A late-night drone view of the station
Port Benton is a railroad station located in Port Benton. It is served by the Stepford County Railway’s Stepford Connect and Waterline operators. The station is located at 3297 Port Benton Lane, according to the city of Benton. The station has 1 side platform and 1 island platform, and has 5 tracks. 3 of those tracks are used for regular passenger service, the other two are used as a layup for out of service trains.
History
The station opened in 1892 as the Dockside station. It was a small station, only having a single side platform and a small station house which also served as a ticket booth. If you wanted to stop at the station, you would have to notify someone on the train staff so they could notify the operator. And if you wanted to get picked up at the station, you’d have to ring a bell, but if a worker was present in thr ticket booth they would flag it down. Eventually, port workers made negotiations with the railway and they remodeled the station, gave it a extra platform, made a larger waiting area, and made it so that all trains stop there instead of it being a “flag stop”. In 1909 the Benton Docks were renamed to Port Benton, and so was the station, and Dockside Lane had been rerouted anyway. In 1958, the railroad that owned the line was bought out by Transport for Stepford under its Waterline services, and eventually under Stepford Connect. The station house was demolished and replaced with the same one that stands today in 1967.
Location
The station is located at Port Benton Lane, directly behind the VisitBodin building. The station has a layup track that is used for storing out of service trains. This was one of the sites chosen by Transport For Stepford to build a expansion yard for its new generation Waterline rolling stock in 2012, but a expansion was chosen at Farliegh.