Portland Union Station

Portland Union Station is an Amtrak train station near the west shore of the Willamette River in the Old Town Chinatown section of Portland, Oregon, United States. The station building also contains offices on the upper floors, as well as Wilf's Restaurant and Piano Bar on the ground level. It also has Amtrak's first Metropolitan Lounge (reserved for first-class sleeping car passengers) on the West Coast.

Southeast of the station, the tracks make a sharp turn and cross the river on the historic Steel Bridge. To the northwest, they follow the river, passing through rail yards before crossing the river again on the Burlington Northern Railroad Bridge 5.1.

The Portland Development Commission earns $200,000 a year from nearly 30 tenants. Amtrak, the main tenant, has a lease through 2010 with a renewal option through 2015.

Transit services

Union Station serves as a transportation hub for Portland. Portland's Greyhound bus station is the next building to the south, having moved to a new building there (from a location in the center of downtown) in 1985. Union Station connects to MAX Green and Yellow Line trains at the nearby Union Station/Northwest 6th & Hoyt Street and Union Station/Northwest 5th & Glisan Street stations, as well as local bus service provided by TriMet. Located at the northern end of TriMet's transit mall, Union Station is also only a short walk to both lines of the Portland Streetcar, in the Pearl District.

Union station

A union station (also known as a union terminal and a joint station in Europe) is a railway station where tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to connect conveniently between them. The term 'union station' is used in North America and 'joint station' is used in Europe.

In most cases, a US union station was used by all passenger trains serving the city, but this was not necessarily so. For example, in Chicago, the Illinois Central and Chicago & North Western depots coexisted with Union Station. Today, while all Amtrak intercity passenger trains use Union Station, Chicago's commuter rail service Metra uses Union Station as well as three additional terminals in the city.

North America

In North America, a union station is usually owned by a separate corporation whose shares are owned by the different railways which use it, so that the costs and benefits of its operations are shared proportionately among them. This contrasts with the system of trackage rights or running rights, where one railway company owns a line or facility, but allows another company to share it under a contractual agreement. However, the company that owns the union station and associated trackage does assign trackage rights to the railroads that use it. Many of the jointly-owned stations were built by terminal railroads. Examples include the Ogden Union Railway & Depot Company, jointly owned by Southern Pacific and Union Pacific to manage the Ogden Union Station in Ogden, Utah, and the Denver Terminal Railway Company, representing the Denver & Rio Grande Western, Chicago Burlington & Quincy, Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe, Colorado & Southern and Chicago Rock Island & Pacific and the Union Pacific railways, which managed the station in Denver, Colorado.

Union Station (Washington Metro)

Union Station is a Washington Metro station in Washington, D.C. on the Red Line. It has a single underground island platform.

The station is located in the Northeast quadrant of the city under the western end of Union Station, the main train station for Washington, where connections can be made to Amtrak intercity trains, as well as Virginia Railway Express and MARC commuter rail trains to suburbs in Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia.

The station was originally named "Union Station–Visitor Center" but when the National Visitor Center there failed, it was renamed Union Station. One or two pylons still read "Union Station-Visitor Center", and a number of older stations still display this name on signage. Like the other original stations, Union Station sports coffered vaults of concrete in its ceiling.

Service began on March 27, 1976 with the opening of the Red Line. It is the busiest station in the Metrorail system, averaging 32,745 passengers per weekday as of May 2010.

Union Station

A union station (or depot, or terminal) is a train station used by more than one railroad company or line.

The proper name Union Station, and variants (Union Terminal, Union Depot, or Union Passenger Station) may refer to:

Train stations

In Canada

In the United States