Corning (Amtrak station)
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The Corning, California Intermodal Transit Station is located at 1024 Courtney Street in downtown Corning. The station opened with much fanfare in 1998 and is still the newest building in the City of Corning. When the facility opened in 1998, it began hosting four daily Amtrak Thruway Motorcoaches linking to and from Capitol Corridor and San Joaquin trains at Sacramento. It also became the home for a full service Greyhound ticket office and hosted Greyhound buses to the north and south. The Modern Spanish-Style station also began serving as a terminal for the region's local bus system, Tehama Rural Area Express (TRAX), and is also home to the Depot Cafe, open daily for breakfast and lunch.
Greyhound has since closed its ticket office at the Corning Station and halted all bus service at the facility. The nearest Greyhound terminals to Corning are now in Red Bluff or Chico. With the termination of Greyhound service the Greyhound passenger waiting room is now locked. The station still serves as a TRAX bus terminal, home to the Depot Cafe, and Corning's link to Amtrak trains through the four daily feeder motorcoaches.
The City hopes that Amtrak will eventually begin stopping its trains at the Corning Station if and when Amtrak San Joaquin trains are extended north from Sacramento to Redding, a vision that still appears to be years away. This coincides with the City of Corning and California Department of Transportation's decision of building the station trackside in downtown; it currently has adequate space to operate as a full service train station. A major obstacle in bringing direct train service to Corning is that the line through downtown Corning is a spur off the main rail line between Sacramento and Redding and additional funding would be necessary to construct a connection between the railroad track at Corning to the mainline near Chico. It could be done, but would require a funding source and more promising ridership statistics from the station than Amtrak's thruway motorcoaches have been able to provide.
