Union Station, also known as Columbia Railway Depot is an historic

train depot A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing such ...

in the city of Columbia,

Maury County Maury County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Middle Tennessee region. As of the 2020 census, the population was 100,974. Its county seat is Columbia. Maury County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

. The depot was completed in 1905 by the

Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway The Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway was a railway company that operated in the U.S. states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. It began as the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, chartered in Nashville on December 11, 1845, ...

(NC&StL) and the

Louisville and Nashville Railroad The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the ...

(LN) as a

union station A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...

. The building was placed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

listings in Maury County, Tennessee on October 23, 1986.

History

The

Duck River Valley Narrow Gauge Railroad The Duck River Valley Narrow Gauge Railway was a narrow gauge railway that connected the cities of Columbia, Lewisburg, and Fayetteville, Tennessee along the Duck River. Chartered on November 4, 1870, construction began from Columbia southwar ...

(NGRR) was chartered in 1870 and began construction in Columbia in 1874. By 1876, six miles were completed with the first 1.75 miles ran as a

dual gauge In railway engineering, "gauge" is the transverse distance between the inner surfaces of the heads of two rails, which for the vast majority of railway lines is the number of rails in place. However, it is sometimes necessary for track to c ...

on the then Nashville and Decatur (Louisville and Nashville) main line. By 1877 NGRR offered rail service from Columbia to Lewisburg (20 miles) and to Petersburg (34 miles) by 1879. The company ran into financial difficulties and in 1879 leased the tracks to NC&StL. The line was completed to Fayetteville (48 miles) on March 16, 1882, where there was a

break-of-gauge With railways, a break of gauge occurs where a line of one track gauge (the distance between the rails, or between the wheels of trains designed to run on those rails) meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and rolling stock generally cannot ...

. NC&StL purchased the line on March 21, 1888, converted the entire tracks to

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

by January 1, 1889, and the tracks were renamed the Columbia spur.

Union Station

NC&StL and LN built ''Union Station'' in 1905, and the depot was shared with LN until 1945 when the Columbia to Lewisburg tracks were abandoned. The Lewisburg to Fayetteville section was abandoned in 1961. Union Station was listed on the Tennessee Preservation Trust, "Ten in Tennessee" list of endangered properties in 2009. The building was used for offices and apartments but became vacant in 1983. David and Debra Hill bought the property in foreclosure in 2012 with plans on restorationWSMV.com
Retrieved 2014-08-27

References

Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Buildings and structures in Columbia, Tennessee National Register of Historic Places in Maury County, Tennessee Columbia Former railway stations in Tennessee

Columbia, Tennessee Columbia is a city in and the county seat of Maury County, Tennessee. The population was 41,690 as of the 2020 United States census. Columbia is included in the Nashville metropolitan area. The self-proclaimed "mule capital of the world," Colum ...

Railway stations in the United States opened in 1905 Railway stations in the United States closed in 1945 {{US-rail-transport-stub