad bridges still in use for rail traffic, carrying loads far greater than originally envisioned. It was named after Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, who laid the cornerstone on July 4, 1828. As he laid the first stone he said, "I consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence." Builder Caspar Wever and designer James Lloyd completed the structure for the railroad in November 1829, at an officially listed cost of $58,106.73. The actual cost of the construction may have been as high as $100,000.


Andrew Jackson, the first President of the United States to ride on a railroad train, crossed the bridge on a trip between Ellicott's Mills and Baltimore on June 6, 1833. The Carrollton Viaduct has provided continual service to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and its modern corporate successor, CSX Transportation.


The viaduct was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 11, 1971 and was automatically listed on the National Register of Historic Places the same day.


Virginia and Truckee Railway Motor Car 22


The car body was constructed from steel using a monocoque design and given an aerodynamic shape. The body consisted of a curved roof, rounded rear end, and its distinctive knife-edge "wind-splitter" front end. Also a characteristic of the McKeen railcars was the frequent use of porthole windows; a total of 33 were used on Motor Car 22. The interior of Motor Car 22 was divided into the engine compartment inside the pointed front end of the motor car, the passenger compartment at the rear of the car, and the baggage compartment in the middle. When built, it had a seating capacity of 84 passengers.


The engine and trucks were removed from the McKeen car, and the body was sold in 1946 by the Virginia and Truckee. It was used as a diner in Carson City until it was sold in 1955 to a plumbing business for use as offices and storage. The remains of Motor Car 22 were eventually donated to the Nevada State Railroad Museum in 1995.


From 1995 to August 1997, the Nevada State Railroad Museum conducted a feasibility study of whether the McKeen could be restored to working order. The study found that most of the historic material needed could be salvaged or replicated, with the exception of the engine, transmission and acetylene lighting.


Motor Car 22 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 6, 2005. The study also determined that there are four surviving McKeen motor cars, only two of them being models. None of them could "display the current state of high integrity and preservation" seen in Motor Car 22: one was converted into a passenger rail car in Anchorage, Alaska, one was cut in half and used as a shed in Price, Utah, while another was converted into a diesel-electric switcher.


The motor car was rededicated after the formal completion of the restoration on the centennial of its delivery to the Virginia and Truckee—May 9, 2010. The McKeen car was designated a National Historic Landmark on October 16, 2012. The car is operated annually by the Nevada State Railroad Museum for Nevada Day, Independence Day, Father's Day and National Train Day.


Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Martinsburg Shops is a historic industrial district in Martinsburg, West Virginia. It is significant both for its railroading architecture by Albert Fink and John Rudolph Niernsee and for its role in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. It consists of three contributing buildings, one of which is the oldest covered roundhouse in the United States. The presence of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company in Martinsburg dates back to the late 1840s, when the first engine and machine shops were erected for the expanding company.


The shops were designated a National Historic Landmark and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. They are now managed by a local authority as an event venue.


The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) was founded on February 28, 1827. On May 21, 1842, the first steam locomotive arrived in Martinsburg and, later that same year, November 10, the first passenger train. The first roundhouse complex was constructed during 1848–1850.


On October 19, 1862, the roundhouse complex was burned by Confederate troops under Colonel Jackson.


In 1866, the B&O began reconstruction of the site. From 1866 to 1872, the present roundhouse complex was re-built. Other major buildings that were built at this time were the West Roundhouse, East Roundhouse, Bridge & Machine Shop, and the Frog & Switch Shop.


On July 16, 1877, the first nationwide strike, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, began when rail workers at Martinsburg started an action to protest pay cuts. After several unsuccessful attempts to quell the protests, Governor Henry M. Mathews called for federal troops. By the time these troops had restored order, the protest of the rail company had spread across the country.


The Martinsburg shops were used until March 14, 1988, when all local operations were transferred to other locations. On May 14, 1990, vandals set fire to wooden pallets in the East Roundhouse, nearly destroying the building. Only portions of the outer walls remain standing.


The Berkeley County Commission purchased the historic railroad property in February 1999 for $150,000 from CSX Transportation Inc. The property was transferred to the Berkeley County Roundhouse Authority in April 2000. The roundhouse authority, a public, nonprofit corporation was established by an act of the West Virginia Legislature in 1999. Efforts to preserve and redevelop the historic railroad site, which dates to the 1840s, is ongoing, but the buildings are open for public tours and can be rented for special events.


On July 31, 2003, the B&O Roundhouse was designated a National Historic Landmark and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.


The Cheyenne Depot Museum is a railroad museum in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is located inside the historic Union Pacific Railroad depot, built in the 1880s. The depot, a National Historic Landmark, was the railroad's largest station west of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and a major western example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture.


The museum, founded in 1993, interprets Cheyenne's early history and that of the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. It hosts an annual Steam Train Excursion in July, and Depot Days, in which tours are offered of other railroad facilities.


The station is built from blocks of sandstone quarried and transported from Ft. Collins, Colorado. The Depot stands directly down the street from, and facing the, Wyoming State Capitol building, signalling its historic significance in the city and state.


It received major renovations in 1922 to lengthen the building and a redecoration 1929. From 2001 to 2006, another renovation to the depot is being made including a $6.5 million US dollar improvement provided by the City of Cheyenne and plaza built in front of the Depot. This plaza hosts a variety of music and events throughout the year.


Amtrak's "San Francisco Zephyr" ceased serving this station directly in 1979 in favor of a new station in Borie, south of Cheyenne. This eliminated a time-consuming backup move in and out of the station. Passengers were bused between Borie and Cheyenne.


The Old West Museum and Cheyenne Frontier Days made an agreement which established the Cheyenne Depot Museum, Inc. as a 501(c)3 Corporation non-profit organization. The depot is under lease from the city of Cheyenne to this corporation for 25 years.


Grand Central Terminal (GCT; also referred to as Grand Central Station or simply as Grand Central) is a commuter rail terminal located at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Grand Central is the southern terminus of the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem, Hudson and New Haven Lines, serving the northern parts of the New York metropolitan area. It also contains a connection to the New York City Subway at Grand Central–42nd Street station. The terminal is the third-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station and Toronto Union Station.


The distinctive architecture and interior design of Grand Central Terminal's station house have earned it several landmark designations, including as a National Historic Landmark. Its Beaux-Arts design incorporates numerous works of art. Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The terminal's Main Concourse is often used as a meeting place, and is especially featured in films and television. Grand Central Terminal contains a variety of stores and food vendors, including upscale restaurants and bars, two food halls, and a grocery marketplace.


Grand Central Terminal was built by and named for the New York Central Railroad; it also served the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and, later, successors to the New York Central. Opened in 1913, the terminal was built on the site of two similarly-named predecessor stations, the first of which dates to 1871. Grand Central Terminal served intercity trains until 1991, when Amtrak began routing its trains through nearby Penn Station. The East Side Access project, which will bring Long Island Rail Road service to a new station beneath the terminal, is expected to be completed in late 2022.


Grand Central covers and has 44 platforms, more than any other railroad station in the world. Its platforms, all below ground, serve 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower. In total, there are 67 tracks, including a rail yard and sidings; of these, 43 tracks are in use for passenger service, while the remaining two dozen are used to store trains. Another eight tracks and four platforms are being built on two new levels deep underneath the existing station as part of East Side Access.


Grand Central Terminal was named by and for the New York Central Railroad, which built the station and its two predecessors on the site. It has "always been more colloquially and affectionately known as Grand Central Station", the name of its immediate predecessor that operated from 1900 to 1910. The name "Grand Central Station" is also shared with the nearby U.S. Post Office station at 450 Lexington Avenue and, colloquially, with the Grand Central–42nd Street subway station next to the terminal.


Grand Central Terminal serves some 67 million passengers a year, more than any other Metro-North station. At morning rush hour, a train arrives at the terminal every 58 seconds.


Three of Metro-North's five main lines terminate at Grand Central:


Through these lines, the terminal serves Metro-North commuters traveling to and from the Bronx in New York City; Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties in New York; and Fairfield and New Haven counties in Connecticut.


The New York City Subway's adjacent Grand Central–42nd Street station serves the following routes:


These MTA Regional Bus Operations buses stop near Grand Central:


The terminal and its predecessors were designed for intercity service, which operated from the first station building's completion in 1871 until Amtrak ceased operations in the terminal in 1991. Through transfers, passengers could connect to all major lines in the United States, including the "Canadian", the "Empire Builder", the "San Francisco Zephyr", the "Southwest Limited", the "Crescent", and the "Sunset Limited" under Amtrak. Destinations included San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, New Orleans, Chicago, and Montreal. Another notable former train was New York Central's "20th Century Limited", a luxury service that operated to Chicago's LaSalle Street Station between 1902 and 1967 and was among the most famous trains of its time.


From 1971 to 1991, all Amtrak trains using the intrastate Empire Corridor to Niagara Falls terminated at Grand Central; interstate Northeast Corridor trains used Penn Station. Notable Amtrak services at Grand Central included the "Lake Shore", "Empire Service", "Ethan Allen Express", "Adirondack", "Niagara Rainbow", "Maple Leaf", and "Empire State Express".


The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to bring Long Island Rail Road commuter trains to a new station beneath Grand Central as part of its East Side Access project. The project will connect the terminal to the railroad's Main Line, which connects to all of the LIRR's branches and almost all of its stations. , service is expected to begin in late 2022.


Grand Central Terminal was designed and built with two main levels for passengers: an upper for intercity trains and a lower for commuter trains. This configuration, devised by New York Central vice president William J. Wilgus, separated intercity and commuter-rail passengers, smoothing the flow of people in and through the station. After intercity service ended in 1991, the upper level was renamed the Main Concourse and the lower the Dining Concourse.


The original plan for Grand Central's interior was designed by Reed and Stem, with some work by Whitney Warren of Warren and Wetmore.


The Main Concourse is located on the upper platform level of Grand Central, in the geographical center of the station building. The concourse leads directly to most of the terminal's upper-level tracks, although some are accessed from passageways near the concourse. The Main Concourse is usually filled with bustling crowds and is often used as a meeting place. At the center of the concourse is an information booth topped with a four-sided brass clock, one of Grand Central's most recognizable icons. The terminal's main departure boards are located at the south end of the space; the boards have been replaced numerous times since their initial installation in 1967.


In their design for the station's interior, Reed & Stem created a circulation system that allowed passengers alighting from trains to enter the Main Concourse, then leave through various passages that branch from it. Among these are the north–south 42nd Street Passage and Shuttle Passage, which run south to 42nd Street; and three east–west passageways — the Grand Central Market, the Graybar Passage, and the Lexington Passage — that run about east to Lexington Avenue by 43rd Street. Several passages run north of the terminal, including the north–south 45th Street Passage, which leads to 45th Street and Madison Avenue, and the network of tunnels in Grand Central North, which lead to exits at every street from 45th to 48th Street.


Each of the east–west passageways runs through a different building. The northernmost is the Graybar Passage, built on the first floor of the Graybar Building in 1926. Its walls and seven large transverse arches are made of coursed ashlar travertine, and the floor is terrazzo. The ceiling is composed of seven groin vaults, each of which has an ornamental bronze chandelier. The first two vaults, as viewed from leaving Grand Central, are painted with cumulus clouds, while the third contains a 1927 mural by Edward Trumbull depicting American transportation.


The middle passageway houses Grand Central Market, a cluster of food shops. The site was originally a segment of 43rd Street which became the terminal's first service dock in 1913. In 1975, a Greenwich Savings Bank branch was built in the space, which was converted into the marketplace in 1998, and involved installing a new limestone facade on the building. The building's second story, whose balcony overlooks the market and 43rd Street, was to house a restaurant, but is instead used for storage.


The southernmost of the three, the Lexington Passage, was originally known as the Commodore Passage after the Commodore Hotel, which it ran through. When the hotel was renamed the Grand Hyatt, the passage was likewise renamed. The passage acquired its current name during the terminal's renovation in the 1990s.


The Shuttle Passage, on the west side of the terminal, connects the Main Concourse to Grand Central's subway station. The terminal was originally configured with two parallel passages, later simplified into one wide passageway.


Ramps include the Vanderbilt Avenue ramp and the Oyster Bar ramps. The Vanderbilt Avenue or Kitty Kelly ramp leads from the corner of Vanderbilt Avenue and 42nd Street down into the Shuttle Passage. The ramp was likewise restored in 1998; originally and currently its space was two stories high. Most of the space was built upon, becoming the Kitty Kelly women's shoe store, and later operating as Federal Express.


Grand Central North is a network of four tunnels that allow people to walk between the station building (which sits between 42nd and 44th Street) and exits at 45th, 46th, 47th, and 48th Street. The Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage run parallel to the tracks on the upper level, while two shorter cross-passages run perpendicular to the tracks. The 47th Street cross-passage runs between the upper and lower tracks, below street level; it provides access to upper-level tracks. The 45th Street cross-passage runs under the lower tracks, below street level. Converted from a corridor built to transport luggage and mail, it provides access to lower-level tracks.


The tunnels' street-level entrances, each enclosed by a freestanding glass structure, sit at the northeast corner of East 47th Street and Madison Avenue (Northwest Passage), northeast corner of East 48th Street and Park Avenue (Northeast Passage), on the east and west sides of 230 Park Avenue (Helmsley Building) between 45th and 46th streets, and (since 2012) on the south side of 47th Street between Park and Lexington avenues. Pedestrians can also take an elevator to the 47th Street passage from the north side of East 47th Street, between Madison and Vanderbilt avenues.


Proposals for these tunnels had been discussed since at least the 1970s. The MTA approved preliminary plans in 1983, gave final approval in 1991, and began construction in 1994. Dubbed the North End Access Project, the work was to be completed in 1997 at a cost of $64.5 million, but it was slowed by the incomplete nature of the building's original blueprints and by previously undiscovered groundwater beneath East 45th Street. The passageways opened on August 18, 1999, at a final cost of $75 million.


The passages contain an MTA Arts & Design mosaic installation by Ellen Driscoll, an artist from Brooklyn.


The entrances to Grand Central North were originally open from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. About 30,000 people used it on a typical weekday, but only about 6,000 people on a typical weekend. Since summer 2006, Grand Central North has been closed on weekends; MTA officials cited low usage and the need to save money.


Vanderbilt Hall is an event space on the south side of the terminal, between the Park Avenue entrance located to its south and the Main Concourse located to its north. Its west side houses a food hall. The space is lit by Beaux-Arts chandeliers, each with 132 bulbs on four tiers.


It was formerly the main waiting room for the terminal, used particularly by intercity travelers. The space featured double-sided oak benches and could seat 700 people. When intercity service ceased at Grand Central in 1991, the room began to be used by several hundred homeless people. Terminal management responded first by removing the room's benches, then by closing the space entirely. In 1998, the hall was renovated and renamed Vanderbilt Hall after the family that built and owned the station. It is used for the annual Christmas Market, as well as for special exhibitions and private events.


Since 1999, Vanderbilt Hall has hosted the annual Tournament of Champions squash championship. Each January, tournament officials construct a free-standing glass-enclosed squash court. Like a theatre in the round, spectators sit on three sides of the court.


In 2016, the west half of the hall became the Great Northern Food Hall, an upscale Nordic-themed food court with five pavilions. The food hall is the first long-term tenant of the space; the terminal's landmark status prevents permanent installations.


A men's smoking room and women's waiting room were formerly located on the west and east sides of Vanderbilt Hall, respectively. In 2016, the men's room was renovated into Agern, an 85-seat Nordic-themed fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurant operated by Noma co-founder Claus Meyer, who also runs the food hall.


The Biltmore Room is a marble hall northwest of the Main Concourse that serves as an entrance to tracks 39 through 42. Completed in 1915 directly beneath the New York Biltmore Hotel, it originally served as a waiting room for intercity trains known formally as the incoming train room and colloquially as the "Kissing Room".


The room's blackboard displayed the arrival and departure times of New York Central trains until 1967, when a mechanical board was installed in the Main Concourse.


The Station Master's Office, located near Track 36, has Grand Central's only dedicated waiting room. The space has benches, restrooms, and a floral mixed-media mural on three of its walls. The room's benches were previously located in the former waiting room, now known as Vanderbilt Hall. Since 2008, the area has offered free Wi-Fi.


The theater stopped showing newsreels by 1968 but continued operating until around 1979, when it was gutted for retail space. A renovation in the early 2000s removed a false ceiling, revealing the theater's projection window and its astronomical mural, which proved similar in colors and style to the Main Concourse ceiling.


Access to the lower-level tracks is provided by the Dining Concourse, located below the Main Concourse and connected to it by numerous stairs, ramps, and escalators. For decades, it was called the Suburban Concourse because it handled commuter rail trains. Today, it has central seating and lounge areas, surrounded by restaurants and food vendors. The shared public seating in the concourse was designed resembling Pullman traincars. These areas are frequented by the homeless, and as a result, in the mid-2010s the MTA created two areas with private seating for dining customers.


The terminal's late-1990s renovation added stands and restaurants to the concourse, and installed escalators to link it to the main concourse level. The MTA also spent $2.2 million to install two circular terrazzo designs by David Rockwell and Beyer Blinder Belle, each 45 feet in diameter, over the concourse's original terrazzo floor. Since 2015, part of the Dining Concourse has been closed for the construction of stairways and escalators to the new LIRR terminal being built as part of East Side Access.


A small square-framed clock is installed in the ceiling near Tracks 108 and 109. It was manufactured at an unknown time by the Self Winding Clock Company, which made several others in the terminal. The clock hung inside the gate at Track 19 until 2011, when it was moved so it would not be blocked by lights added during upper-level platform improvements.


Metro-North's lost-and-found bureau sits near Track 100 at the far east end of the Dining Concourse. Incoming items are sorted according to function and date: for instance, there are separate bins for hats, gloves, belts, and ties. The sorting system was computerized in the 1990s. Lost items are kept for up to 90 days before being donated or auctioned off.


As early as 1920, the bureau received between 15,000 and 18,000 items a year. By 2002, the bureau was collecting "3,000 coats and jackets; 2,500 cellphones; 2,000 sets of keys; 1,500 wallets, purses and ID's ; and 1,100 umbrellas" a year. By 2007, it was collecting 20,000 items a year, 60% of which were eventually claimed. In 2013, the bureau reported an 80% return rate, among the highest in the world for a transit agency.


Some of the more unusual items collected by the bureau include fake teeth, prosthetic body parts, legal documents, diamond pouches, live animals, and a $100,000 violin. One story has it that a woman purposely left her unfaithful husband's ashes on a Metro-North train before collecting them three weeks later. In 1996, some of the lost-and-found items were displayed at an art exhibition.


Grand Central Terminal contains restaurants such as the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant and various fast food outlets surrounding the Dining Concourse. There are also delis, bakeries, a gourmet and fresh food market, and an annex of the New York Transit Museum. The 40-plus retail stores include newsstands and chain stores, including a Starbucks coffee shop, a Rite Aid pharmacy, and an Apple Store. The Oyster Bar, the oldest business in the terminal, sits next to the Dining Concourse and below Vanderbilt Hall.


An elegantly restored cocktail lounge, the Campbell, sits just south of the 43rd Street/Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. A mix of commuters and tourists access it from the street or the balcony level. The space was once the office of 1920s tycoon John W. Campbell, who decorated it to resemble the galleried hall of a 13th-century Florentine palace. In 1999, it opened as a bar, the Campbell Apartment; a new owner renovated and renamed it the Campbell in 2017.


From 1939 to 1964, CBS Television occupied a large portion of the terminal building, particularly in a third-floor space above Vanderbilt Hall. The CBS offices, called "The Annex", contained two "program control" facilities (43 and 44); network master control; facilities for local station WCBS-TV; and, after World War II, two production studios (41 and 42). The total space measured . Broadcasts were transmitted from an antenna atop the nearby Chrysler Building installed by order of CBS chief executive William S. Paley, and were also shown on a large screen in the Main Concourse. In 1958, CBS opened the world's first major videotape operations facility in Grand Central. Located in a former rehearsal room on the seventh floor, the facility used 14 Ampex VR-1000 videotape recorders.


"Douglas Edwards with the News" broadcast from Grand Central for several years, covering John Glenn's 1962 Mercury-Atlas 6 space flight and other events. Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" originated there, including his famous broadcasts on Senator Joseph McCarthy, which were recreated in George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck", although the film incorrectly implies that CBS News and corporate offices were in the same building. The long-running panel show "What's My Line?" was first broadcast from Grand Central, as were "The Goldbergs" and "Mama". CBS eventually moved its operations to the CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street.


Grand Central Terminal's basements are among the largest in the city. Basement spaces include M42, which has AC-to-DC converters to power the track's third rails as well as Carey's Hole, a former retail storage space and present-day employee lounge and dormitory.


Grand Central Terminal contains an underground sub-basement known as M42. Its electrical substation is divided into substation 1T, which provides for third-rail power, and substation 1L, which provides for other lighting and power. The substation—the world's largest at the time—was built about under the Graybar Building at a cost of $3 million, and opened February 16, 1930. It occupies a four-story space with an area of .


The terminal holds the Guinness World Record for having the most platforms of any railroad station: 28, which support 44 platform numbers. All are island platforms except one side platform. Odd-numbered tracks are usually on the east side of the platform; even-numbered tracks on the west side. , there are 67 tracks, of which 43 are in regular passenger use, serving Metro-North. At its opening, the train shed contained 123 tracks, including duplicate track numbers and storage tracks, with a combined length of .


The tracks slope down as they exit the station to the north, to help departing trains accelerate and arriving ones slow down. Because of the size of the rail yards, Park Avenue and its side streets from 43rd to 59th Streets are raised on viaducts, and the surrounding blocks were covered over by various buildings.


At its busiest, the terminal is served by an arriving train every 58 seconds.


The upper Metro-North level has 42 numbered tracks. Twenty-nine serve passenger platforms; these are numbered 11 to 42, east to west. Tracks 12, 22, and 31 do not exist, and appear to have been removed. To the east of the upper platforms sits the East Yard: ten storage tracks numbered 1 through 10 from east to west. A balloon loop runs from Tracks 38–42 on the far west side of the station, around the other tracks, and back to storage Tracks 1–3 at the far east side of the station; this allows trains to turn around more easily.


Track 63 held MNCW #002, a baggage car, for about 20 to 30 years. The railcar's location near Roosevelt's Track 61 led former tour guide Dan Brucker and others to falsely claim that this was the president's personal train car used for transporting his limousine. The baggage car was moved to the Danbury Railway Museum in 2019.


The lower Metro-North level has 27 tracks numbered 100 to 126, east to west. Two were originally intended for mail trains and two were for baggage handling. Today, only Tracks 102–112 and 114–115 are used for passenger service. The lower-level balloon loop, whose curve was much sharper than that of the upper-level loop and could only handle electric multiple units used on commuter lines was removed at an unknown date. Tracks 116–125 were demolished to make room for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) concourse being built under the Metro-North station as part of the East Side Access project.


The upper and lower levels have different track layouts and, as such, are supported by different sets of columns. The upper level is supported by ultra-strong columns, some of which can carry over .


The LIRR terminal being built as part of East Side Access will add four platforms and eight tracks numbered 201–204 and 301–304 in two double-decked caverns below the Metro-North station. The new LIRR station will have four tracks and two platforms in each of the two caverns, with each cavern containing two tracks and one platform on each level. A mezzanine will sit on a center level between the LIRR's two track levels.


Upper floors of the terminal primarily hold MTA offices, including the fifth-floor office of the terminal's director, overlooking the Main Concourse. The seventh floor contains Metro-North's situation room for handling emergencies, as well as the offices of the Fleet Department.


Grand Central Terminal has a single Operations Control Center, where controllers monitor the track interlockings with computers. Completed in 1993, the center is operated by a crew of about 24 people. The terminal was originally built with five signal control centers, labeled A, B, C, F, and U, that collectively controlled all of the track interlockings around the terminal. Each switch was electrically controlled by a lever in one of the signal towers, where lights illuminated on track maps to show which switches were in use. As trains passed a given tower, the signal controllers reported the train's engine and timetable numbers, direction, track number, and the exact time.


Tower U controlled the interlocking between 48th and 58th streets; Tower C, the storage spurs; and Tower F, the turning loops. A four-story underground tower at 49th Street housed the largest of the signal towers: Tower A, which handled the upper-level interlockings via 400 levers, and Tower B, which handled the lower-level interlockings with 362 levers. The towers housed offices for the stationmaster, yardmaster, car-maintenance crew, electrical crew, and track-maintenance crew. There were also break rooms for conductors, train engineers, and engine men. After Tower B was destroyed in a fire in 1986, the signal towers were consolidated into the modern control center.


Another library, the Frank Julian Sprague Memorial Library of the Electric Railroaders Association, was created in the terminal in 1979. The library has about 500,000 publications and slides, focusing on electric rail and trolley lines. A large amount of these works were donated to the New York Transit Museum in 2013.


Grand Central Terminal was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Reed and Stem, which was responsible for the overall design of the terminal, and Warren and Wetmore, which mainly made cosmetic alterations to the exterior and interior. Various elements inside the terminal were designed by French architects and artists Jules-Félix Coutan, Sylvain Salières, and Paul César Helleu. Grand Central has both monumental spaces and meticulously crafted detail, especially on its facade. The facade is based on an overall exterior design by Whitney Warren.


The terminal is widely recognized and favorably viewed by the American public. In America's Favorite Architecture, a 2006-07 public survey by the American Institute of Architects, respondents ranked it their 13th-favorite work of architecture in the country, and their fourth-favorite in the city and state after the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 2013, historian David Cannadine described it as one of the most majestic buildings of the twentieth century. The terminal is also recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, added in 2013.


As proposed in 1904, Grand Central Terminal was bounded by Vanderbilt Avenue to the west, Lexington Avenue to the east, 42nd Street to the south, and 45th Street to the north. It included a post office on its east side. The east side of the station house proper is an alley called Depew Place, which was built along with the Grand Central Depot annex in the 1880s and mostly decommissioned in the 1900s when the new terminal was built.


The station house measures along Vanderbilt Avenue (120 feet longer than originally planned), on 42nd Street, and tall.


The station and its rail yard have steel frames. The building also uses large steel columns designed to hold the weight of a 20-story office building, which was to be built when additional room was required.


The facade and structure of the terminal building primarily use granite. Because granite emits radiation, people who work full-time in the station receive an average dose of 525 mrem/year, more than permitted in nuclear power facilities. The base of the exterior is Stony Creek granite, while the upper portion is of Indiana limestone, from Bedford, Indiana.


The interiors use several varieties of stone, including imitation Caen stone for the Main Concourse; cream-colored Botticino marble for the interior decorations; and pink Tennessee marble for the floors of the Main Concourse, Biltmore Room, and Vanderbilt Hall, as well as the two staircases in the Main Concourse. Real Caen stone was judged too expensive, so the builders mixed plaster, sand, lime, and Portland cement. Most of the remaining masonry is made from concrete. Guastavino tiling, a fireproof tile-and-cement vault pattern patented by Rafael Guastavino, is used in various spaces.


In designing the facade of Grand Central, the architects wanted to make the building seem like a gateway to the city. The south facade, facing 42nd Street, is the front side of the terminal building, and contains large arched windows. The central window resembles a triumphal arch. There are two pairs of columns on either side of the central window. The columns are of the Corinthian order, and are partially attached to the granite walls behind them, though they are detached from one another. The facade was also designed to complement that of the New York Public Library Main Branch, another Beaux-Arts edifice located on nearby Fifth Avenue.


The facade includes several large works of art. At the top of the south facade is a clock. The clock is surrounded by the "Glory of Commerce" sculptural group, a sculpture by Jules-Félix Coutan, which includes representations of Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. At its unveiling in 1914, the work was considered the largest sculptural group in the world. Below these works, facing the Park Avenue Viaduct, is an 1869 statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt, longtime owner of New York Central. Sculpted by Ernst Plassmann, the bronze is the last remnant of a 150-foot bronze relief installed at the Hudson River Railroad depot at St. John's Park; it was moved to Grand Central Terminal in 1929.


The Main Concourse, on the terminal's upper platform level, is located in the geographical center of the station building. The cavernous concourse measures long by wide by high; a total of about . Its vastness was meant to evoke the terminal's "grand" status.


Many parts of the terminal are adorned with sculpted oak leaves and acorns, nuts of the oak tree. Cornelius Vanderbilt chose the acorn as the symbol of the Vanderbilt family, and adopted the saying "Great oaks from little acorns grow" as the family motto. Among these decorations is a brass acorn finial atop the four-sided clock in the center of the Main Concourse. Other acorn or oak leaf decorations include carved wreaths under the Main Concourse's west stairs; sculptures above the lunettes in the Main Concourse; metalwork above the elevators; reliefs above the train gates; and the electric chandeliers in the Main Waiting Room and Main Concourse. These decorations were designed by Salières.


Among the buildings modeled on Grand Central's design is the Poughkeepsie station, a Metro-North and Amtrak station in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was also designed by Warren and Wetmore and opened in 1918. Additionally, Union Station in Utica, New York was partially designed after Grand Central.


The Park Avenue Viaduct is an elevated road that carries Park Avenue around the terminal building and the MetLife Building and through the Helmsley Building — three buildings that lie across the line of the avenue. The viaduct rises from street level on 40th Street south of Grand Central, splits into eastern (northbound) and western (southbound) legs above the terminal building's main entrance, and continues north around the station building, directly above portions of its main level. The legs of the viaduct pass around the MetLife Building, into the Helmsley Building, and return to street level at 46th Street.


The viaduct was built to facilitate traffic along 42nd Street and along Park Avenue, which at the time was New York City's only discontinuous major north–south avenue. When the western leg of the viaduct was completed in 1919, it served both directions of traffic, and also served as a second level for picking up and dropping off passengers. After an eastern leg for northbound traffic was added in 1928, the western leg was used for southbound traffic only. A sidewalk, accessible from the Grand Hyatt hotel, runs along the section of the viaduct that is parallel to 42nd Street.


The terminal complex also originally included a six-story building for baggage handling just north of the main station building. Departing passengers unloaded their luggage from taxis or personal vehicles on the Park Avenue Viaduct, and elevators brought it to the baggage passageways (now part of Grand Central North), where trucks brought the luggage to the respective platforms. The process was reversed for arriving passengers. Biltmore Hotel guests arriving at Grand Central could get baggage delivered to their rooms. The baggage building was later converted to an office building, and was demolished in 1961 to make way for the MetLife Building.


The terminal's subway station, Grand Central–42nd Street, serves three lines: the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (serving the ), the IRT Flushing Line (serving the ), and the IRT 42nd Street Shuttle to Times Square. Originally built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the lines are operated by the MTA as part of the New York City Subway.


The Main Concourse is connected to the subway platforms' mezzanine via the Shuttle Passage. The platforms can also be reached from the 42nd Street Passage via stairs, escalators, and an elevator to the fare control area for the Lexington Avenue and Flushing Lines.


During the terminal's construction, there were proposals to allow commuter trains to pass through Grand Central and continue into the subway tracks. However, these plans were deemed impractical because commuter trains would have been too large to fit within the subway tunnels.


Three buildings serving essentially the same function have stood on the current Grand Central Terminal's site.


Grand Central Terminal arose from a need to build a central station for the Hudson River Railroad, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the New York and New Haven Railroad in modern-day Midtown Manhattan. The Harlem Railroad originally ran as a steam railroad on street level along Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue), while the New Haven Railroad ran along the Harlem's tracks in Manhattan per a trackage agreement. The business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Hudson River and New York Central Railroads in 1867, and merged them two years later. Vanderbilt developed a proposal to unite the three separate railroads at a single central station, replacing the separate and adjacent stations that created chaos in baggage transfer.


Grand Central Depot had reached its capacity again by the late 1890s, and it carried 11.5 million passengers a year by 1897. As a result, the railroads renovated the head house extensively based on plans by railroad architect Bradford Gilbert. The reconstructed building was renamed Grand Central Station. The new waiting room opened in October 1900.


The entire building was to be torn down in phases and replaced by the current Grand Central Terminal. It was to be the biggest terminal in the world, both in the size of the building and in the number of tracks. The Grand Central Terminal project was divided into eight phases, though the construction of the terminal itself comprised only two of these phases.


The current building was intended to compete with the since-demolished Pennsylvania Station, a majestic electric-train hub being built on Manhattan's west side for arch-rival Pennsylvania Railroad by McKim, Mead & White. In 1903, New York Central invited four architecture firms to a design competition to decide who would design the new terminal. Reed and Stem were ultimately selected, as were Warren and Wetmore, who were not part of the original competition. Reed and Stem were responsible for the overall design of the station, while Warren and Wetmore worked on designing the station's Beaux-Arts exterior. However, the team had a tense relationship due to constant design disputes.


Construction on Grand Central Terminal started on June 19, 1903. Wilgus proposed to demolish, excavate, and build the terminal in three sections or "bites", to prevent railroad service from being interrupted during construction. About of the ground were excavated at depths of up to 10 floors, with of debris being removed from the site daily. Over 10,000 workers were assigned to the project. The total cost of improvements, including electrification and the development of Park Avenue, was estimated at $180 million in 1910. Electric trains on the Hudson Line started running to Grand Central on September 30, 1906, and the segments of all three lines running into Grand Central had been electrified by 1907.


After the last train left Grand Central Station at midnight on June 5, 1910, workers promptly began demolishing the old station. The last remaining tracks from the former Grand Central Station were decommissioned on June 21, 1912. The new terminal was opened on February 2, 1913.


The terminal spurred development in the surrounding area, particularly in Terminal City, a commercial and office district created above where the tracks were covered. The development of Terminal City also included the construction of the Park Avenue Viaduct, surrounding the station, in the 1920s. The new electric service led to increased development in New York City's suburbs, and passenger traffic on the commuter lines into Grand Central more than doubled in the seven years following the terminal's completion. Passenger traffic grew so rapidly that by 1918, New York Central proposed expanding Grand Central Terminal.


In 1923, the Grand Central Art Galleries opened in the terminal. A year after it opened, the galleries established the Grand Central School of Art, which occupied on the seventh floor of the east wing of the terminal. The Grand Central School of Art remained in the east wing until 1944, and it moved to the Biltmore Hotel in 1958.


In 1947, over 65 million people traveled through Grand Central, an all-time high. The station's decline came soon afterward with the beginning of the Jet Age and the construction of the Interstate Highway System. There were multiple proposals to alter the terminal, including several replacing the station building with a skyscraper; none of the plans were carried out. Though the main building site was not redeveloped, the Pan Am Building (now the MetLife Building) was erected just to the north, opening in 1963.


The terminal was used for intercity transit until 1991. Amtrak, the national rail system formed in 1971, ran its last train from Grand Central on April 6, 1991, upon the completion of the Empire Connection on Manhattan's West Side. The connection allowed trains using the Empire Corridor from Albany, Toronto, and Montreal to use Penn Station. However, some Amtrak trains used Grand Central during the summers of 2017 and 2018 due to maintenance at Penn Station.


In 1988, the MTA commissioned a study of the Grand Central Terminal, which concluded that parts of the terminal could be turned into a retail area. The agency announced an $113.8 million renovation of the terminal in 1995. During this renovation, all advertisements were removed and the station was restored. The most striking effect was the restoration of the Main Concourse ceiling, revealing the painted skyscape and constellations. The renovations included the construction of the East Stairs, a curved monumental staircase on the east side of the station building that matched the West Stairs. An official re-dedication ceremony was held on October 1, 1998, marking the completion of the interior renovations.


On February 1, 2013, numerous displays, performances, and events were held to celebrate the terminal's centennial. The MTA awarded contracts to replace the display boards and public announcement systems and add security cameras at Grand Central Terminal in December 2017. The MTA also proposed to repair the Grand Central Terminal train shed's concrete and steel as part of the 2020–2024 MTA Capital Program. In February 2019, it was announced that the Grand Hyatt New York hotel that abuts Grand Central Terminal to the east would be torn down and replaced with a larger mixed-use structure over the next several years.


The East Side Access project, underway since 2007, is planned to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into the terminal when completed. LIRR trains will reach Grand Central from Harold Interlocking in Sunnyside, Queens, via the existing 63rd Street Tunnel and new tunnels under construction on both the Manhattan and Queens sides. LIRR trains will arrive and depart from a bi-level, eight-track tunnel with four platforms more than below the Metro-North tracks. The project includes a new 350,000-square-foot retail and dining concourse and new entrances at 45th, 46th, and 48th streets. Cost estimates have jumped from $4.4 billion in 2004, to $6.4 billion in 2006, then to $11.1 billion. The new stations and tunnels are to begin service in December 2022.


The Park Avenue Viaduct, which wrapped around the terminal, allowed Park Avenue traffic to bypass the building without being diverted onto nearby streets, and reconnected the only north–south avenue in midtown Manhattan that had an interruption in it. The station building was also designed to accommodate the re-connection of both segments of 43rd Street by going through the concourse, if the City of New York had demanded it.


Every train at Grand Central Terminal departs one minute later than its posted departure time. The extra minute is intended to encourage passengers rushing to catch trains at the last minute to slow down. According to "The Atlantic", Grand Central Terminal has the lowest rate of slips, trips, and falls on its marble floors, compared to all other stations in the U.S. with similar flooring.


All of the terminal's light fixtures are bare light bulbs. At the time of the terminal's construction, electricity was still a relatively new invention, and the inclusion of electric light bulbs showcased this innovation. In 2009, the incandescent light bulbs were replaced with energy- and money-saving fluorescent lamp fixtures.


When Grand Central Terminal opened, it hired two types of porters, marked with different-colored caps, to assist passengers. Porters with red caps served as bellhops, rolling luggage around Grand Central Terminal, and were rarely paid tips. There were more than 500 red-capped porters at one point. Porters with green caps, a position introduced in 1922, provided information services, sending out or receiving telegrams or phone messages for a fee. They later started dropping off and picking up packages as well. There were only twelve green-capped porters, as well as two messengers who brought messages to an exchange on the west side of the terminal.


Grand Central Terminal was built to handle 200 trains per hour, though actual traffic never came close to that. It had 46 tracks and 30 platforms, more than twice Penn Station's 21 tracks and 11 platforms. Its rail yard could hold 1,149 cars, far more than the 366 in its predecessor station, and it dwarfed Penn Station's yard.


As constructed, the upper level was for intercity trains, and the lower level for commuter trains. This allowed commuter and intercity passengers to board and exit trains without interfering with each other.


Balloon loops surrounding the station eliminated the need for complicated switching moves to bring the trains to the coach yards for service. At the time, passenger cars did not run on their own power, but were pulled by locomotives, and it was believed dangerous to perform locomotive shunting moves underground. Trains would drop passengers off at one side of the station, perhaps be stored or serviced in the rail yard, then use the turning loops and pick up passengers on the other side. The loops extended under Vanderbilt Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east.


Burying the terminal's tracks and platforms also allowed the railroads to sell above-ground air rights for real-estate development. Grand Central's construction thus produced several blocks of prime real estate in Manhattan, stretching from 42nd to 51st Streets between Madison and Lexington avenues. By the time the terminal opened in 1913, the blocks surrounding it were each valued at $2 million to $3 million. Terminal City soon became Manhattan's most desirable commercial and office district. From 1904 to 1926, land values along Park Avenue doubled, and land values in the Terminal City area increased 244%.


The district came to include office buildings such as the Chrysler Building, Chanin Building, Bowery Savings Bank Building, and Pershing Square Building; luxury apartment houses along Park Avenue; an array of high-end hotels that included the Commodore, Biltmore, Roosevelt, Marguery, Chatham, Barclay, Park Lane, and Waldorf Astoria; the Grand Central Palace; and the Yale Club of New York City. The structures immediately around Grand Central Terminal were developed shortly after the terminal's opening, while the structures along Park Avenue were constructed through the 1920s and 1930s.


The Graybar Building, completed in 1927, was one of the last projects of Terminal City. The building incorporates many of Grand Central's train platforms, as well as the Graybar Passage, a hallway with vendors and train gates stretching from the terminal to Lexington Avenue. In 1929, New York Central built its headquarters in a 34-story building, later renamed the Helmsley Building, which straddled Park Avenue north of the terminal. Development slowed drastically during the Great Depression, and part of Terminal City was gradually demolished or reconstructed with steel-and-glass designs after World War II.


The area shares similar boundaries as the Grand Central Business Improvement District, a neighborhood with businesses collectively funding improvements and maintenance in the area. The district is well-funded; in 1990 it had the largest budget of any business improvement district in the United States. The district's organization and operation is run by the Grand Central Partnership, which has given free tours of the station building. The partnership has also funded some restoration projects around the terminal, including installation of lamps to illuminate its facade and purchase of a streetlamp that used to stand on the Park Avenue Viaduct.


The terminal is served by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police Department, whose Fifth District is headquartered in a station on the Dining Concourse. The police force use specialized vehicles to traverse the interior of the terminal and other large stations; these vehicles include three-wheeled electric scooters from T3 Motion and utility vehicles by Global Electric Motorcars.


Various actions by MTA officers in the terminal have received media attention over the years. In 1988, seven officers were suspended for behaving inappropriately, including harassing a homeless man and patrolling unclothed. In the early 2000s, officers arrested two transgender people — Dean Spade in 2002 and Helena Stone in 2006 — who were attempting to use restrooms aligning with their gender identities. Lawsuits forced the MTA to drop the charges and to thenceforth allow use of restrooms according to gender identity. In 2017, an officer assaulted and arrested a conductor who was removing a passenger from a train in the terminal.


The brigade's fleet, stored in a bay next to Track 14, includes three electric carts equipped with sirens and red lights: a white-painted ambulance no wider than a hospital bed that carries a stretcher, oxygen tanks, defibrillators, and other medical equipment; a red pumper that carries 200 gallons of water and 300 feet of fire hose; and a red rescue truck with air packs, forcible entry tools, and turnout gear.


Among the permanent works of public art in Grand Central are the celestial ceiling in the Main Concourse, the "Glory of Commerce" work, the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt in front of the building's south facade, and the two cast-iron eagle statues adorning the terminal's facades. Temporary works, exhibitions, and events are regularly mounted in Vanderbilt Hall, while the Dining Concourse features temporary exhibits in a series of lightboxes. The terminal is also known for its performance and installation art, including flash mobs and other spontaneous events.


Grand Central Terminal is one of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions, with 21.6 million visitors in 2018, excluding train and subway passengers. The high visitor traffic makes it one of the most-photographed places in New York City and the United States. A 2009 Cornell University study mapping out geotagged photos worldwide indicated the station was the fourth most photographed place in New York City. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has partnerships with the Municipal Art Society for daily docent-led tours of the station, and with audio tour producer Orpheo USA for half- and full-hour tours with headsets. The audio tour is also available as a smartphone app. The tours debuted in 2013, in conjunction with the terminal's centennial celebration.


Transit passenger traffic makes the terminal the third-busiest train station in North America, after New York Penn Station and Toronto Union Station.


Grand Central Terminal has been the subject, inspiration, or setting for literature, television and radio episodes, and films.


Almost every scene in the terminal's train shed was shot on Track 34, one of the few platforms without columns.


The first filmed scene in which Grand Central Terminal appears may be the 1909 short comedy "Mr. Jones Has a Card Party". The terminal's first cinematic appearance was in the 1930 musical film "Puttin' On the Ritz", and its first Technicolor appearance was in the 1953 film "The Band Wagon". Some films from the 20th century, including "Grand Central Murder", "The Thin Man Goes Home", "Hello, Dolly!", and "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" used reconstructions of Grand Central, built in Hollywood, to stand in for the terminal. Additionally, the terminal was drawn and animated for use in the animated films "Madagascar" (2005) and "Wreck-It Ralph" (2012).


Other films in which the terminal appears include:


Notable documentaries about the terminal include "Grand Central", a 1982 film narrated by James Earl Jones and featuring Philip Johnson and Ed Koch.


On October 19, 2017, several of these films were screened in the terminal for an event created by the MTA, Rooftop Films, and the Museum of the Moving Image. The event featured a cinematic history lecture by architect and author James Sanders.


Grand Central Terminal's architecture, including its Main Concourse clock, are depicted on the stage of "Saturday Night Live", an NBC television show. The soundstage reconstruction of the terminal in Studio 8H was first installed in 2003.


"Grand Central Station", an NBC radio drama set at the terminal, ran from 1937 to 1953. Among the video games that feature the terminal are "Marvel's Spider-Man", "", and "Tom Clancy's The Division".


The Allegheny Portage Railroad was the first railroad constructed through the Allegheny Mountains in central Pennsylvania, United States; it operated from 1834 to 1854 as the first transportation infrastructure through the gaps of the Allegheny that connected the midwest to the eastern seaboard across the barrier range of the Allegheny Front. Approximately long overall, both ends connected to the Pennsylvania Canal, and the system was primarily used as a portage railway, haulting river boats and barges over the divide between the Ohio and the Susquehanna Rivers. Today, the remains of the railroad are preserved within the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service.


Except for peak moments of severe storms, it was an all-weather, all-seasons operation. Along with the rest of the Main Works, it cut transport time from Philadelphia to the Ohio River from weeks to just 3–5 days. Considered a technological marvel in its day, it played a critical role in opening the interior of the United States beyond the Appalachian Mountains to settlement and commerce. It included the first railroad tunnel in the United States, the Staple Bend Tunnel, and its inauguration was marked with great fanfare.


The entire Main Line system connecting Philadelphia and Pittsburgh via the Philadelphia-Columbia railroad, the Columbia-Hollidaysburg canal, the Portage railroad linking Hollidaysburg to Johnstown, and a canal from Johnstown to Pittsburgh, was long. A typical ride took 4 days instead of the former 23-day horse-wagon journey. The Old Portage Railroad was in operation for twenty years being considered "the wonder of America." Charles Dickens wrote a contemporary account of travel on the railroad in Chapter 10 of his "American Notes." Quoted at length in the Pennsylvania guide, Dickens "described travel on the Portage in 1842," describing aspects of the Portage Railroad's immediate social and geographic context, as well as mechanical strategies used by the Railroad for coping with the steep grades encountered on the route :


In the 1850s, the Main Line of Public Works and its portage railroad was rendered obsolete by the advance of railway technology and railroad engineering. Early in 1846 the Legislature chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to cross the entire state in response to plans by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to reach the Ohio Valley through Virginia. In December 1852 trains started to run between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh shortening the travel time from 4 days to 13 hours.


Construction on the New Portage Railroad, a 40-mile realignment to cross the Allegheny Ridge bypassing inclines, started in 1851 and cost $2.14 million. The PRR raised sufficient investment and had enough quick success that they bought the existing Portage railroad and other parts of the Main Line of Public Works from the state on July 31, 1857. The PRR abandoned most of the line and used the rest as local branches; "anything of value was either sold or stripped from the Allegheny Portage Railroad."


Nearly half a century later, the graded roadbeds of the descending section east of the Gallitzin Tunnel were re-railed with standard gauge freight tracks. The line reopened as a freight bypass line in 1904.


Pennsylvania Railroad successor Conrail abandoned this line to Hollidaysburg and most of the branch trackage along the Juniata River in 1981 and removed the rails.


The National Historic Site was established on in 1964 and is about west of Altoona, in Blair and Cambria counties.


The park service operates a visitor center with interpretive exhibits near the old line. Nearby is the Samuel Lemon House, a tavern located alongside the railroad near Cresson that was a popular stop for railroad passengers; it has been converted into a historical museum by the National Park Service. The NPS also maintains a length of reconstructed track, an engine house with exhibits, a picnic area, and hiking trails.


A skew arch bridge, a masterwork of cut stone construction, is another feature of the site near the Lemon House. The bridge is long on the south elevation, long on the north elevation, and high. It was the only bridge on the line that was built to carry a road.


The Staple Bend Tunnel is preserved in a separate unit of the historic site, east of Johnstown.


Central of Georgia Depot and Trainshed is a former passenger depot and trainshed constructed in 1860 by the Central of Georgia Railway (CofG) before the outbreak of the American Civil War. This pair of buildings was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, a listing that was expanded in 1978 to the .


Located on the northwest corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Louisville Road in the city's historic downtown, the red brick passenger terminal of the CofG complex houses the Savannah Visitor Center and the Savannah History Museum. The site complex includes several notable structures, including cotton yard, a blacksmith shop, a brick viaduct and the trainshed, as well as an office car and caboose. It is owned by the Coastal Heritage Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of coastal Georgia and adjacent regions.


The Savannah History Museum is located at 303 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard (Georgia State Route 25 Connector). The museum is housed inside the old passenger terminal. It contains artifacts and exhibits relating to the history of Savannah from its establishment to the current time. The shops and terminal facilities were listed separately on June 2, 1978, and the Coastal Heritage Society opened the museum on the site in 1989.


The Georgia State Railroad Museum (formerly the Roundhouse Railroad Museum) is a museum in Savannah, Georgia located at a historic Central of Georgia Railway site. It includes parts of the Central of Georgia Railway: Savannah Shops and Terminal Facilities National Historic Landmark District. The complex is considered the most complete antebellum railroad complex in the United States. The museum, located at 655 Louisville Road, is part of a historic district included in the National Register of Historic Places.


The museum is across the street from the Central of Georgia Depot and Trainshed, also part of the historic district. The complex was constructed in 1853 by the Central of Georgia Railway (CofG) before the outbreak of the American Civil War. Savannah Shops and terminal buildings were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, a listing which was expanded in 1978 to include additional buildings in the complex.


The historic railroad structures at the Georgia State Railroad Museum site include a partial roundhouse with operating turntable, partial machine shop, Tender Frame Shop, Blacksmith Shop, Boiler House, Storehouse & Print Shop, Lumber and Planing Sheds, Coach and Paint Shops, and a partial Carpentry Shop which now houses Savannah Children's Museum. Many of these structures are open for visitors to explore.


The Historic Railroad Shops complex is among the finest remaining examples of Victorian railroad architecture and design and is the most intact antebellum railroad repair complex in the country. It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. On-site displays include antique shaft driven machinery, locomotives and railroad stock, model train layouts, an operating turntable, and the oldest portable steam engine in the United States. The Historic Railroad Shops offers a valuable educational experience for students and has also become a popular local tourist attraction.


The complex has been maintained as the Georgia State Railroad Museum and a general industry museum by the Coastal Heritage Society with the assistance of the City of Savannah.


The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833, and built a passenger station, freight terminal and some shops in the Louisville Road area of Savannah around 1836. However, none of those structures remain today. By the mid-1840s the railway had expanded to of track, and the CG began construction of new shops in 1851. The first completed building was the carpenters' shop in 1853, followed by the original roundhouse, machine shop, tender frame shop, blacksmith shop and several other buildings in 1855. Additional buildings were constructed at the complex into the 1920s.


The roundhouse, turntable and other structures were rebuilt in the late 1920s after a major fire in 1923, as well as to accommodate larger locomotives and rolling stock.


The Central of Georgia operated several trains to the station, on an Atlanta (Terminal Station) - Macon (Terminal Station) - Savannah itinerary. The last of these was the "Nancy Hanks."


The Southern Railway purchased the CG in 1963 and closed the Savannah shops. Subsequently, the railway transferred the complex to the City of Savannah. The Coastal Heritage Society, a non-profit organization, opened the museum on the site in 1989.


The Georgetown Steam Plant, located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, was constructed in 1906 for the Seattle Electric Company to provide power for Seattle, notably for streetcars.


The plant was originally built by Stone and Webster in 1906. One of the first reinforced concrete structures on the U.S. West Coast, it originally provided power for the Interurban Railway between Seattle and Tacoma; it also provided both direct current for Seattle's streetcars and alternating current for Georgetown, then an independent city. They purchased General Electric steam turbine technology, based on patents originally held by inventor Charles Gordon Curtis. At the time, this was cutting edge technology, and the Georgetown Steam Plant "marks the beginning of the end of the reciprocating steam engine" as the dominant mode of generating electricity on a large scale.


Originally located along an oxbow of the Duwamish River to provide cooling water, the plant was left inland after the original river channel was straightened in 1917. Retired after nearly 75 years of operation, it remains "surprisingly complete and operable". The plant has three Curtis turbines, manufactured by the General Electric Company between 1906 and 1917.


Puget Sound Traction and Lighting Company (now Puget Sound Energy) bought the Seattle Electric Company in 1912; the Georgetown Steam Plant powered the Seattle-to-Tacoma Interurban and Seattle streetcars; it also provided residential and industrial power to Georgetown. Originally an oil-fired plant, it converted to a coal in 1917. As hydropower was developed in the 1910s and 1920s the steam plant became uncompetitive and only used for emergencies. It last produced electricity in January 1953 when water levels at the dams were low. Decommissioning took place in 1972.


The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1984, and is also designated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. At the time of its landmarking, it contained the "last operating examples of the world's first large scale, steam turbine". The building itself, "built by a fast-track construction process, was designed and supervised by Frank W. Gilbreth, later a nationally famous proponent of efficiency engineering." The building is also a Seattle City Landmark and is on the Washington State Register of Historic Places.


Paul Carosino and Lilly Tellefson founded the Georgetown PowerPlant Museum in 1995 to restore, maintain and operate the plant. It now teaches boiler firemen and steam engineers.