(The following story by Jill Schramm appeared on the Minot Daily News website on May 7.)
MINOT, N.D. — The committee heading up the restoration of Minot’s Amtrak depot plans to kick off the reconstruction during the observance of National Train Day on Saturday.
The depot will get a new roof and new brick exterior this year.
Saturday’s open house runs from 8:30 to 10 a.m., at the depot, 400-1st Ave. SW, to coincide with a scheduled arrival and departure of Amtrak’s Empire Builder.
There will be a ribbon cutting, refreshments and an exhibit showing how the new depot will look. Committee members will be on hand to provide information. There will be a drawing for two free Amtrak tickets to Chicago.
This is the first National Train Day sponsored by Amtrak. It recognizes May 10, 1869, as the date the “golden spoke” was driven into the final tie at Promontory Summit, Utah, to join the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads, completing the first transcontinental railroad.
The restoration of Minot’s depot also has historical overtones. The reconstruction will restore the building to its original condition.
“It will look not identical but very similar to what the depot looked like when they built it in 1905,” said Dennis Lutz, chairman of the restoration committee.
The exterior will be the same old-style brick from North Dakota’s Hebron Brick Co. as existed on the original building. The stucco exterior that covered the old bricks already has been removed.
Craft Builders of Minot will be erecting the new pitched roof. Once the roof project is complete, Hight Construction of Minot will put a new brick exterior over the existing bricks and place new windows.
The expense totals about $373,000. Funding sources were a $300,000 federal grant through the North Dakota Department of Transportation and the City of Minot.
The restoration committee will have about $13,000 remaining in its treasury to cover any contingency costs and to use as seed money for future work. The committee has been working about five years to achieve funding to restore the depot exterior and intends to continue raising money for additional work on the building interior and grounds, Lutz said.
The committee hasn’t determined what type of interior work will be done because the remodeling will depend on available money, Lutz said. The committee would like to reproduce the wainscoting and tin ceiling of the original depot.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad owns the depot, which is leased by Amtrak.
Amtrak decided to initiate National Train Day because its ridership is up nationally, Lutz said. In Minot, ridership increased from 35,829 passengers to 38,254 passengers between fiscal year 2005-06 and 2006-07. For the first six months of the current fiscal year, which began in October, there have been 21,049 passengers.
Lutz said those numbers reflect people who board or get off the train but not passengers who pass through Minot. More than 100,000 people a year come through on Amtrak, and many of them step off the train because Minot is Amtrak’s only 20-minute stop in North Dakota.
Minot’s Amtrak depot is the one view people get of Minot and North Dakota, Lutz said.
“That’s why we think this is the depot, of all the places in the state, that warrants this type of restoration,” he said.