The station was originally built in 1927 as the
Greensboro Southern Railway Depot. It was a replacement for an 1899 Southern Railway Depot that still exists today, albeit without the gabled-third story and cupola it had in the past. The 1927 depot was donated to the city in 1978, a year before the
Southern Railroad finally gave up passenger service. Efforts to return service to the old station began in 1993. It was heavily renovated from 2001 to 2005, and reopened to the public on October 1, 2005. The restored station was named for James Douglas "Doug" Galyon (1930–2019), a longtime civic leader in Greensboro who was a member of the
North Carolina Board of Transportation from 1992 to 2008, serving for most of that time as the board's chairman. Designed by the New York architectural firm of
Alfred T. Fellheimer & Steward Wagner, the 1927
Beaux-Arts facade of the Greensboro station features Ionic columns, a full entablature, and a three-story arched entry. Inside, the ticketing area features a vast mural displaying the service area of the Southern Railway system in the 1920s. Until 1970 the Southern Railway operated the
Asheville Special from
Asheville and
Winston-Salem to Greensboro. Until the 1960s that train had linked with the
Augusta Special at Greensboro and had continued to Washington, D.C., and New York City. Until the 1960s the
Carolina Special went from Cincinnati to Asheville, with the North Carolina branch of the train going to Greensboro. Until 1953 or 1954 the
Carolina Special went further east to
Goldsboro in the eastern part of the state.
Former Amtrak station Open in 1979, the station was located along Oakland Avenue, at the Pomona freight yard, in a facility owned by Southern Railway (later becoming
Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982). The building was split with passenger service, operated by Amtrak, and freight service that included a control tower for the yard. It had one side platform and a fence that separated it from the short-term (30 minutes) parking area for passengers. The station was closed in 2005 when Amtrak moved passenger operations back to downtown Greensboro. The station half of the building was afterwards converted as a police station for the Norfolk Southern Railway Police Department. == Services ==