Rail travel arrived in Bowling Green in 1859 when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad completed its first run through the city after nine years of construction, cutting travel time between Louisville and Nashville to thirteen hours and bringing railroad shops and a depot to the rail yard as communities competed to be placed along the line. In February 1862, as Confederates withdrew and Union troops shelled the city, the depot and the other railroad buildings burned, and a small replacement station soon fell into disrepair. After years of local demands for a better station, a large new depot of local oolitic limestone opened in 1925 with classical architectural details that reflected the railroad's importance. For the first half of the 1900s, the depot helped make the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Bowling Green's largest employer and served as the city's connection to the wider world, with more than twenty-six passenger trains a day passing through at its peak in the 1940s. Passenger service ended there in 1979 as automobiles became the main form of transportation, and after a period of vacancy and deterioration, the community restored the depot, leading to the opening of the Historic RailPark in 2002 and the Train Museum in 2007.