Building to house Southwest Chief after 14 year $ 4.5 million project
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Fort Madison, Iowa, Mayor Matt Mohrfeld speaks at a ceremony Friday to mark the completion of the 1910 restoration of the Santa Fe Railway Station. (Amtrak / Ed Kim)
FORT MADISON, Iowa – The city of Fort Madison celebrated the completion of nearly 14 years of efforts to restore its downtown passenger yard on Friday, December 10th.
Work on the downtown Santa Fe facility, built in 1910, required elevating the building above the Mississippi floodplain and building a platform that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It will return to downtown for the first time since 1968 when Santa Fe moved passenger traffic to a building in Fort Madison Yard, about 1.5 miles away.
At ceremonies on Friday, the chief made a ceremonial stop at the downtown train station to allow Fort Madison Mayor Matt Mohrfeld and a delegation of city, state and Amtrak officials to disembark to cut the ribbon .
“Our station will be just beautiful,” said Mohrfeld the tri-state public radio. “… When you look at Fort Madison, you step back and there are two things that are obvious. We have a beautiful river bank and we have a nice train connection. ”The customer review has been automatically translated from German.
The restored station is located at 810 10th Street in Fort Madison. Santa Fe sold the building to the city for $ 1 in 1968 and was leased to the North Lee County Historical Society in 1972, which houses a museum. In 2006, work began on restoring the station to accommodate an Amtrak waiting room and ticket office. According to Amtrak’s Great American Stations site, the project included lifting the building from its foundation and building a new 1.5 m high concrete base before lowering the structure back into place. The project cost approximately $ 4.5 million including federal, state, municipal, city, BNSF, and Amtrak funding.
Officials including (from left) Amtrak Vice President David Handera, MP Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and Mayor Mike Mohrfeld severed a ribbon to celebrate the completion of the Fort Madison train station project. (Amtrak / Ed Kim)
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