North Central: Any platform, any time...

At most Metra stations that have platforms on both sides of the tracks in double (or triple) track territory, the station platform signs include train direction; i.e., "To Chicago, or "From Chicago"; depending on whether or not Metra (or the host railroad) generally runs this particular line left or right-handed. During my annual railfan trip on NC yesterday, I noticed that the platform signage at stations in double track territory had the directional information crossed out, or taped over. While I would guess most rush hour trains on any given day would berth at the same platform, off-peak service now seems to be a little more random, where trains will just "get in where they fit in", and take any track that happens to be open. This became evident while riding 116 into downtown, because I noticed that we ran left-handed north of Deval, then right-handed south of there to B12. Also, this route, like UP/W, is prone to many freight train interference delays, and 116 seems to get spiked more than most, but yesterday's train actually arrived CUS three minutes early. Overall, it was a pretty nice ride on a beautiful day...

In my ~3 years of riding the NCS, I definitely found this to be the case. Freight interference was the rule, particularly in Mundelein, it seemed, even during rush hour (although non-rush hour trains were scarce to begin with while I rode the line).

The unpredictability of what platform you would be using had some potentially dangerous side effects that I noticed in Mundelein. First, on mornings when the trains would be running southbound on the eastern track, you would have a crush of commuters getting out of their cars at the last minute, only to notice in a panic that they had to run down the platform to the crossing. At Mundelein, the depot is on the western side and and there is/was no access to the east platform except for one crossing at the northern end of the station. On these mornings, people darting in front of the train was an epidemic - I saw even more close calls than when I used to ride the BNSF from Berwyn.

Also, a couple years ago I posted about a time when we were let off the train on the east platform while a freight stood still on the western track. Our train left, but the freight didn't move. As I mentioned above, there is only one way across to the depot/parking lot at Mundelein, and the freight stretched out north/south as far as anyone could see from the platform in the dark, so you had people dressed in business clothes, with bags and briefcases, climbing over and under a freight train. Those of us that valued our lives and waited for help from Metra (some 45 minutes later) learned later that the freight was disabled, but it was still a potentially dangerous situation.

NCSRider wrote:Also, a couple years ago I posted about a time when we were let off the train on the east platform while a freight stood still on the western track. Our train left, but the freight didn't move. As I mentioned above, there is only one way across to the depot/parking lot at Mundelein, and the freight stretched out north/south as far as anyone could see from the platform in the dark, so you had people dressed in business clothes, with bags and briefcases, climbing over and under a freight train

I remember that post, and I believe it was later determined that the freight in question had died on hours. It's happened a couple of other times on that route since then, the most recent one was a few months ago which totally wiped out the morning rush. Freight train interference delays are just minor annoyances most of the time, but I wouldn't want to even imagine a similar extreme situation occurring on UP or BNSF; that would be a real PR nightmare...