Guesstimate... on the MED.

Well with all the latest developments , new detailing Bi levels with Burlington written on them, repaint and restore of some old smooth sided cars, and ongoing rebuilding of the F40PH's on the Diesel Metra lines, I begin to wonder whats next for the seems to be forgotten step child, the MED. There was the order of 26 new Bi-levels in 05' ( should have been at least 50 cars IMHO) and that has seemed to come to a halt , a few improvements in between here and there like the new ticket machines, then a downtown stations received a bit of attention (11th st.) as the latest. Yet, No more improvements seem to be on the horizon for the coming years on the MED. The latest info from the brass and the press has been vague at best, so I ask whats your best guesstimate.....

1) Next order or shipment New Rolling stock.....
2) Next station(s) to be Revitalized...
3) Replacement of the wooden platform station on the MED main between 63rd and 111th st....
4) 115th & Kensington Interlocking project actually getting under way....
5) Catenary upgrades and higher speeds on express runs...
6) Will we ever see "Illinois Central" written over the the doors of the new Nippon Sharyo cars....
7) Any thing else I may have forgotten... give it your best shot!

buddah wrote:4) 115th & Kensington Interlocking project actually getting under way....

That one is scheduled to begin this year ... with completion in 2011.
NICTD is paying for it. Approvals for purchases have been made in board meetings.

buddah wrote: 6) Will we ever see "Illinois Central" written over the the doors of the new Nippon Sharyo cars....

Absolutely not. The BNSF cars got that respective lettering almost certainly because BNSF actually runs and maintains those trains. The IC, aside from the fact that it's now part of CN, hasn't had anything to do with the MED since 1987 when it sold the whole operation to Metra. Arguably some of the IC's "investments" in the MED while they owned it aren't quite as "positive" as has been seen on the BNSF:

- Railcars built cheaply for only about 20 years of service, which are now getting pretty rusty.
- Same railcars also have blended brakes which lose the dynamics without warning every now and then. This necessitated the blocking out of the highest notch on the Highliners' controllers, leaving them with a pitifully low top speed.
- Again with the old Highliners: Every try to use a bathroom in one?
- IC solution to a station getting ratty: Just Add Tarpaper©!
- That godawful turnstiles/automated ticketing scheme they had in place, which never worked quite right.

It's my opinion that the high water mark for the MED is April 19th, 2010. The IC was a real cheapskate railroad, and the further away the Electric District gets from that legacy, the better.

To be fair to the IC, they were one of about five roads that actually bought new equipment around the 1970 time. PRR bought equipment with state money, same with Reading, MILW, and RI. I'm not sure IC had any state money. I am sure most of those roads didn't buy bathroom-equipped trains either, and never had in the past. Contrast this with CSS, EL, and NH - their equipment was 1920's vintage, and even RDG and PRR kept plenty of their 1920's-vintage rolling stock around. IC was likely the only road to completely re-equip by 1980. Also, it's worth noting that all commuter traffic was especially hard-hit around this time, but IC had the added hit of the Dan Ryan CTA line opening up in 1969, which absolutely annihilated the IC traffic between 95th and downtown.

Tadman wrote:I'm not sure IC had any state money.

They didn't have state money, but subsidies for the Highliners were provided by the South Suburban Mass Transit district. I'm not sure if the SSMTD still exists or not - if you look the name up in Google you get an address for a plot of land which is now a parking lot next to the tracks in Flossmoor. I think the SSMTD worked just like the WSMTD, NWSMTD, etc - it was an organization used to pool funding from local municipalities so it could be transferred to the local commuter operation (either as cash or purchased assets).

The original Highliner purchase involved, I believe, 80 percent federal funding, 20 percent by the IC. This was one of the first car purchases involving federal funding. The second Highliner purchase was 80 percent federal, 20 percent state. The IC was under presssure to buy new equipment since the old Pullmans were nearing 50 years old and were clearly inadequate when compared to the gallery cars used on the other main commuter railroads. The Chicago South Suburban Mass Transit District, which had no local government source of revenue, was used as a funding mechanism, since the feds would not give money directly to a private company. The CSSMTD existed primarily on "rental" payments paid by the IC for the use of the Highliners, and later, from money received for managing some commuter parking lots.
The second generation Highliner purchase was limited to 26 cars since that's all the money that was available after Metra's mass purchase of cars for the diesel fleet. Plans to buy enough cars to completely reequip the fleet have been in place since that time, but the Illinois leglislature has never found a way to pay for the state's share of the cost.
Since the original Highliners have soldiered on for more than 40 years, they seem to have been a pretty good purchase. Rust has always been a problem with the exterior of the cars, with frequent repaintings since the early years.
The original reason for not including rest rooms was that the existing IC equipment never had them, the longest ride was just over an hour and the IC didn't wan't to have the expense of serving them.
The fare gate system was a mistake from the beginning.
And, there's no reason "Illinois Central" should ever appear on any Metra equipmlent. The IC is dead. And it was a cheap outfit.

It may have been a cheap outfit, but they made money in the late 1960's when quite a lot of outfits were given up for dead. And interestingly enough, Wayne Johnston was a pro-passenger guy even in the late 1960's - the Panama lasted quite late into the decade as Pullman-only. However, the road seemed to get every mile possible out of power and rolling stock, and then some.

Sorry, I got carried away and forgot to answer some of the other questions.
Next stations to be rehabbed: 59th Street and 63rd Street.
I don't think much will ever be done to the 67th to 111th Street stations or the stations on the Blue Island branch. Ridership is pitiful at those stations and it would be hard to justify spending a lot on money on them.
Rehab of some or the newer suburban stations is in order, the concrete work on some of the stations is in pretty shape and needs fixing up.
If the IC hadn't initiatded the fare gate system, there's probably still be ticket agents at the busier suburban stations. I am suprrised, however, that Metra has never extened the ticket vendning machines to other lines. The technology is there, why not expand upon it?
I don't know if higher speeds are necessary. The rush hour runs from the suburbs are pretty snappy and the non-rush hour trips between 59th and 115th seems to be fast enough. The other services feature too many close stops for any speed improvements.
The historical stuff I've cited for the Highliners and other IC/Metra Electric stuff comes largely from the years (1971-2007) that I spent covering the Chicago South Suburban Mass Transit District for The Star newspapers. I sat through many a long night at the Harvey City Hall (later Flossmoor Village Hall) coverning the district's board meetings. These meetings often went into mind-numbing detail about the district's projects, the initial Highliner order from St. Louis, the second Highliner order from Bombardier, new buses for South Suburban SafeWay Lines, the extension of the IC suburban from Richton Park to University Park, reverse signalling, stations and parking lots. The district had no source of local tax revenue, although the district's name appeared on local property tax bills, it had no authority to levy a propert tax. The hard-working trustees and small staff (a part-time director and an attorney) worked very hard to ensure the South Suburbs had good transit service. The district lived on rental payments for equipment from the IC and Safeway, some parking lot revenue and federal grants.
The IC never invested any more money than was absolutely needed. While it did fund 20 percent of the cost of the original Highliners, remember that C&NW, CB&Q, Milwaukee Road and even the Rock Island, for Pete's sake, purchased gallary cars using their own funds.

It's my opinion that the high water mark for the MED is April 19th, 2010. The IC was a real cheapskate railroad, and the further away the Electric District gets from that legacy, the better.

I am going to go ahead and sort of disagree. Illinois Central may have turned in to a cheapskate operation at some point, but it is not the impression I get from the history of the suburban service. The whole territory south of the city was completely vacant, but they built it like a high volume rapid transit line. That was a risk, and none of the other Chicago railroads built anything like it. The first time I checked it out a few years ago the line stood out to me as having a pretty solid infrastructure. Substantial grade separation, isolated passenger mains, good drainage, robust looking catenary masts, and a relatively straight route with "on ramp" and "off ramp" tie ins and flyovers. It was built to be efficient and durable, and profitable. The railroad could have been a standard for market based transportation in some alternative universe. I call the high water mark sometime before the cheapskate phase and subsidization, because there is no way Metra is ever going to have the ability or the need to put this kind of improvement in to any of its lines.

Well put. MED is the only commuter line that was built entirely parallel but separate to the intercity lines in Chicago, and maybe the US. A book I'd recommend is "Limiteds Along the Lakefront" by Alan Lind. Great writing about the IC between downtown and Markham.

I''ll back off on my "cheep" comment as you are right, the IC did build a first class suburban railroad back in 1926 when it eliminated all grade crossings on the main line and electrified. Of course, that was about the last money the railroad spent on its suburban operations. By the late 1960's, it still looked like it was 1926 and many civic leaders in the south suburbs were complaining that the line's equipment was hurting the area when it came to attracting residents. After all, people who lived along the Burlington, Milwaukee and Northwestern got to ride in air conditioned comfort, while the IC riders were sweating in open widow cars and sitting on rattan seats. Even the Rock Island had a few gallery cars and, of course, the Aerotrains. Of course, the IC was losing money hand over fist on the suburban operations, so it had no incentive to spend any money on it.
An interesting look at the IC's thinking was that during the planning for the University Park extension (and by the way the IC was an investor in what was then called Park Forest South and had an incentive to extend the commuter line. Park Forest South was to be a totally planned utopia with a population in excess of 100,000, of course, it didn't work out that way), the CSSMTD board was shocked when the IC people designing the line came up with their plans for the University Park station --- a wooden platform exactly like every other station on the IC. The transit district trustees put some pressure on the railroad and an architect was hired to design a station in a more modernist style. I'm not sure why that IC thought a wooden platform was necessary, after all, they weren't paying for any part of the extension, it was totally funded by federal and state grants.

It's interesting learning so much about MED, my favorite Metra line. As for "why did IC design a wooden platform when feds were funding" at UP, I can only guess it was the same reason a government-funded Conrail ran their commuter passenger trains into the ground. Conrail was being funded to be a money loser in the first few years, yet they still ran a destructive maintenance policy on equipment like FL9's and 4400's. It wasn't until MNCR totally took over that New York commuter service was really cleaned up; similar intent could be seen in IC's outright total sale of suburban lines rather than keeping the contract like CNW or BN. Of course, the cash-rich IC of the 1960's and early 1970's had turned into the cash-poor ICG of the 1980's, interested in diversification and divestiture of non-key railroad operations.

Since the IC's commuter lines were totally separate from the freight operations, it was a no-brainer for the IC to the sell the passenger lines to Metra. They were selling everything off in those days and the railroad would have no use for the extensive passenger facilities. The BN and C&NW, on the other hand, wanted to keep control over their main lines from the west into Chicago. They didn't want Metra running their main lines and probably restricting freight traffic to tight time requirements.

The 1926 design is amazing ... and what we see of it is just the remainder. There were two additional tracks in the past with six track service to 51st St with a pocket track just south of 53rd. The non-electrified tracks had separate passenger and freight mains in both directions. 10 running tracks.

I'm glad the ROW survived and didn't become another freeway. Space for three tracks were lost when Lake Shore Drive was rerouted at 18th St and Central Station and the yards are now gone to development but they have managed to keep the ROW pretty much intact.

Most "commuter rail" lines that have been around long enough have had two peaks ... one "back in the day" in the 1920-50's and one closer to now. I don't expect any line to get back to the way it was in 1926 - the world has changed too much and it is public money funding the upgrades. But I would hope to say of ANY rail line that now is the peak. I want to see constant improvement and not read about/remember how good it was a decade ago.

So I agree that 1926 was the peak and now is the peak ... just different eras.

justalurker66 wrote:I don't expect any line to get back to the way it was in 1926 - the world has changed too much and it is public money funding the upgrades. But I would hope to say of ANY rail line that now is the peak. I want to see constant improvement and not read about/remember how good it was a decade ago

It's a shame that we can't talk about Metra's other legacy roads without mentioning neglected infrastructure (RI), mass station closures (CNW), or diminished capacity after tracks were ripped out (CNW's north line, RI, and to a lesser degree, Milwaukee Road). But thankfully, MED isn't the only line whose infrastructure more or less survived intact; the same can also be said for BNSF's Chicago subdivision, which is an amazing railroad in its own right, and where heavy freight and passenger traffic all share a 3-track ROW in almost perfect harmony. The historical discussions about these routes no doubt can stand on their own, but modern operations certainly do not pale in comparison. Just wish that could be the norm instead of the exception...