Eventually, the Terminal Station was serving some fifty passenger trains per day plus some freight and package service.

One by one, the Southern cancelled its trains, which included the Pelican, connecting New York and New Orleans; Ponce de Leon, Cincinnati-Jacksonville; Royal Palm, Cincinnati-Miami; and Tennessean, Memphis-Washington, D.C.[5] As passenger traffic declined, the railroad began using the station's platforms for storage.

[6] In 1970, Southern cancelled its last passenger train to Chattanooga—the Birmingham Special, from New York City to Birmingham—and closed Terminal Station.

[7] In 1989, another group of business people invested another $4 million to refurbish and renovate the hotel and to bring in and hire new management and staff.

The hotel is surrounded and fenced in by rose gardens and includes an additional area for educational historic trolley rides as well as an outdoor ice skating rink during the cold winter months.

Some parts of the complex were connected by a heritage streetcar line, operated by a 1924-built ex-New Orleans Perley Thomas trolley car originally numbered #959; this has been discontinued.

[10][11] The Beaux-Arts-style station designed by Donn Barber remains one of the grandest buildings in Chattanooga, with an arched main entrance leading to a center section with an 82-foot (25 m) ceiling dome with a skylight.

[13] The then-president of the Southern Railway System, William Finley, wanted the architecture to recall the National Park Bank of New York.