Joel N. Weber II
Engineer
I think 100 years ago, it was quite common for train stations to be named after the railroad. If you go to Back Bay Station in Boston and wander around the surface streets looking at what are now the emergency exit buildings on the surface, you'll find that what is now Back Bay Station was once two different stations, at least one of which still (as of a year ago or something, anyway) has a sign listing the name of the original railroad it was built for.Owned by the PRRthe more interesting question is why so many are called pennsylvania station.Seriously, according to Wikipedia, "A union station or union terminal is a train station where tracks and facilities are shared by two or more railway companies allowing passengers to connect conveniently between them." If Wikipedia is correct, this obviously has it's origins in pre-amtrak days!(Why is every other train station named union station?)
union actually makes sense.. pennsylvania, not so much
Eventually the railroads realized that operating out of shared stations made sense, and Union Station became the typical name for such stations. However, there are exceptions; South Station in Boston is an example of a union station.