The train station....

Now we move on to the train station portion of our Mattoon tour. The train station in Mattoon was always special to me as: a. It's a cool historical building, b. My Grandpa Pano (mom's dad) built bridges for the Illinois Central Railroad so he had a part in building the railroad itself and c. After his death, my Grandma Georgia had a free pass on the trains and the train just happened to run between Mattoon and Carbondale so I could visit Grandma Georgia and then she would take me on the train to Carbondale (for free) so I could visit my other grandparents. I'm pretty sure she ended up spending quit a bit though as I remember getting lots of snacks on the train.

This is a shot of my mom coming down the train station stairs. The station is in a bit of disrepair at this point, but there are plans to return it to it's former glory. The basic architecture is amazing, I think. My mom particuarly loves the curve at the bottom of the staircase.

And this is where you would wait for the trains. Again, keeping in mind that much of my time spent there was as a younger child, I always imagined that it was a lot like Grand Central Station. I'm guession that my perspective was a little off :-)

Turner found this picture as part of the rennovation. Its a shot of the dining room interior as it was originally. I don't know if they're going to re-do that as well, but it would be awesome if they did.

And here's a shot of outside the train station off of the tracks. This is where you would board and disembark the trains. Again, I get that maybe most people aren't that into train stations, but since I travelled through this one a lot and my grandfather had a hand in making it what it was, I wanted Turner to see it and was so glad we got a chance to go inside.