Station or Terminal

[west point]

What if anything other than dock is an ocean liner terminating at ? Or for that matter a sea plane dock ? Airport is an airport.

 

[the_traveler]

An ocean liner or cruise ship goes to a port. An airport could also be a field - although not many jets land in fields (at least by choice ) but some single engine planes do.

 

[ehbowen]

What if anything other than dock is an ocean liner terminating at ? Or for that matter a sea plane dock ? Airport is an airport.

 

[railiner]

Greyhound Lines generally refer to all of their company operated depot's as terminal's...although that is changing, as they have converted a large number of them into commission agencies....

And most common-carrier truck lines also refer to their bases as terminal's....

 

[railiner]

What if anything other than dock is an ocean liner terminating at ? Or for that matter a sea plane dock ? Airport is an airport.

LaGuardia Airport's Marine Air Terminal at one time was served by Pan Am's famous Boeing 314 'Clipper's, for their transatlantic flights...other seaplane ports are simply seaplane bases...

Bayonne, New Jersey's "Cape Liberty" cruise port was originally known as the Military Ocean Terminal, (and still is to mariner's)....

Southampton, England has an "Ocean Terminal"

and most cruise ship ports refer to the wharf, dock, or pier building as a terminal.

 

[jis]

Yup. For example, Port Canaveral has North and South Terminals. Those are buildings. And then it has Terminals 2 through 10 with 7 missing. Those are berths.

 

[neroden]

All Terminals are Stations. Not all Stations are Terminals.

A Terminal is really defined by stub-end tracks with buffer stops.

That said, some terminals have been converted into through stations later and retained the "terminal" name.

I think this is the best explanation. I'd like to add terminals often had crews assigned to assist with the movement and positioning of equipment. Remember, push pull trains didn't always exist and railroads didn't always have a locomotive on each end. A lot of "stations" are actually listed as terminals in the employee timetable.

Washington Union station is Washington Terminal, Springfield Union Station in Mass is Springfield Terminal and used to sit in the Springfield Terminal District. New York is in the New York terminal district. The same goes for Richmond.

This definition based on functional activities at a "station" to characterize it as a Terminal, rather than worrying about buffer stops makes much more sense.

As Thirdrail points out, the dead-end buffer-stop tracks were typically what *necessitated* the extra "terminal activities" and staffing. But I get your point.
A station which was not a terminal would be "arrive; drop off; pick up; leave". A terminal involved extra operations associated with the "beginning" or "end" in some sense.

Here's a curious example: Emeryville isn't really a terminal; all the Amtrak trains pull straight through it, in and out. The terminal for the trip is in the yard some distance away at Oakland. But the yard is north of the next station, so the California Zephyr's last passenger station is at Emeryville.

Airplanes always have terminals because none of them are passing straight through (I'm not even sure what that would mean -- mid-air refuelling maybe?)