The front of the station with a WRTA bus in front (I really like this photo.)
Under the rules of All the Stations, visiting a station requires one to be on a train that is scheduled to stop at said station. You don't have to get on or off. By that logic, I have visited all the Worcester Line stations except for one, that being the namesake, Worcester. I finally got the opportunity to visit the station on my school's Photography Club's field trip to the station.
Why, out of anyone, would a photography club visit a train station? Well, Worcester's train station is one of Worcester's nicest looking buildings architecturally. And we could go inside.
The front of the station with a WRTA bus in front (I really like this photo.)
The full front of the station. I decided to add both in because why not?
Well then, where do I start on the inside? For reference throughout the post, there were 3 people on this trip. It was me, my friend, and a teacher that was the club moderator. She drove us here. We started in the parking garage behind the station, where there is a direct passageway to the station. Nothing super special about either the passageway or the garage.
We came into the station's atrium. It's actually much smaller than I had expected it to be. This place is kind of lonely for a Friday afternoon. Well what did we find there?
Here's a rack of the WRTA's bus schedules.
Ooh, fancy display of upcoming departures. But wait, doesn't Amtrak train 449 go all the way to Chicago?
A little history lesson on the Blackstone Canal, with one of the T's signature information screens. They had one inside along with a couple on the platform. That's my friend there.
We left the atrium and went into a large function room. This is located at the very front of the building.
Ooh, spacious!
Oh my, I love this!
Now that we've spent some time in the other parts of the station, to the trains!
But first, look at this view from the upper level of the atrium. It just goes to show how small it is.
One thing I noticed, there is very little seating inside the station. There's just a bench or two by the door to the outdoor platform. There's also some on the platform as well.
It is possible to buy a train ticket at the station, but it's not in the greatest of all places. Why, just why did they put it here? At least this is right near the door to the platform.
The platform is fully outdoors, and very long. There's actually some history behind this. Worcester started seeing passenger rail service before the station building was restored (was previously abandoned), so they built a low-level platform a bit east of the building. The low-level portion also has a portion underneath I-290. The building was restored, and a new high-level platform was built. On March 12, 2022, the current platform will go out of service for a new island platform to be built, allowing for greater capacity and frequency of trains at the station. The new platform is expected to open in 2023. So yes, I visited on the last day of the current platform.
Looking west from the platform.
Looking east along the platform.
Pretty clean and updated map here as well. The platform situation is kinda weird. The service advisory says (correctly) that for the March 12 - 13 weekend, trains will board on the low-level portion. On March 14, the new temporary platform opens.
The new temporary platform opening March 14.
The low-level portion of the platform goes over the road.
The bridge over the road has this unqiue marker. I'm assuming that this is the rail distance to downtown Boston... seems to be about that distance of 44 miles.
The front of an inbound train. I guess I'm a foamer now.
The back of the same train. All trains terminate here so I was able to walk the entire length of the train to take this.
My friend also took a photo of the train. He's not a transit nerd like me though.
But Worcester isn't just a train station. Remember those WRTA bus schedules? Union Station is also the hub of the WRTA's whole network. The WRTA calls this place the Central Hub. All the bus routes (except the A, B, and 8) terminate here.
And they all serve this one really nice station too. We didn't go inside. We only saw this as we went to walk around downtown a bit.
A bus in the busway.
A 15 leaves the bus station.
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