Saint Paul Union Depot is a historic railroad station and intermodal transit hub in the Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It serves light rail, intercity rail, intercity bus, and local bus services.
It is the eastern terminus for the METRO Green Line light rail line, with the stop located outside the station's headhouse. It is also the Twin Cities' stop for Amtrak, the national intercity railroad service. In addition to rail, Union Depot also serves Metro Transit, Minnesota Valley Transit Authority (MVTA), Jefferson Lines, Greyhound Lines, and Megabus.
The headhouse, located at the 4th Street entrance, was designed by architect Charles Sumner Frost and is neoclassical in style. The concourse and the waiting room that extend over the tracks are viewed as a great architectural achievement. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It is also a contributing property to the Lowertown Historic District.
In addition to its transit uses, Union Depot also contains a Hertz rental car location, coffee shop, restaurant, a bike shop, offices, a museum, and loft condominiums.
History Original Union Depot
There have been two Union Depots in Saint Paul. The first was completed in 1881, and combined the services of several different railroads into one building (hence the "union"; see Union station). In 1888 the old station had its peak year, handling eight million passengers. That year, about 150 trains departed daily. Around this time, the building was remodeled with a taller central tower and other alterations to the roofline. This station burned in 1915.
Current building The current structure was started in 1917 but was not completed until 1923 because World War I forced construction to halt for several years.
During its heyday, the depot hosted the passenger trains of nine railroads, and more than 20 million pieces of mail passed through the station to the neighboring St. Paul Central Downtown Post Office annually. At its peak in the 1920s, there were 282 train movements daily. The waiting room stood atop nine platforms serving 18 tracks; the eight northern ones closest to the headhouse were stub-end tracks, while the other ten ran through. However, track ownership and trackage rights west of the station meant that most trains operated as though the station was a stub terminal. These trains, when they were intended to continue beyond the station, instead backed up to a wye just to the east to get to other main lines.
The Saint Paul Union Depot Company controlled of St. Paul trackage and terminal facilities, including the depot building. The company was operated in tandem with the Minnesota Transfer Railway Company, with effective control of both properties exercised by the same board, composed of representatives of the nine tenants.
Train ridership began to erode in the 1920s as the automobile took hold and airlines began to operate. The railroads sought ways to stem the flow of passengers and compete with these new forms of transportation. As the Great Depression unfolded, more aggressive moves were required. The streamliner era in the United States began in 1934 with the introduction of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy's Zephyr. After making a "Dawn-to-Dusk Dash" from Chicago to Denver, Colorado, the CB&Q's interest soon turned to the Twin Cities run. A demonstration run was completed in 6 hours and 4 minutes, including six one-minute stops. Other railroads were soon busy investigating how to run faster trains to Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
The first locomotive to run in Minnesota, the William Crooks, was displayed at the depot from 1955 until the station's 1971 closure, after which it was moved to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth.
Early high-speed trains On January 2, 1935, high-speed express service to Chicago was introduced on the Chicago and North Western Railway's 400, cutting the scheduled time between the two cities from about 10 hours down to 7. Time dubbed the 400, "the fastest train scheduled on the American Continent, fastest in all the world on a stretch over 200 mi." The C&NW beat two other railroads which had been planning 6½ hour service to begin in the spring. The Milwaukee Road's Hiawatha and the Burlington Route's Twin Cities Zephyr were introduced with 6½ hour service a few months later at the same time, and C&NW matched their schedules.
The Burlington Zephyrs were the first streamlined diesel-electric trains to serve the Twin Cities, and originally ran in an articulated configuration. The 400 (now renamed the Twin Cities 400) followed in 1939, but using more conventional trucks and couplers to link passenger cars together. The Hiawatha had always been powered by a streamlined (or, in the terminology of the Milwaukee Road, "speedlined") steam locomotive. The Twin Cities Zephyrs added a second set of trains daily in 1936, running the Morning Zephyr and Afternoon Zephyr from each terminal. The Hiawatha added a second set of trains in 1939, and the Morning Hiawatha and Afternoon Hiawatha each provided daily service from Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago.
The Morning Hiawatha may have held the record as the world's fastest steam train on two or more measures: The run from Sparta to Portage, Wisconsin was scheduled for 58 minutes—an average of . Speeds up to and above were achieved on a daily basis, and the powerful Milwaukee Road class F7 engines (designed for a "reserve speed" of ) likely ran more miles at or above than any other steam locomotives in history.
Burlington's diesel Zephyrs were also very fast, and they had to be—the Zephyr route was about longer than the competition. In southwestern Wisconsin, a stretch of track between stations required an average speed of .
Eventually, the Hiawathas, Zephyrs, and the 400 ran 6¼-hour service between St. Paul and Chicago, and for a time the Morning Zephyr from Chicago reached St. Paul in six hours flat. In the 1950s, the federal government began imposing stricter rules for high-speed operation, and expensive advanced signaling was installed along the routes to the Twin Cities, though trains generally traveled a maximum of . Unable to keep up with an increasing automobile speeds on an improving road network and other factors that kept passengers away from trains, train ridership declined and the five daily fast trains became unprofitable.
Other notable trains to serve the depot Twin Star Rocket (Rock Island Railroad: Minneapolis/St. Paul – Houston) Gopher and Badger (Great Northern Railway: Minneapolis/St. Paul – Duluth/Superior) North Coast Limited (Northern Pacific Railway and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy: Chicago – Seattle) Western Star (Great Northern Railway: Chicago – Seattle and Portland)
End of service The Twin Cities 400 was the first victim, ending service on July 23, 1963.
It was announced that when Amtrak formally took over most passenger service on May 1, 1971, it would consolidate its Twin Cities service in Minneapolis at the Minneapolis Great Northern Depot. Accordingly, the Burlington (later Burlington Northern) Zephyrs ended service on April 30, 1971, the same day the depot closed. The Afternoon Zephyr was the last train to serve the depot when it departed that evening bound for Minneapolis. At this time, this train was normally combined with the Empire Builder and North Coast Limited from Chicago to St. Paul, except on Fridays when it ran as a separate train. Since April 30 was a Friday, the Zephyr had the "honor" of being the last train to depart the station.Steve Glischinski, eyewitness account at depot on April 30, 1971.
Restoration and return of passenger service
Area boosters had long hoped that trains would return to the Union Depot, and plans gathered steam as the Blue Line light rail project in Minneapolis drew toward completion. Planners envisioned the depot being used for a restored Amtrak service along with Metro and Jefferson Lines buses.
A few businesses had occupied the headhouse since the halt of train service in 1971, while the United States Postal Service (USPS) took over the rear of the building. The concourse and waiting room were used for some postal service activities and storage. After lying dormant for several years in the 1970s, the train tracks were removed from the train deck and it was paved with a flat surface. It began to be used for staging semi-trailer trucks carrying mail to and from the neighboring Downtown St. Paul Central Post Office as well as USPS employee parking. A driveway ramp was sliced into the train deck at the intersection of Kellogg Boulevard and Broadway Street for USPS vehicles. In the early 2000s, the upper levels of the headhouse were converted into 33 2-story loft condominiums.
In 2005, the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority secured funding to renovate the station as an intermodal transit hub served by Amtrak trains, Metro Transit light rail, and intercity bus lines.
In June 2009, the Ramsey County Board approved purchasing the depot headhouse for $8.2 million, to serve as a METRO Green Line light rail station and for future passenger rail use. In 2010, USPS moved most of the truck operations to a bulk mail processing center in Eagan, Minnesota, making way for rehabilitation of the depot as a rail hub. Demolition of the Postal Service building that blocked track access to the station began in mid-March 2011. The USPS ramp cut all the way across the train deck and blocked the ability for tracks to be installed, so the ramp was modified during restoration to make a roughly right-angle turn to access new bus platforms on the north end of the train deck while freeing up room for a few tracks to be restored on the south end.
The renovation was completed in late November 2012 at a cost of $243 million, of which $35 million was provided by the US government through the TIGER program. The renovated station re-opened to the public on December 8, 2012.
The first Amtrak train to service Saint Paul Union Depot was the westbound Empire Builder on May 7, 2014, with its eastbound counterpart stopping the next day. service began on May 21, 2024, with St. Paul as its western terminus.
Special events Since opening in late 2012, the Depot has hosted a number of events including yoga classes, weddings, seasonal farmers markets, art galas, and holiday tree lighting ceremonies among other various public and private events.
In December 2014, for the first time in nearly 50 years, an active steam locomotive returned to St. Paul Union Depot. Milwaukee Road 261 and some historic passenger cars, decorated as the "North Pole Express" ran short excursions to and from the depot. It was determined to be an overwhelming success and has continued every year since (as of 2022). In 2014 and 2015 Canadian Pacific's traveling Holiday Train made a stop at the depot.
On December 9, 2017, Metro Transit and BNSF operated a "free to ride" Northstar Holiday Train between Big Lake and St. Paul Union Depot. The event continued in 2018 and 2019, before discontinuing in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2019, as part of Union Pacific's "Great Race Across the Midwest" tour, Union Pacific 4014, made multiple stops at Union Depot for display before touring around other midwest states including Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
In 2024, Canadian Pacific 2816 stopped here as part of its Final Spike Tour to Mexico City.
Union Depot Train Days