Detour
D.C.’s
venerable
Union Statio
is a city
within
a city
Imagination
Stations
A new golden
age of train
travel is upon us
BY HEATHER JOHNSON
When it comes to America’s taste in
transportation, it seems the only constant is change. A map of the rail lines
covering 1950s America looked like a
bowl of spaghetti, but just 20 years later
most of those strands had been gobbled
up by the increasing popularity of air and
highway travel. Twenty years after that,
the golden age of luxury airlines had given way to budget carriers and many of the
industry’s high fliers had fallen from the
sky. Our love affair with the automobile
lingers on, but growing environmental
awareness is inspiring many to rediscover
the merits of public transportation ... like
trains. What we travelers embrace is
not always predictable and certainly is
not linear, but sometimes we manage to
preserve the best parts of our past and
take them with us into the future.
Our majestic East Coast train stations are an excellent case in point.
Built on a grand scale to give travelers
Union Station
WASHINGTON, D.C.
It’s hard to believe this
thriving beaux-arts jewel
of a station was once home
to a crop of toadstools, but
after rain damage caved in
parts of the roof during the
early 1980s that’s exactly
what it became. A $160 mil-
lion renovation brought Union
Station back to life and the
new facility opened in 1988.
The capital’s most visited
tourist destination, this city
within a city is home to fine
restaurants and retailing,
an international food court,
movie theaters, exhibitions
and cultural events, private
parties and the presidential
inaugural ball.
