Richmond's Main Street Station in the downtown area was built in 1901 by the
Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL) and the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O). Seaboard had introduced service to Richmond, and C&O had consolidated the former
Virginia Central Railroad and the
Richmond and Allegheny Railroad, which had previously maintained separate stations. The ornate Main Street Station was designed by the
Philadelphia firm of
Wilson, Harris, and Richards in the
Second Renaissance Revival style. In 1959, Seaboard shifted its Richmond passenger service to
Broad Street Station (now the
Science Museum of Virginia), ending service to the north platform and across the James River. The C&O maintained offices in the upper floors, and its passenger service continued at Main Street Station until Amtrak took over in 1971. Major long distance
passenger train services in the mid and late 1960s included: • Chesapeake and Ohio trains west to Louisville, Cincinnati and Detroit: •
Fast Flying Virginian •
George Washington •
Sportsman In 1970, Main Street Station and its trainshed, one of the last surviving trainsheds of its type in the nation, were added to the
National Register of Historic Places. In 1976 it was designated a
National Historic Landmark. Amtrak took over most intercity passenger train service in the United States on May 1, 1971, including trains to Main Street Station. In 1972,
Hurricane Agnes caused the
James River to flood the station. The damage was so severe that in 1975, Amtrak moved its Richmond stops to
Richmond Staples Mill Road, a much smaller suburban station in
Henrico County, five miles north of downtown. To make matters worse, the station was damaged by fires in 1976 and 1983.
Service restoration Main Street Station reopened to Amtrak service on December 18, 2003, following renovations. In 2018, the station became a stop on the
GRTC Bus Rapid Transit's Broad and Main Street Line. There are also plans for Main Street Station to become an intermodal station with Richmond's city
bus services operated by
GRTC, a
public service company owned jointly by the City of Richmond and Chesterfield County. Local officials hoped to increase the number of trains stopping at Main Street Station by extending services that otherwise terminate at
Staples Mill station in suburban Henrico County. The completion of a bypass around Acca Yard in March 2019 was a step in this direction, although the first additional service that it enabled—a second
Northeast Regional round trip to Norfolk—did not serve Main Street Station. On September 27, 2021, two Amtrak trains—one northbound in the morning and the other southbound in the evening—were extended from Staples Mill to Main Street Station as the first part of Virginia's multi-billion dollar rail expansion program.
Proposed future The 2017 Draft Environmental Impact Report of the DC2RVA project recommended routing all trains that serve Staples Mill station through Main Street Station, while maintaining full service to Staples Mill. Other considered alternatives had involved closing one of the two stations, or replacing both with a single station at
Boulevard or
Broad Street. Main Street Station is located on the
Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor (SEHSR), a passenger rail transportation project planned to connect with the existing high speed rail corridor from
Boston, Massachusetts to
Washington, D.C., known as the
Northeast Corridor (served by Amtrak's
Acela Express and
Northeast Regional services and many
commuter railroads) and extend similar high speed passenger rail services south through
Richmond and
Petersburg in
Virginia through
Raleigh and
Charlotte in
North Carolina. Since first established in 1992, the
U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has since extended the corridor to
Atlanta and
Macon, Georgia;
Columbia, South Carolina;
Jacksonville, Florida; and
Birmingham, Alabama. ==See also==