Has anyone attended the events celebrating the opening of Michigan Central Station in Detroit?

~Wesley

It has reopened last week.

What will be required for Amtrak to return? To/from where?

Bob Johnston wrote a nice online piece on the Trains magazine Newswire on that question recently: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... ls-future/

I attended one of the early ticketed admission open houses. The building is gorgeous and appears to have a very bright future as they work on finishing up the restoration/renovation work and move tenants in. They've also made some pretty nice improvements to the immediate area surrounding the building as well. Although the rails and structure that once held the tracks and platforms behind the building were demolished due to severe degradation of the ironwork, they appear to have incorporated remnants of the rails and other materials into the landscaping around the building. Fencing, benches, etc. incorporate sections of the rails which I thought was a nice touch. Garden beds appear to have been decorated with broken sections of marble that were removed from the interior during the restoration work.

I've seen some negative comments from a few folks about decisions Ford made in their restoration work and use of spaces within the building, but I find it hard to knock the drastic change from the building's status just a few short years ago. I've seen photos of the interior from over the past few decades and still found it hard to wrap my mind around the fact that such a beautiful building had been so badly degrading for so many years (even before it was abandoned) before it finally got the restoration it deserved. The other thing that struck me was the atmosphere inside even with the crowds. Although several hundred folks were also in the building, there was a certain hush about it almost as if being in an art museum or something of that nature. It seemed as though there was a sense of reflection and awe that spread throughout everybody that entered that I just thought seemed like a cool thing to experience..