Wilmington Station (Delaware) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station, normally called Wilmington Station, is a passenger rail station in Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...

, formerly known as Pennsylvania Station

Pennsylvania Station

Pennsylvania Station is a label first applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals.-New York City:...

. The station is located on Front Street between French and Walnut Streets in downtown Wilmington. It has one inside level which has stores, a cafe, Amtrak

Amtrak

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...

and SEPTA ticket offices, a car rental office, and a post office; passengers board their trains on the second story train platforms. It is served by Amtrak trains along the Northeast Corridor

Northeast Corridor

The Northeast Corridor is a fully electrified railway line owned primarily by Amtrak serving the Northeast megalopolis of the United States from Boston in the north, via New York to Washington, D.C. in the south, with branches serving other cities...

going south to Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, and going north to Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

and New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the Silver Star

Silver Star

The Silver Star is the third-highest combat military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for valor in the face of the enemy....

and the Silver Meteor

Silver Meteor

The Silver Meteor is a 1389-mile passenger train route operated by Amtrak in the Silver Service brand, running from New York City, New York, south to Miami, Florida, via the Northeast Corridor to Washington, D.C., thence via Richmond, Virginia; Fayetteville, North Carolina; North Charleston, South...

to Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, and the Cardinal to Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach

Amtrak Thruway Motorcoach

Thruway Motorcoach is Amtrak's system of Amtrak-owned intercity coaches, locally contracted transit buses, through-ticketed local bus routes and taxi services to connect Amtrak train stations to areas not served by its railroads...

service is provided through the station to Dover

Dover, Delaware

The city of Dover is the capital and second largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. It is also the county seat of Kent County, and the principal city of the Dover, Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Kent County. It is located on the St. Jones River in the Delaware...

and Seaford, Delaware

Seaford, Delaware

Seaford is a city located along the Nanticoke River in Sussex County, Delaware. According to the 2010 Census Bureau figures, the population of the city is 6,928, an increase of 3.4% from the 2000 census...

, and Salisbury, Maryland

Salisbury, Maryland

-Demographics:Salisbury is the principal city of the Salisbury-Ocean Pines CSA, a Combined Statistical Area that includes the Salisbury metropolitan area and the Ocean Pines micropolitan area , which had a combined population of 176,657 at the 2010 census.As of the census of 2000, there were...

. It is also served by SEPTA's Wilmington/Newark Regional Rail Line

SEPTA Regional Rail

The SEPTA Regional Rail system consists of commuter rail service on thirteen branches to over 150 active stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and its suburbs. Service on most lines runs from 5:30 AM to midnight...

with service to Philadelphia and Newark, Delaware

Newark, Delaware

Newark is an American city in New Castle County, Delaware, west-southwest of Wilmington. According to the 2010 Census, the population of the city is 31,454. Newark is the home of the University of Delaware.- History :...

. Like all stations in Delaware, SEPTA service is provided under contract and funded through DART First State

DART First State

The Delaware Transit Corporation, trading as DART First State is the primary public transportation system that operates throughout Delaware, USA...

, which also provides extensive local bus service.

Continental Airlines

Continental Airlines

Continental Airlines was a major American airline now merged with United Airlines. On May 3, 2010, Continental Airlines, Inc. and UAL, Inc. announced a merger via a stock swap, and on October 1, 2010, the merger closed and UAL changed its name to United Continental Holdings, Inc...

code shares

Code sharing

A codeshare agreement, sometimes simply codeshare, is an aviation business arrangement where two or more airlines share the same flight. A seat can be purchased on one airline but is actually operated by a cooperating airline under a different flight number or code...

on some Amtrak trains between Wilmington and Newark Liberty International Airport

Newark Liberty International Airport

Newark Liberty International Airport , first named Newark Metropolitan Airport and later Newark International Airport, is an international airport within the city limits of both Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States...

. For this reason, Wilmington Station is assigned the IATA airport code

IATA airport code

An IATA airport code, also known an IATA location identifier, IATA station code or simply a location identifier, is a three-letter code designating many airports around the world, defined by the International Air Transport Association...

of ZWI.

Wilmington Station changed its name to Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Railroad Station at a public ceremony on 19 March 2011, in honor of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden

Joe Biden

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...

, who took over 7,000 round trips from the station during his U.S. Senate career. It will still be referred to simply as Wilmington in station announcements.

Architecture

The station was built in 1907 by the Pennsylvania Railroad

Pennsylvania Railroad

The Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....

, and replaced an earlier station erected by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad

Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad

The Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad was the Pennsylvania Railroad's main line from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania southwest to Baltimore, Maryland in the 19th and early 20th centuries...

. This station, along with the adjacent Pennsylvania Building (which housed the offices for the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad) and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad's Water Street freight depot, were designed by renowned architect Frank Furness

Frank Furness

Frank Heyling Furness was an acclaimed American architect of the Victorian era. He designed more than 600 buildings, most in the Philadelphia area, and is remembered for his eclectic, muscular, often idiosyncratically scaled buildings, and for his influence on the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan...

.

Wilmington Station has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

since 1976. A renovation project was conducted in 1984. The National Register added the adjacent railroad viaduct in 1999.

A two-year, $37.7 million restoration of the station was active throughout 2010; about ⅔ of the funding for this project was from United States government stimulus funds

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA and commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama.To...

. All customer operations, including platform access, was housed in a temporary station adjacent to the main station during the restoration period. The station reopened to customers December 6, 2010, and final work was completed in March 2011.

Ridership

Of the two Delaware stations served by Amtrak, Wilmington was the busier during the 2010 fiscal year, boarding or detraining an average of approximately 1900 passengers daily. It is the twelfth-busiest station within the Amtrak system.

External links

Friends of Furness Railroad District

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Architecture

Ridership

See also

External links