Day 70: Chugging across the Cheddar Curtain

     Let's say that you live up in the Northern Suburbs of Chicago, and driving is getting to be a giant pain in the rear end.  You know what you need to do?  You need to get on the train!  And to do that, you need to make your way onto the Metra Union Pacific North Line, which travels between Chicago and Kenosha, and serves all communities in between, primarily those right along the lake.

     The roots of the line go all the way back to 1851, when the Illinois General Assembly authorized the laying of tracks north from Chicago to the Wisconsin border. Shortly thereafter, the Wisconsin legislature also authorized the laying of tracks south from Milwaukee to the Illinois border.  By 1854, the Illinois line had reached Waukegan, and the two lines met each other the following year, upon which a "last spike" ceremony was held in Kenosha.  Over the next decade, the two companies underwent various reconfigurations, until the two companies emerged in 1863 under the combined name Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad.

     At the same time that the tracks were being put up towards Wisconsin, there was a local service also being inaugurated, one that started in 1856.  However, this line quickly started to become unprofitable, and the railroad wanted to abandon passenger rail in favor of freight.  Eventually the powers that be were talked into giving the passenger operation another chance, and traffic on that line eventually picked up. As the train became more successful, it also sprouted the growth of such northern suburbs as Lake Bluff, Ravinia, and Winnetka(to name a few).  By 1871, the line was thriving, with 7 round-trip trains running every day between Chicago and Kenosha, a trip that took just over 2 hours to make.  Upon arrival downtown, the trains would pull into a station situated at Wells and Kinzie streets that had been built in 1853.  All seemed to be going well.

     But then on the evening of October 8, fire took hold of the city and maintained its hellish grip for two whole days.  When the smoke finally cleared, any building that wasn't the Water Tower, the Pumping Station, or three other buildings, was destroyed.  This included the Chicago & Milwaukee's downtown station.  There wouldn't be a replacement built at the same site for another 10 years. Eventually things went back to normal, but then around the turn of the century, the replacement station was getting a bit too small, so the process was started to erect a new station.  In 1908, ground was broken, and in 1911, the station that would eventually come to be called Ogilvie Transportation Center was opened in its original iteration.

     Over the course of the 20th Century, not much changed up until 1984, when Metra was formed and the Chicago & Northwestern(as the line had come to be called) became part of it.  Eleven years later, Union Pacific absorbed the C&NW and the line became known as the Union Pacific North Line.  However, the old line lives on in the color of the UP North's schedule(Flambeau Green) which hearkens back to the lines C&NW heritage.  Today the line takes about an hour and 45 minutes to get from one end to the other, and also includes a feature that is the last of it's kind in America.  But more on that later...