Williams Junction Amtrak station

[MillennialUrbanist]

Originally Posted by infocyde

Yep, I didn't sleep but I definitely loitered in their lobby both times. I felt kinda bad so if I still wasn't picked up by the time their breakfast area opened up at six I'd go spend some money there (second time I think). So the station is completely closed now? There were locals that would pick up people at the Williams station. Driving to Flag and back adds another hour to their pickup times if the person using the train doesn't take the shuttle back, kind of a bummer for them.

Yup, the Williams Junction station is gone. Well, the bare-bones concrete platform is still there, but trains no longer stop. It operated mainly as GCRR's pet project to bring in Amtrak passengers; the shuttles were a private GCRR operation. I guess when train travel became increasingly popular, it got too expensive to shuttle all the passengers from the station, as well as to figure out what to with them once they got to GCRR's site. (If no passengers were coming or going, shuttles simply didn't need to run.) Today, Amtrak's shuttles between Williams and Flagstaff are contracted out to Arizona Shuttle, rather than falling under the GCRR umbrella.

I keep reading about how people drove to Williams Junction to pick someone up. I once read that it was located on BNSF Railway's private property, and only Amtrak's official shuttles were allowed on site. No personal cars. Were these people breaking the rule, with BNSF not enforcing it? (I take it the private road to the station didn't have gates or anything like that.) Or what's the deal?

[infocyde]

Originally Posted by MillennialUrbanist

I keep reading about how people drove to Williams Junction to pick someone up. I once read that it was located on BNSF Railway's private property, and only Amtrak's official shuttles were allowed on site. No personal cars. Were these people breaking the rule, with BNSF not enforcing it? (I take it the private road to the station didn't have gates or anything like that.) Or what's the deal?

Don't know what the rules were or how they got there, but I can verify by past eye sight that locals did pick people up at the station.