MD-W Stations

hey guys, i road the train out to elmwood park yesterday. Station construction seems to be moving at a snails pace considering they are standard designs. Workers were begining to construct Hanson Park's inbound platform. (no more crosswalks) Elmwood Parks station building and shelter are finished, but the inbound platform needs to be constructed. I assume that this will happen when the line switches to center track express. What is intresting is that it looks like they are going shift the platform east across the street as a timber outline has already been constructed. Galewood still has work to be done. All other stations look like they are near completion. Various stations now have signaled pedestrain cross walks, which i guess is becoming a metra standard. Does anyone know if they are going to keep the old inbound platforms or at part of them to serve the middle track when things take the inbound track out of sevice? It seems to me if they are going to leave all that space in between the tracks they should leave the platforms for situations like this.

I don't think the old platforms for the soon to be middle track will be permanent. Though they might be there for a while. Metra has yet to tare up the old Wrightwood Station on SWS and it has been almost 6 months since the new station opened "next door". Metra might be extending Elmwood Park's inbound platform across the street. Metra's Ashburn extension on SWS looks like they are moving the station over, but the old platform was so short it just looks out of place.

The last time I rode MILW-W in March, it looked like Metra started to break ground for the new Cicero Station. Has anything new happend with that?

i did not even look for the new cicero station. I am mostlikley going to ride to elgin next week so ill look out for it.. on another note after looking at your website i am suprised at how fast construction of the oaklawn station is coming along

I was suprised by the Oak Lawn progress too. There was no structure up in March when I rode SWS last. It also flew past Palos Park's new station constrution, which started 3 months earlier and seems to be taking forever. Palos Park's construction started last October and there is still no major station structure up or a full platform on either track.

The SWS Expansion page on MetxPix will hopefully have more pictures by tomorrow.

it always seems that it takes forever unless the actually town gets involved. I think the worst is college ave been underconstruction for 3 years

It may have taken awhile, but the new College Ave station on UP-W is finished. Complete with a brand new waiting room, improved lighting on the platforms, and ramps for the disabled, plus addtional parking spaces. It's a fairly pleasant station now that it's done, and I suppose it counts as an upgrade over the previous one (although I don't know what the other one looked like since I've only been in the area for a little over a year) but I also wonder why it took so long...

College Avenue is an enormous upgrade over the old station there, which consisted of one of those little brick-and-windows C&NW-era waiting rooms (think Berkeley but somewhat larger) and two old unsheltered platforms. Here's a shot of the old station, at least until Metra decides to update their Web site:

http://metrarail.com/Sched/cnw_w/college_ave.shtml

MetraRy wrote:it always seems that it takes forever unless the actually town gets involved

As far as I know, Palos Park is involved with the station, but I'm not sure how big of a role they are playing. There was a lot of ground work that had to be done at Palos, in order to fit the new 2nd track along with a platform and a new parking lot. The wooden outline of a new platform has been there for about 3 weeks and hasn't been touched since.

Another station that took forever to build was the Palos Heights station which opened last December. It was only supposed to take 14 months to build but ended up taking 4 years and costing $3.6 million over budget.

i wish metra would just focus on a few stations at a time. I could see palos hieghts taking awhile because of its location and, i could be wrong, but i thought enviormental cleanup had to take place at the location. There is always problems related to that. Does anyone know how 99th street on the rock is coming along. Last time i was there the trailier was set up but there was no progress being made and no workers in sight.

I have not been past 99th Street in a while. If it follows 95th and 111th streets, it should look nice when its completed.

I have to correct myself on the Wrightwood station. I rode SWS today and the old platform, bus shelter, and stairs were gone. The only way you can tell a station used to be there is all the dirt where everything once stood.

i rode the sws today, and boy, they got further then i even thought at oak lawn. btw does anyone know how many cars ausburns platforms will be able to hold? They seem to strech on forever crossing 4 streets in the process. Today crews were working on the signal south of the 179th depot. pretty intresting watching them test it. work also seems to be in full swing at palos park and worth. I was, however suprised how few people ride the 1:45 out of union and the 3:03 out of 179th. We were only in one half of a car and i still got a four seater to myself

All platforms on SWS will be able to fit 9 cars when construction is complete, at least at the current stations. Wrightwood is the only one I'm not sure about. For Manhattan trains, the 179th Street platform should be able to fit 5 or 6 cars. Metra is not using the newly completed platform at 179th, so I'm not sure.

The 1:45 train does have 3 cars open, which is not bad for an early afternoon train on a not so busy line. Rush hour trains as expected are busier. In comparison the 1:25 NCS train only opens 2 cars and the 1:30 RI train opens 4. The lowest ridership on SWS does happen on reverse trip trains. The 7:48am outbound, and the 6:52pm inbound would be lucky to get 25+ people on board. Half of the time train #3 (7:48am) doesn't stop at 179th because no one is on board.

I'm waiting to see what Metra is going to do with the signals at the north end of 179th Street yard. That is the only place that is still using old signals except Chicago Ridge.