Station Improvements Outside New Start Projects

dee road looks like its coming along nicely too. It does not look like metra is going to keep the outbound platform at arlington park.

Yep, I took a look at the Arlington Park station during lunch on Friday and I see that indeed, there is a sidewalk along the south side of the tracks and the new island platform between tracks 2 and 3 will serve as the sole outbound platform. Seems like kind of a poor design to me.

yep, its very poor. its intresting that on the UP, metra favored a combined middle track and outbound track platform. Yet, when they had the chance to construct the chicago stations on the MD-W with this style. they instead decided to move the platforms to the outside. I also couldn't believe that they are installing crosswalks at jeferson park. This was a nice struce of railroad that had no grade crossing that in my opinion could of had some nice high speed running. I really like the style of the new dee road station. did anyone else see it? The orginal Crystal Lake station is also getting a much need rehab.

The new Dee Road station is attractive, but for some reason I have a special place in my heart for those old brick-and-glass structures that are rapidly disappearing these days. At least Cumberland will be around for a while.

According to a Chicago Tribune article, the College Ave. station in Wheaton opened last week.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... 1487.story

Pingree Road now has a new opening month...September. Lets see if Metra gets its estimate right this time.

Let's hope so... I don't think they want a repeat of last week, when several boxes worth of UP-NW schedules had to be destroyed because the service levels shown within for new the Pingree Road station hadn't been approved by the schedule department yet, even though a few hundred (as I understand it) of these "premature" schedules somehow made print. So any of you out there that would happen to have a schedule for this route with an effective date of 8/1/05... well, looks like you've got yourself a collector's item.

While out chasing trains yesterday evening, I noted that construction is well underway at the new Cicero Avenue station on the Milwaukee District West Line. The platforms have been started, and a section of the embankment has been removed on the south side of the tracks a half block west of Cicero, suggesting a shelter or tunnel may be located there.

MikeF wrote:While out chasing trains yesterday evening, I noted that construction is well underway at the new Cicero Avenue station on the Milwaukee District West Line. The platforms have been started, and a section of the embankment has been removed on the south side of the tracks a half block west of Cicero, suggesting a shelter or tunnel may be located there.

It seems like its been that way for at least a month. I don't know what they're doing, but they haven't made much visual progress for quite some time.

The Cicero station ties into the NCS New Start Expansion, so it should open sometime by early '06.

UP-NW's new schedule goes into effect September 4th, which of course includes the Pingree Rd. station. The afternoon rush has been changed the most with with the 3:30 train being split into a 3:25 local to Des Plaines and a 3:45 express to Des Plaines. The 6:20 local has also been pushed back 10 minutes to 6:30, the 6:30 express has been pushed up 5 minutes to 6:25.

It sure didn't take long for Pingree Road to get its own "station page" and to be added to the map on the UP-NW page. It only took about 2 weeks for Palos Heights to get the same on the SWS page.