Reno station is an

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ...

intercity

train station 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 ...

Reno, Nevada Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is th ...

, served by the ''

California Zephyr The ''California Zephyr'' is a passenger train operated by Amtrak between Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area (at Emeryville), via Omaha, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Reno. At , it is Amtrak's longest daily route, and second-longest overall ...

'' train. It is also served by

Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach Amtrak Thruway is a system of through-ticketed transportation services to connect passengers with areas not served by Amtrak trains. In most cases these are dedicated motorcoach routes, but can also be non-dedicated intercity bus services, trans ...

routes to

Sacramento ) , image_map = Sacramento County California Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Sacramento Highlighted.svg , mapsize = 250x200px , map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...

Description

The station is located at 280 North Center Street in downtown Reno. The tracks are owned by the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

, while the station and

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

are owned by the city of Reno. The station does not have a parking lot. The tracks are placed below ground level as they pass through the heart of downtown Reno. As of 2014, the station was served by the once-daily ''California Zephyr'', running between

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and

Emeryville, California Emeryville is a city located in northwest Alameda County, California, in the United States. It lies in a corridor between the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, with a border on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The resident population was 12,905 ...

(in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area G ...

). The previous year, the station served 78,827 passengers, or about 216 per day. The station is popular with passengers traveling in both directions between Northern California and Reno. Three

routes, two originating at the station and one at the

Nugget Casino Resort Nugget Casino Resort (formerly Dick Graves' Nugget and John Ascuaga's Nugget) is a casino hotel in Sparks, Nevada. It is operated by Century Casinos. The main portion of the casino consists of two 29-story towers nestled between Interstate 80 an ...

in Sparks, connect the station to Sacramento.

History

A depot has existed at this location since the

first transcontinental railroad North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail netwo ...

arrived in Reno in 1868. A series of wooden depots built by the

Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a rail company chartered by U.S. Congress in 1862 to build a railroad eastwards from Sacramento, California, to complete the western part of the " First transcontinental railroad" in North America. Incor ...

burned down. The current stucco depot was built by the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

in 1926. The Southern Pacific Depot was also used by the

Virginia & Truckee Railroad The Virginia and Truckee Railroad is a privately owned heritage railroad, headquartered in Virginia City, Nevada. Its private and publicly owned route is long. When first constructed in the 19th century, it was a commercial freight railroad ...

until 1950, when the railroad ceased operations. The

Western Pacific Railroad The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route dire ...

historically provided service to Reno, but never used this station, instead using the (now disused for rail service)

Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad Depot The Nevada-California-Oregon Railroad Depot was built by the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway (NCO) in 1910 in Reno, Nevada. It is Nevada Historical Marker number 210. It is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The building to ...

, a few blocks to the east.

ReTRAC

The station was enlarged in 2007 as part of the Reno Transportation Rail Access Corridor (ReTRAC) project, which

grade separated In civil engineering (more specifically highway engineering), grade separation is a method of aligning a junction of two or more surface transport axes at different heights (grades) so that they will not disrupt the traffic flow on other tra ...

the tracks to mostly eliminate

street running A street running train is a train which runs on a track built on public streets. The rails are embedded in the roadway, and the train shares the street with other users, such as pedestrians, cars and cyclists, thus often being referred to as ru ...

in downtown Reno. In the process of excavating around the depot, many artifacts from Reno's past were discovered including a long filled-in pedestrian tunnel and a previously unknown basement at a former

masonic lodge A Masonic lodge, often termed a private lodge or constituent lodge, is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also commonly used as a term for a building in which such a unit meets. Every new lodge must be warranted or chartered ...

. Many items from the excavation are on display in the station lobby, including an old

cistern A cistern (Middle English ', from Latin ', from ', "box", from Greek ', "basket") is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. Cisterns are distinguished from wells by ...

used by the fire department, a horse watering fountain, Native American artifacts, and several bottles dating as far back as the 1860s. As part of the renovation, Amtrak moved most of its operations to a glass-enclosed addition near the trench, though passengers can still use the original waiting area. On December 4, 2012, it was announced that the station would be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Notes

References

External links