Next monthly meeting of the
Board of Directors, Thursday, March. 12, 2026, 2
p.m., Peak
(FormerlyTwinStar) Corporate Offices, Upstairs
Conference Room, 4501 Intelco Loop,
Lacey Web Page Updated February 14, 2026
Operating since 1993
at 6600 Yelm Highway S.E. completely by community
volunteers who meet every passenger train, regardless of when
each train arrives. Volunteers are available twenty-four hours
per day for 33 years, seven days per week,14 trains per day. The
depot, also known as "Centennial Station" to celebrate 1889-1989
statehood, was built with community volunteers, donated labor
and contributions from Olympia, Tumwater, Lacey, Thurston
County, the Port of Olympia, etc. It is now the fourth busiest
passenger train depot in Washington state and hosted a record
82,519 passengers in 2025, more than an 11 percent increase from
2024, (Mile Post 32.2 on the Burlington
Northern Seattle Sub). The building, designated by Amtrak as
"OLW", was sold to Intercity Transit which maintains the
facility and provides scheduled city bus connections and
park/ride lots
Amtrak Coast Starlight between Los
Angeles and Seattle stops twice daily at our depot. Photo
from July, 2025.
Above, BNSF
employees making repairs to Main 2 elevation at the station.
6600
Yelm Highway S.E. Olympia-Lacey, Washington Phone: 360-923-4602
AMTRAK passengers
and depot visitors
are welcome to comment, compliment or ask questions to
volunteers by email, click below: contactOLWstation@gmail.com
Engrossed House Bill 1837, the Amtrak Intercity Rail Improvement bill was signed into law (Chapter 363, 2025) by Gov. Bob Ferguson
in May and became effective July 27, 2025.
The final bill set targets during the next 10 years and annual reports on the progress. Our station would have 16 more Cascades trains per day if 10-year targets set by ESHB 1837 in each house becomes reality. A summary report is due in two years, June 2027.
We should expect the first annual report next year.
The new law will establish 2035 targets for the Department of Transportation's Amtrak Cascades service regarding improvements, connections, frequency, and reliability.
Targets are established for Amtrak Cascades service, to be met by 2035, which include:
(1) a minimum trip reliability of 88 percent on-time performance,
(2) a minimum of 14 round trips per day between Seattle and Portland and a minimum of five roundtrips per day between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia
(3) improvements to first and last mile connections, and
(4) emissions reductions.
It also requires the Department of Transportation to annually report to the transportation committees of the Legislature and the Joint Transportation Committee with progress toward attaining goals and provide detailed explanations for constraints, whether or not they can be mitigated by the Legislature or another party. Instructs the Joint Transportation Committee to conduct an independent review of Amtrak Cascades 2024 preliminary service development plan.
.
Fourteen
Daily Trains from Olympia-Lacey
.
Amfleet cars bring a new look to most Amtrak
Cascades trains on eight trains daily, April 2025
Amtrak Cascades continues to
use two Talgo-brand trainsets as well on four trains
daily.
That data was provided by our YouTube host, Steel Highway, that
hosts our station camera server. That's something like an
astounding 4,300 to 5,000 views per day in our first month of
operation for Olympia-Lacey, the second highest views for any
single location in the Steel Highway YouTube network. Our rail
cam continues to be one of the most appreciated. The average viewer is online each view for 13 minutes. Indications are that we had more than 34,000 distinct individuals viewing our camera in the first month with an overwhelming number returning for more views.
By March, 2025, the site collected more than 2,200 likes.
Outages in May and December, 2025, forced additional count
resets. But 800 views were reported for the first three weeks of
2026.
2024 Annual Statistics for Main 1 and Main 2 at
the Station: 4,908 Amtrak Trains per year!
Compiled by nine
Chehalis Railfans, Here are some statistics on the
mainline track that runs in front of our station
Special thanks to David Norton.
Total Freight & Passenger Trains Recorded: 18,047 Total
Northbound: 10,697 Total Southbound:
7,350 Longest freight train (cars): 288
(About three miles!) Busiest Hour: 7 p.m. - 8
p.m. Slowest Hour: 7 a.m. - 8 a.m. Total
locomotives spotted: 50,147
Average Daily Trains:
49.3 Average Car Count BNSF: 92.2 Average
Car Count UP: 100.8
Pictured above, left to right, are Robert Moorhead, Secretary, Larry
Ganders, President, Teri Weber, Vice President
and Dave Norton, Treasurer
(Photo by John
Reinhart)
2025-2026
Amtrak Depot Committee Board of Directors
Officers Elected for a Single Year, Board
Term is 3 Years
Larry Ganders
President
August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2028
Teri Weber
Vice President
August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027
David Norton
Treasurer
August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027
Bob Moorhead
Secretary
August 1, 2023
to July 31, 2026
Jon Cox
Gazette Editor Member-at-Large
August 1, 2025
to July 31, 2028
Luis Molina
Member-at-Large
Dec. 11, 2025
to July 31, 2026
Noel Nordquist
Member-at-Large
August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027
Ken Mauermann
Member-at-Large
August 1, 2025
to July 31, 2028
Robert Kastner
Member-at-Large
August 1, 2023
to July 31, 2026
Our forerunner:
"AmShack"
Photo taken in 1980
The remote site had no public
transportation, no lighting, a gravel lot, and a usually non-operational pay
telephone. The three-sided building served East Olympia for about 20
years. (Photo by Paul Vitous)
OLW is Multimodal: Intercity Transit
Olympia-Lacey Depot (OLW) offers daily
service from 14 trains (Amtrak Coast Starlight and Cascades)
plus two Intercity Transit bus routes (Routes 94 &
64.) The community busses winding through Yelm, Lacey and
Olympia make nearly 80 stops daily at the depot and a
park/ride lot between the hours of 5:45 a.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Bus 64 from downtown Olympia (College St./Amtrak) currently
makes 28 stops daily, 6:15 a.m. to 8:03 p.m., services the
Lacey Transit Center and terminates
at the station. Bus 94 from
downtown Olympia or Yelm (Yelm Via Boulevard) currently
makes more than 50 stops daily, 5:45 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
It is currently the last bus out to downtown from our
station nightly both weekdays and weekends.
Station Painting
Our station opened in 1993 and a
rendering by J. Craig Thorpe that was painted prior to construction was pictured atop the 1993 National Amtrak Calendar.
That launched a career as a transportation artist for Thorpe. But the Olympia station opened without any financial support from Amtrak for station staff.
The volunteers sold the building to Intercity Transit which
maintains it.
Left, the
Chambers Prairie Station that preceded "AmShack" in East Olympia
that was built by Union Pacific Railroad and razed in the late
1960s. Center is the original Northern Pacific Station for
Olympia near the state Capitol. Photos by Fisher and Labbe are
courtesy of the Northern Pacific Railroad Historical
Association. Right, is a 1912 photo of the Northern Pacific
Depot at Lacey, Washington. Photo from the Harold Meir
Collection, Courtesy St. Martin's University Abbey. Special
thanks to Father Peter Tynan, University Chaplain and Abbey
Monk. Locomotive is a Baldwin 4-6-0 built about 1890.
Santa and Mrs. Claus Arrived by Train
Saturday,
December 13, 2025 Olympia-Lacey Centennial Amtrak
Station Sponsored by Olympia-Lacey
Amtrak Centennial Station Volunteers
About 300 children,
parents, and passengers attended the arrival of Santa on
a northbound Amtrak Cascades.
Loram Rail Grinder Video at OLW
This Loram Rail Grinder train,
shown in the video clipped from the OLW YouTube camera, was grinding the BNSF mainlines in front of the
Olympia-Lacey station
to make rails smooth, remove defects and corrosion and eliminate
deformities. At night, you can see sparks from stone grinders under the unit. Note water sprayed at the end
unit to prevent fire. (Video editing contributed by Vaclav
Sedlacek, Steel Highway Chehalis
Railcam Operator.)
Our History
Photos from construction of OLW
Depot in 1992. (Courtesy Audrey Skaugseth)
Since the Northern Pacific first built track to Tenino in 1872, the
Olympia area has been often spurned for passenger train service. NP
chose Tacoma over Seattle and Olympia for its West Coast terminus. At
the urging of the territorial governor, private landowners began laying
track on their own to connect Olympia with the "Prairie Line" to Tacoma
that ran east from Tenino (known eventually as the Port Townsend
Southern) to enable Olympia passenger service. That same citizen
commitment from the late 1880s continued one hundred years later when
Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater residents began planning a full-service
train station to serve the Amtrak Pioneer three days per week and the
Amtrak Coast Starlight to replace a
three-sided shelter resembling a crude bus stop at Chambers Prairie in East Olympia (Today, we refer to
it as 'AmShack.') At the time, AmShack was the only train station in
Olympia or Lacey.
The initial
fundraising campaign for the station began in 1987 and was to mark the State of Washington
centennial in 1989. This "Centennial Station" that resulted was built largely from community donors and laborers working mostly without compensation. Approximately $100,000 was raised in cash and $300,000 in products and services to build Centennial Station. Washington State provided $60,000 in additional funds to install utilities after the building was completed.
Donors purchased bricks on the station platform during one local donation drive. There were at least 30 Olympia-area depots that preceded it in history (many pictured
inside the station.)
Once built, Amtrak initially refused to to
provide staffing for the
station (even though the station was pictured that first
year on the 1993 Amtrak National Calendar. Amtrak also
considered bypassing Olympia and running directly
between Tenino and Tacoma (the old NP Prairie Line.)
The community responded with an
all-volunteer staff that has met every train (14 per
day) for 32 consecutive years.
Olympia-Lacey Centennial Amtrak Station was designed by an Olympia architect, Harold Dalke, to capture the feel of an early 20th Century train station. To a model railroader, the 1993 building's classic lines are like the plastic model stations used on Lionel train layouts. The OLW Depot features180-year-old solid cypress corbels, vaulted interior ceilings, stained glass with historic railroad logos, light fixtures scaled from Grand Central Station,
and a classic platform clock donated by the Talgo Corporation in a ceremony by a
visiting Spanish prince.The corbels were refinished at the wood shop of Panorama City and purchased by individual donors for installation.
Hundreds of donors purchased engraved bricks in the early 1990s to
be displayed in the platform area to help finance construction.
Donors today can get assistance from station volunteers to locate
the brick purchased.
