Amtrak Omaha

After driving through last week, and seeing the construction around the station was wondering if passengers were still departing and arriving from Omaha or getting bused to Lincoln or Creston ?

The station was only closed for a few weeks; trains have been stopping there again since mid April.

I was in Omaha to ride behind the Union Pacific Big Boy and was happy to see the former Burlington Northern Train station fixed up. It was abandoned in such bad shape the last time I saw it, I feared it would be torn down. While it is a shame it wasn't restored as a passenger terminal ala St. Paul Union Station... at least it's been restored on the outside and looks nice.

crescent-zephyr said:

I was in Omaha to ride behind the Union Pacific Big Boy and was happy to see the former Burlington Northern Train station fixed up. It was abandoned in such bad shape the last time I saw it, I feared it would be torn down. While it is a shame it wasn't restored as a passenger terminal ala St. Paul Union Station... at least it's been restored on the outside and looks nice.

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We visited Omaha last year via the CZ and yes Burlington Station was restored but is now home to a TV station. Union Station across the way has been fully restored to its former glory. Even the lunch counter is exactly as it was back in the day. It is magnificent to see and is now a museum that you can visit. Amtrak Passenger service will most likely continue at the small building just down the tracks but when we boarded in early morning the small place was entirely packed.

dlagrua said:

Union Station across the way has been fully restored to its former glory. Even the lunch counter is exactly as it was back in the day.

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Yes! I was so impressed with that museum. The Union Pacific Pullman cars that you can tour downstairs are really neat as well. I had never seen a Pullman that had windows for upper berth passengers before.

There used to be a long, covered pedestrian bridge linking the Burlington Station and Union Station. Just prior to Amtrak, I arrived Omaha on the Milwaukee Roads "City of Everywhere",
and crossed that bridge to return to Chicago on a Zephyr (can't remember if DZ or CZ)...

For the younger readers, the long pedestrian bridge was the substitute for having a true Union Station. Here is the line-up from the June 1941 Official Guide, which claimed that the stations were 50 yards apart.

Burlington Station: Burlington Route, Chicago Great Western.

Union Pacific Station: Union Pacific, Chicago & North Western, Milwaukee Road, Rock Island, Illinois Central, Missouri Pacific, Wabash.

Situations like this were especially harmful to rail travel in pre-computer days. Travelers had to depend on the knowledge of ticket clerks, friends and families and what they may have read, so one customer would have a wonderful experience and the next would swear never to do it again. That was one of the negative effects of station transfers for WWII traffic, when over-stressed manual reservation systems collided with people who had never made a long-distance train trip before.

Here's an example of a 1905 effort to get long-distance passengers to transfer in Omaha: