

Like many communities along the Piedmont route, Cary owes its existence to the railroad. Also within reach is the Glenwood South entertainment district, home to the city’s busiest nightlife and great restaurants worth visiting during the day. You’ll also find CAM Raleigh, a contemporary art museum Father & Son, a beloved thrift shop with vintage clothing, furniture and accessories Videri Chocolate Factory and Crank Arm Brewing. Within a few blocks of the station, you’ll find several restaurants and the Morgan Street Food Hall, with a bar and nearly two dozen eateries. The plaza runs between the historic 1840 State Capitol building, which is open to the public Monday through Saturday, and the Legislative Building where the General Assembly has met since it opened in the 1960s. Museum of Natural Sciences, both on Bicentennial Plaza. These include the Marbles Kids Museum at 301 East Hargett St. Within walking distance: Downtown Raleigh is easy to navigate on foot, but several of the most popular destinations are just beyond the half-mile threshold. To reach the platform from the waiting area, passengers descend a long walkway, lined with rusted steel plates salvaged from the old warehouse, then ascend by escalator or elevator. The station has the first raised passenger platform in North Carolina, allowing people to walk on or off the train without stairs. Echoes of the building’s past are found throughout, including the massive steel pillars and ceiling beams and two gantries that used to move steel overhead. The station: Raleigh Union Station opened in 2018 with a cavernous waiting room built in the shell of a former steel warehouse. From here, it’s a five-block walk to Fayetteville Street, the city’s heart. The train station is on the west side of downtown, in an area known as the Warehouse District for the one- and two-story brick buildings that clustered around the railroad tracks more than a century ago. That’s reflected in the city’s downtown, which has come alive in the past two decades with restaurants, bars and shops catering to visitors and the workers and residents in the new buildings sprouting up. State University.īut partly because of NCSU and its graduates and the establishment of Research Triangle Park in 1959, Raleigh and surrounding Wake County became one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, drawing companies and people from all over the world. That included not only the legislature, governor and state bureaucracy, but also a large psychiatric hospital and prisons and, starting in 1887, the college now known as N.C. Raleigh was established in 1792 to become North Carolina’s capital city, and for most of its history state government and its appendages were the city’s main preoccupation. There are bike racks in the baggage cars, but space is limited and you need to reserve a spot in advance. You can also buy them in advance through Amtrak or on NCDOT’s website, which has more information than Amtrak’s site, including scheduled arrival and departure times.Įach passenger can bring two pieces of luggage anything more must be checked 45 minutes before departure. You can buy tickets at the stations from either ticket agents (Raleigh, Cary, Durham, Greensboro and Charlotte) or from kiosks (Burlington, High Point, Salisbury and Kannapolis). One way from Raleigh to Charlotte is $30.
CHARLOTTE TRAIN STATION FULL
The southbound Carolinian is scheduled to depart Raleigh at 5:30 p.m., though after a full day of travel from New York it can run late. The northbound Carolinian leaves Charlotte at 6:30 a.m., making all the same stops, but continues on north through Selma, Wilson and Rocky Mount on its way to the Northeast.
