Kingston Station, Rhode Island

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About Kingston Station, Rhode Island

This group is about those who appreciate the Historic Kingston Station built in 1875, in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.
It is located on the Amtrak Northeast Corridor at mile post 158.
It is for those who either appreciate the building, grounds, trains, or landscaping, or who have photographs of passengers or persons, or of the Rhode Island Railroad Museum located there as well.
Over 125,000 passenger boardings or departures were logged here in the year of 2005 and it has grown by ten percent a year over this decade.

The Kingston Station is now owned by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation and used by Amtrak on the east waiting room and ticket office. It was "saved" from destruction by the Friends of Kingston Station over the past quarter century.

Purpose of Organization The Friends of the Kingston Station (Rhode Island) was established in 1974 to restore, preserve, and protect the historic Kingston Station, built in 1875. Through the efforts of the group, the station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, an action that saved the station from being bulldozed after a near-disastrous fire in 1988. The organization received 501(C)3 status in 1990. Through intense effort over the next decade, funding was received, primarily through the first ISTEA, ( as a demonstration project ), to completely restore the station. RIDOT and the Friends, along with The RI Historic Preservation Society and Amtrak, worked together over a period of a decade to see the project completed. It is, at present, one of the busiest of small stations on the Amtrak system. Ownership of the station was transferred to the State under RIDOT as a condition of the renovation, and in 1998, the station was rededicated with a ceremony organized by the Friends which over 2,000 people attended.

The station website: www.kingstonstation.org