Edmonds (Sounder, Amtrak Casacades and Empire Builder)

The Edmonds Station is located down along Puget Sound across Railroad Avenue from the Edmonds ferry terminal where ferries run across to Kingston, WA. The station receives Amtrak service three times a day in each direction, the two Cascades trains up to Vancouver, BC and from the daily Empire Builder out to Chicago. It is fully staffed and every train is met with checked-baggage service.The stop is too remote from having interstate highway access so the one midday round-trip thruway bus north to Bellingham bypasses the station. Sounder North trains stop four times each rush hour making their peak direction trips between Seattle and Everett. The stops remoteness from major highways also gives it only limited bus connections with just a few local Community Transit bus routes. The station just had some minor improvements including a bus loop built and was rededicated in 2011 as a transit center.

The Edmonds depot is a historic white wooden building with a green trim roof that opened in 1956. The entire interior including the Amtrak ticket window has wood paneling and a black and white checkerboard linoleum floor. It is decorated with photographs, prints and posters pertaining to the rail history in Edmonds as well as a memorabilia case that includes items like a menu from the Mount Baker International (the original Seattle to Vancouver train) when it included sit-down dining. There is minimal seating consisting of black airport-style lounge chairs. There are also restrooms but a sign in the window says "No Public Restroom Available." The agent did let me use it. I believe you have to be an Amtrak rider.

The station house is alongside a long wide, simple concrete mini-height platform that runs the entire length (with entrances at either end) between the grade crossings of Dayton Street and Main Street. This makes it about 1,300 feet long. The single platform serves a single track (and presently a bottleneck on the corridor with dual-tracking in the planning process) across from Pudget Sound and Railroad Avenue. The platform has no large canopy, just four small benches in smaller wind-screened sheltered areas south of the depot along the platform here that has a tactile warning strip This is where Sounder trains stop. There is also a mini-high platform for ADA access. There are also a few Sounder TVMs in a shelter here.

Beyond the southern half of the platform here is a parking lot, the station has 156 spaces in total, continuing north the platform loses its tactile warning and gets just a yellow line. There is another small section of the parking lot and then the station's bus loop at its northern end right across from the ferry terminal.
All Photos taken on October 10, 2011;

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