Demolition of the Depot
Westbound UP No. 103 prepares to depart North Platte for a second-to-last time on April 30, 1971.
What would have seemed incomprehensible to canteen workers 30 years prior became fact in May 1971 when passenger train service to North Platte ended. The years since World War II saw improved public highway and airline travel cut deeply into the people-carrying facet of railroading. By 1970, Union Pacific passenger service to North Platte had been reduced to the daily runs of the combined City of Los Angeles-Portland streamliners, a connecting City of Denver train to the Mile High City, and a North Platte-South Torrington, Wyo. mixed train. The company was permitted to drop these last trains when the federally subsidized Amtrak passenger system chose to operate its one route across Nebraska via another railroad. The nostalgic and the rail buffs gathered at the station on May 1, 1971, to witness the last arrivals and departures, and to observe a mock Wild West train robbery for the occasion.
Minus the passengers, the North Platte station briefly remained in use for railroad offices. The former canteen space had over the years been used intermittently for gatherings of UP employees and retirees. (The room was also used to feed and shelter hundreds of stranded rail passengers during the epic winter of 1949.) It was otherwise used for the city’s annual “Frontier Revue” program.
Some North Platte residents expressed hopes the building could be preserved, but UP officials announced the railroad's modern high-speed freight service precluded on-site reuse. Demolition of the station began November 1, 1973.
|
|