Great Northern Promises Newport a $20,000 Brick Depot
The railroad superintendent says work will soon begin on a new brick station on the old depot site, part of a wider burst of passing tracks and ballast work.
Supt. L. H. Bowen, of the Great Northern, was in town today. Mr. Bowen stated that work would soon be started on the new $20,000 depot for Newport. The depot plans are again in the hands of the company's architects at St. Paul, having been returned there for enlargement on the original plans. The structure is to be of brick and will be located practically on the site of the old depot.
Passenger and freight trains on this division of the Great Northern are now so numerous that additional passing tracks are required all along the line. New stations will be established between Priest River and LaClede and between Wrencoe and Sandpoint, and at all other stations the present capacity of the passing tracks will be doubled so as to enable trains to pass without sawing by. This work will be started in the near future, and to provide ballast for these passing tracks and for rehaballasting part of the main line steam shovels will be operated in the Newport gravel pit this summer. It is also reported that the main line is to be double tracked between Colbert and Fort Wright.
The I. W. N. is expecting the arrival of two new freight engines about May 10. As soon as they are placed in service the work of ballasting the extension from Newport to Ione will be completed. The gravel for this work will be brought from the Spirit Lake pit. The gravel in that pit makes a superior kind of ballast and the removal of it makes way for a track revision that will cut out one of the worst curves on the road.
Forty of the new flat cars ordered by the I. & W. N. from eastern builders have arrived and are being placed in service.
Construction work for the building of the Milwaukee road into Spokane from Coeur d'Alene is under way at several points, a connection with the O. R. & N. to be made at Dishman's near Spokane, and the tracks of the latter road used into the city. Work is also in progress for the connection between Spokane and the main line of the Milwaukee at the south end of Coeur d'Alene Lake.
Last Friday was clean-up day for the I. W. N. Railroad in Newport, and a large gang of men was put to work to clean up the yards of the company.
“The structure is to be of brick and will be located practically on the site of the old depot.”
Rail stations once decided which towns grew and which faded; today, transit investments still shape local real estate and civic pride. Newport's new depot was more than a building—it was a bet on the town's future as a railroad hub.
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