Closed December 8, 1975 Opened 16 September 1974 | Rebuilt 2017 Planned Tracks 1 | |
Line(s) SunRail:
SunRail
Phase 2 (2017) Similar Sand Lake Road station, Lake Mary station, Sanford station, Maitland station, DeBary station | ||
Poinciana station is a planned train station in the community of Poinciana, Florida. It is the planned southern terminus of the final phase of SunRail, the commuter rail service of Greater Orlando. The site was also used briefly by Amtrak from 1974 to 1975.
History
In the mid 1970s, the site was planned as the southern terminus for Amtrak's inaugural auto ferry service called Auto-Trak connecting Florida to Indianapolis Union Station, in competition with the Auto-Train Corporation's Auto-Train service. Amtrak initially built a complex with a 1,600 square foot modular building, a parking lot and two spur-lines with eventual plans for a 7,000 square foot facility. The initial complex opened on September 16, 1974 with the simultaneous arrival of the Floridian and the Champion trains. It was envisioned to be the official stop for tourists bound for Walt Disney World. The Auto-Trak service never came to life, however, and the station was used for just over a year as a stop for the Champion and the Floridian until December 12, 1975 when those trains began stopping at Kissimmee instead. Sometime in the 1980s, the station building was demolished, the spur-lines were removed and the parking lot along with the access road into the site were abandoned and eventually overgrew with vegetation over the years. The site sat vacant until construction of the Poinciana SunRail station began in early 2016.