Reno station is an

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak (; ), is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates intercity rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

intercity

train station A train station, railroad station, or railway station 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 suc ...

Reno, Nevada Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada–California border. It is the county seat and most populous city of Washoe County, Nevada, Washoe County. Sitting in the High Eastern Sierra foothills, ...

, served by the ''

California Zephyr The ''California Zephyr'' is a Amtrak Long Distance, long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak between Chicago, Illinois, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area (at Emeryville station, Emeryville), via Omaha, Nebraska, Omaha, Denver, Sa ...

'' train. It is also serviced by five times per weekday, and twice on weekends,

Amtrak Thruway 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, transi ...

routes to

Sacramento Sacramento ( or ; ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 p ...

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 is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

, while the station and

platform Platform may refer to: Arts * Platform, an arts centre at The Bridge, Easterhouse, Glasgow * ''Platform'' (1993 film), a 1993 Bollywood action film * ''Platform'' (2000 film), a 2000 film by Jia Zhangke * '' The Platform'' (2019 film) * Pla ...

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 Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

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, California, Berkeley and Oakland, California, Oakland, with a border on the shore of San Francisc ...

(in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

). 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 America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad), Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the exis ...

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 most of the western part of the "First transcontinental railroad" in North Americ ...

burned down. The current stucco depot was built by the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

in 1926. The

Virginia and Truckee Railroad The Virginia and Truckee Railroad (stylized as Virginia & Truckee Railroad) is a privately owned heritage railway, heritage railroad, headquartered in Virginia City, Nevada. Its private and publicly owned route is long. When first constructe ...

utilized the station until 1950, when the railroad ceased operations. The Southern Pacific Depot was also the terminus of Reno's street railways: Reno Traction Company streetcars and the Nevada Interurban served the station between 1908 and 1925. 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, 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 tr ...

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 (also called Freemasons' lodge, or private lodge or constituent lodge) is the basic organisational unit of Freemasonry. It is also a commonly used term for a building where Freemasons meet and hold their meetings. Every new l ...

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

cistern A cistern (; , ; ) is a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water. Cisterns are often built to catch and store rainwater. To prevent leakage, the interior of the cistern is often lined with hydraulic plaster. Cisterns are disti ...

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

Bibliography

External links

Reno Amtrak Station
TrainWeb
ReTRAC Project
City of Reno Amtrak stations in Nevada Buildings and structures in Reno, Nevada Transportation in Reno, Nevada Railway stations in the United States opened in 1926 Former Southern Pacific Railroad stations in Nevada History of Reno, Nevada National Register of Historic Places in Reno, Nevada Railway stations on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada Railway stations in the United States opened in 1868 {{Nevada-railstation-stub