A union station (also union terminal or joint station) is the term used for a train station where tracks and facilities are shared by two or more railway companies, allowing passengers to connect conveniently between them. The term 'union station' is used in North America and 'joint station' in Europe.
Historically, a union station was used by all passenger trains serving the city. Today, this is not necessarily true. In Chicago, Illinois, for example, commuter trains use Union Station and three other terminals, while the city's Union Station handles all intercity traffic.
Read more about Union Station: North America, Europe
Famous quotes containing the words union and/or station:
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)