For all you folks who have traveled on Amtrak into or out of St. Louis, MO in the last 26 years....Monday afternoon, in a fanfare of media attention that barely made only one of our TV channel's 10 o'clock news, St. Louis' double-wide that was, uh - lovingly, yeah that's it, sure - known as the AmShack has been retired! The 26-year old temporary facility has been replaced by..... a NEW temporary facility! Fear not those who have been there - the new station is at the other end of the parking lot, so you won't have to miss that drive down the historic brick remains called 16th street to get there! You can still enjoy the lovely view of the underisde of the highway 40 overpass as you pull in! And now, there's even MORE to enjoy, as the US Mail truck drivers that were used to entering the US Mail facility at the spot where the new station now stands have NO clue what the heck's going on!Passengers will now be able to enjoy the new station's amenities, such as all NEW vending machines, and... uh.... new, uh... restrooms! Instead of the old, worn out signboard that had to be manually updated with train status the old fashioned way (ie sticking the numbers and letters on it by hand), there is now a NEW, state-of-the-art train status board that has to be updated the same old-fashioned way!And on those cold, rainy St. Louis mornings where you had to exit the station into the outdoors right on to the dank concrete remains we call a platform, you now get to stroll through about 50 feet through beatiful new landscaping in the freezing rain before you have to face those same dank concrete remains!OK, i'm sure you've had enough of that...
In case you can't tell, i am not at all impressed with this new temporary station. Whatever genius decided that the station should still have no covered platform, only now be situated 50 ft FARTHER from the tracks needs to be hit upside the head or something. The waiting room is nice inside - as nice as can be had from a concrete and brick building anyway - but actually feels SMALLER than the old Amshack's! The ticket counter is much nicer and actually makes you feel like you are in a real station now, so that's at least one thing i have to give it. Staff seems to be somewhat more cheerful now too, so that's a good thing!And if nothing else, it IS nice actually having a station that was BUILT, and not just delivered! But jeez, i wish St. Louis would finally decide to allocate the blasting funding for that "intermodal" Amtrak/Greyhound/Metrolink station they've been talking about for the last umpteen years! These "temporary" facilities are getting tedious. But no, we'd rather spend the taxpayer money on a new runway for an airport that has drastically declining traffic, which won't actually help relieve any congestion on stormy days anyway, rather than giving other travellers a nice facility to wait for one of the 8 trains that come through here each day (Ann Rutledge, State House, Texas Eagle, Mule, one each way).At any rate, while i am disappointed in the new station, at least we finally got SOMETHING new. Plus, the view IS MUCH more pleasant when you step off the train now, it actually does look respectable. Just hope it's not pouring rain when you disembark ----------- BUZZ -----------
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