Work under way to preserve historic depot

SANDPOINT — A project is on track to preserve the island of history that is the Sandpoint train depot.

The Idaho Transportation Department has hired a masonry restoration company to do a comprehensive analysis of the historic depot and bolster parts of the building as construction of the U.S. Highway 95 bypass picks up. The depot will also be monitored during construction.

Work on the Sand Creek Byway has raised questions about the fate of the depot. But history, rail and architecture enthusiasts can breathe easy.

“The depot stays where it is,” said Barbara Babic, ITD’s District 1 spokeswoman.

Babic said Talisman Construction Services of Spokane, Wash., is conducting the analysis and repair work. The cost of the restoration project was not immediately available on Thursday.

The depot was built in 1916 for the Northern Pacific Railroad and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It is said to be the oldest active Northern Pacific depot in the state.

Some railway aficionados describe the depot’s architecture as Tudor, while others describe it as Gothic. The national register lists the architectural style as turn-of-the-century revival.

The depot is now owned by the BNSF Railway and used as a stop for Amtrak’s Empire Builder passenger train, which runs from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest.

“ITD’s actually invested a lot of money to save that structure,” said Ryan Alsup, a field engineer with bypass contractor Parsons RCI. “There’s several features on the job that they’re incorporating explicitly for that.”

The depot-sensitive work includes in the installation of lightweight concrete fill within the highway alignment on the west side of the building. The lightweight concrete fill will be flanked on each side with deep-soil mixing earth work, which involves impregnating the ground with a cement-treated soil product.

The lightweight fill and the deep-soil mixing are meant to protect the depot.

“It’s intended to dampen the vibrations resulting from future highway traffic,” Alsup said.

A new frontage road will also be constructed so traffic and pedestrians can access the depot from Bridge Street. The frontage road, which will be above the grade of the bypass, will be separated from the highway by a concrete wall, the face which will be dressed with brick.

The depot was a facet in the North Idaho Community Action Network’s injunction to stop the bypass project and preserve the waterfront. NICAN argued state and federal highway officials violated the National Environmental Policy Act because they failed to take the required “hard look” at impacts to the historic depot.

The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, however, found the impacts to the depot had been sufficiently scrutinized during the regulatory process.

“It’s a beautiful station. Everybody that I know of would like to see it preserved,” said local author and rail historian Paul Rechnitzer.

Rechnitzer said Northern Pacific tended to use the same building design for its stations, but for some unknown reason Sandpoint’s depot was built from a different mold.

“It’s kind of a stand-alone in the sense that its architecture did not conform to what they did in most places,” he said.