Newport News, VA (NPN)

Newport News Transportation Center
500B Bland Blvd
Newport News, VA 23602

Station Hours

Annual Ticket Revenue (FY 2023): $4,201,540
Annual Station Ridership (FY 2023): 124,877

• Ownerships
• Routes Served
• Contact
• Local Community Links

• Facility Ownership: City of Newport News
• Parking Lot Ownership: City of Newport News
• Platform Ownership: City of Newport News
• Track Ownership: CSX Transportation, Inc.

• Northeast Regional

Todd Stennis
Regional Contact
governmentaffairsnol@amtrak.com
For information about Amtrak fares and schedules, please visit Amtrak.com or call 1-800-USA-RAIL (1-800-872-7245).

• City of Newport News
• Amtrak Virginia
• Virginia Passenger Rail Authority
• Hampton Roads Transit

Amtrak moved into the modern Newport News Transportation Center on August 22, 2024, making it the railroad’s third home in the city over more than five decades. In addition to serving Amtrak customers – via Northeast Regional trains and Thruway Buses to Norfolk and Virginia Beach – the facility is used by Hampton Roads Transit buses, taxi service and shuttles to and from the nearby Newport News-Williamsburg Airport. 

Designed by Niles Bolton Associates, an Atlanta-based firm with an extensive portfolio of multimodal projects, the building features an angled, cantilevered roof and walls with large expanses of glass that allow natural light to flood the interior. Customers enjoy a 3,450-square-foot waiting area with a soaring ceiling and various seating arrangements.  

Accessible features that make travel easier for all passengers include a parking lot and bus area with fully illuminated pathways leading to the building; automatic doors at each entrance; and a state-of-the-art Passenger Information Display System (PIDS). The PIDS communicates train status, origin and destination stations, and other information through synchronized audio and visual messaging.  

A new high-level platform aligns with the train and provides a safer and faster way for all customers to board and depart the cars. Along the platform’s edge is a yellow tactile surface strip, which serves as a hazard warning to alert customers who are blind or have low vision.  

In addition to the transportation center, the overall project also encompassed the construction of a maintenance facility where crews service and clean trains in preparation for the next day’s departures. 

Project stakeholders included Amtrak, the city of Newport News, Virginia Passenger Rail Authority (VPRA), CSX, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) and Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). Together they assembled a package of $53 million in federal, state and municipal funding to plan and build the transportation center. 

That funding included: $20.5 million from Virginia’s Intercity Passenger Rail Operating and Capital Fund; a $1.2 million Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program grant through the FRA; a $30 million Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program/Rural Surface Transportation Program grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation; and $1.5 million from the city of Newport News. 

The current transportation center is the third facility Amtrak has used in Newport News since the company took over most intercity passenger rail service in the country in 1971. Amtrak originally served a former Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C&O) depot on the southern edge of downtown where 23rd Street meets the James River. As it was then, that part of the riverfront remains lined with piers. The colonial revival red brick depot still stands and has been converted to commercial use. 

In October 1981, Amtrak relocated about four miles to the northwest to the northern end of a rail yard now operated by freight railroad CSX. This location had previously served as the Hampton Roads suburban stop for C&O passenger trains. There was no depot, only a short canopy-covered platform. To serve rail passengers, the Oyster Point Development Corporation constructed a new depot of white rusticated concrete masonry units. It was punctuated by a decorative angled eave fitted with clerestory windows. 

Even though Newport News was only incorporated as an independent city in 1958, the region has a long history of European settlement, stretching back to the original colonies on the Virginia Peninsula. The northern edge of the peninsula is bordered by the York River and the south by the James River, while to the east lie the Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads.  

In 1634 the peninsula was organized as Warwick River Shire – one of the original shires formed by the House of Burgesses of the Virginia Colony, by order of King Charles I of England. This county remained largely composed of farms and wilderness until almost 250 years later. 

Although rail had been in Virginia since 1836, after the Civil War, officials of the Virginia Central Railroad – devastated by the conflict – realized they needed outside capital to rebuild: Enter Collis P. Huntington, one of the “Big Four” railroad magnates who built the Central Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad, then just being completed. 

Land agents began buying up land in the county for Huntington in 1865, and these purchases formed the basis of the original city of Newport News. By 1880, Huntington chartered the Old Dominion Land Company and transferred his holdings to it. In 1881, with the completion of the Peninsula Subdivision, Newport News became the Atlantic deepwater terminus of Huntington’s C&O, which had been formed in 1868 from the merger of the Virginia Central and Covington and Ohio Railroad. The purpose of this construction lay in creating a direct line from Chicago, and the greater Midwest, by way of the rich coalfields of West Virginia, through to the Atlantic. It allowed Huntington to bring West Virginia bituminous coal to port for coastal shipping and worldwide export. 

The new railroad brought terminals, coal yards and piers to Hampton Roads, the East Coast’s largest year-round ice-free port. Within a few years, Huntington developed the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, which became the world’s largest shipyard of the day. After the Spanish-American War, when President Theodore Roosevelt declared his intention to create the Great White Fleet in the first decade of the 20th century, the Newport News shipyard entered the warship business by constructing seven of the first 16 U.S. Navy ships that circumnavigated the globe. Today the shipyard holds a dominant position in the American warship construction business. 

In the heyday of the C&O, the railroad built the original 23rd Street station directly on the waterfront. As passenger traffic grew, it was replaced in 1889 by a large multi-story, gabled Victorian depot with a tall clock tower. On the south side, a train shed ran right out onto a pier in the James River to meet the steamers that carried people and mail between Newport News and Norfolk, located on the south side of Hampton Roads. Steamer passengers could transfer to trains to head toward points west and vice versa. The pier remained active until 1950.  

The clock tower was taken down sometime during World War I, and the entire station was torn down and replaced in 1942 with a red brick depot – the one Amtrak began serving in May 1971.  

Newport News remains a shipbuilding and railroad city, with Newport News Shipbuilding a major employer; the CSX Newport News Marine Terminal, covering 165 acres; and industrial parks. Large coal piers are still operated by CSX Transportation, the C&O’s successor. Other water- and harbor-related vocations are also pursued because of the superior natural harborage at Hampton Roads. 

Many defense suppliers are located nearby, as well as military facilities including Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and Camp Peary. Across the harbor in South Hampton Roads stands the world’s largest naval base: Naval Station Norfolk. 

Research and education also play a role in the regional economy. At the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, nearly 2,000 scientists from around the world undertake fundamental research in nuclear and high-energy physics. It also partners with industry in providing advanced technology and applications, and with the community through educational outreach.

Northeast Regional service within Virginia is funded in part through grants made available by the Commonwealth of Virginia. 

Station Building (with waiting room)