Wildwood station

Wildwood station
File:Wildwood Amtrak station03.jpg
Location	601 North Main Street Wildwood, FL, 34785
Coordinates
Owned by	CSX
Line(s)	Thruway Motorcoach service to the Silver Meteor and Silver Star
Services
Former services   Preceding station   Amtrak   Following station Dade City toward Miami Palmetto Ocala toward New York City

Wildwood station is a bus station, and former train station, in Wildwood, Florida. It serves Amtrak's Thruway Motorcoach bus system and formerly served trains for Amtrak and other rail companies. The station is located on 601 North Main Street (US 301) in Wildwood, Florida. Along with the northern terminus of Florida's Turnpike, the station gave Wildwood a reason to refer to itself as "The Crossroads of Florida."

The station was built in 1947 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and is located on what is today CSX's S-Line, which runs along the west side of the building. This segment of the S-Line is officially named the Wildwood Subdivision. The station served SAL's Silver Star to Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Miami, among other trains. It is also the western terminus of an inactive spur that once ran to cities such as Leesburg and Tavares. This spur is now owned by the Florida Midland Railroad, and only runs as far east as Orange Home along County Road 44A, where it served as home for some abandoned freight cars until the first deecade of the 21st Century.

The Silver Star was transferred to Amtrak in 1971, along with most passenger service in the United States. The Palmetto was rerouted to the CSX S-Line in 1979, until it was truncated to Savannah, Georgia on November 1, 2004, prompting Amtrak to revive Silver Star service to Tampa along the same line shared by the current Silver Meteor, and part of the suspended Sunset Limited. Today, the station operates as a CSX maintenance yard, and by Amtrak's Thruway Motorcoach bus service between Jacksonville and Lakeland. The actual station building remains, but the platform was demolished and a new double track was built over it.

External links

• Wildwood Amtrak Station (USA RailGuide – TrainWeb)