The Saving Union Station Committee is hosting a family-friendly fun and informative event to honor historic Goldsboro Union Station from 4 p.m. to 8:15 on Tuesday, at Union Station, located at 101 N. Carolina Street.
The event will feature a regional Eastern Carolina Rail meeting, hosted by members of the Eastern Carolina Rail Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to returning passenger service to the Port City of Wilmington.
This meeting will highlight a recent draft report, titled Southeastern North Carolina Passenger Rail Feasibility Study, a study that examined passenger rail service connecting Raleigh to Wilmington.
The results of the study found the route through Goldsboro to be more favorable than another previously considered route through Fayetteville. This is an important first step in having this route budgeted for funding at the federal and state levels.
Goldsboro’s Union Station was built from 1907 to 1909 and serviced passenger rail until 1968. It is an architectural gem that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Eastern Passenger Rail Regional Meeting is scheduled from 5:30 to 6:45. Following the meeting will be several announcements from the SUS committee.
North Carolina General Assembly member, House Majority Leader, John Bell, will open the meeting with comments at 5:30 pm. Historian-led tours of the station are scheduled from 4:30 to 5:00 pm and again from 7:00 to 7:30 pm.
In addition to this meeting, Saving Union Station Day will feature a kid’s train, food trucks, music, historian-led scheduled tours of Union Station’s interior, a live plein air painting and auction, a flag raising ceremony by a local Boy Scout troop, and additional exciting announcements that you won’t want to miss.
The Saving Union Station (SUS) Committee was organized to save the station and is made up of a handful of volunteers. Goldsboro’s Union Station is currently in need of immediate repairs, or it might not last until the time passenger rail is developed through Goldsboro, or another use or investor is found.
In late 2023, the Saving Union Station Committee challenged the City of Goldsboro and the County of Wayne to each contribute $375,000 towards its initial emergency stabilization costs and committed to matching that total of $750,000 with another $750,000 that SUS would raise to complete the necessary work.
The purpose of this effort is twofold. The primary purpose is to save the station. The secondary reason is to demonstrate our community’s commitment to our federal and state partners – our commitment to the station we inherited as well as the development of passenger rail with improved freight service infrastructure through eastern North Carolina.
While the news of the initial draft study is promising, the Federal Rail Administration is exploring the expansion of passenger rail service nationally.
Learn more about Saving Union Station and the Goldsboro Union Station here.
The Federal Rail Administration received a significant investment on November 15, 2021, when President Joseph R. Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—a generational investment in America’s intermodal transportation system of which freight and intercity passenger rail are an integral part and an engine of our economy.
For more information about what this could mean for the Southeastern North Carolina Passenger Rail route, visit the Federal Rail Administration’s website, here.
The purpose of this investment is to help make our nation’s rail network safer, more reliable, resilient, sustainable, and equitable.
