If you’re from Springfield, chances are, you’ve heard about the issue with putting high speed rail on the 10th Street corridor (as opposed to 3rd Street, where the trains now run). If you’re not from here, basically, the city wants to do away with the 3rd Street railroad corridor entirely (which runs through downtown) and place all rail traffic on the 10th Street corridor (on the eastern edge of downtown).
Missed in the 3rd Street / 10th Street high speed rail issue here in Springfield is the Lincoln Depot, at 10th and Monroe (pictured). Abraham Lincoln used this station often, most notably when he left Springfield to assume the Presidency. It’s currently like a small museum. I think it would be neat if it could become an actual passenger train station again, so that you could get on and off the train where Lincoln did. It would become the only station that Lincoln used that would also be in contemporary use as a train station.
The city plans a multimodal transportation hub (a place where intercity train and bus service would link up with local mass transit) located along the 10th Street tracks and the Lincoln Depot could become the centerpiece of the plan. Currently, the State Journal Register owns the Depot and a parking lot to the west at 9th and Monroe. They can barely keep the Depot open from April to August, and it is closed the rest of the year. If it becomes a train station, it would be open year round, and bring more attention to the site. I can envision the adjacent 9th/Monroe parking lot as a bus transfer center, and the State Journal Register parking that’s in this lot now could be consolidated into the lot at 10th and Capitol. If more room is needed than this for the multimodal transportation facility, perhaps something could be done with the currently vacant warehouses on Monroe between 10th and 11th. They could be demolished or reused/rehabilitated as necessary. As far as I know, they are not Lincoln era structures.
One interesting thing about the 3rd Street tracks is that those are the tracks that Lincoln’s funeral train arrived on when it arrived in Springfield. It’s kind of creepy how those are the tracks used right now for passenger rail. If we move passenger rail to 10th Street we have the opportunity to allow tourists and residents to walk in the same footsteps Lincoln did in his travels. Wouldn’t that be neat?
Map of the Lincoln Depot area, showing my idea:
