CHICAGO — Commuters arriving today (Nov. 12) at the Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago — the former Chicago & North Western commuter terminal that serves Metra’s UP North, Northwest, and West lines — today may have been a bit surprised to find a train on Track 6 that was definitely not the usual Metra trainset. The Union Pacific executive train was on hand for a 12:30 p.m. “CEO Media Day” trip from downtown to UP’s Global IV intermodal facility in Joliet, via the Belt Railway of Chicago’s Clearing Yard. The roughly 2½-hour trip featured media presentations from CEO Jim Vena and other UP executives on the proposed merger with Norfolk Southern, the complexities of Chicago operations, and other topics.
The six-car train, led by C44ACM No. 6017 and the railroad’s Abraham Lincoln unit, SD70M No. 1616, included a power car, business car St. Louis, sleeping car Lake Mead, dining car City of Denver, dome car City of San Francisco, and inspection car Fox River.
i still say the “winged shield” looks better than just that little shield. You don’t hardly even see it when a UP train goes by but you sure see the WINGS and they mean something to long time UP supporters…
Just to clear up any confusion, so-called “Uglyvie” is neither across the street from CUS, nor on the same level…the former above street level and the latter at…the former has a “headhouse” being a stub-end, the latter, thanks to the Pennsy, has a coupla thru tracks next to the river, but the majority are stubs, the CB&Q to the south, the Milw. Rd. north. Back in the day, at Canal St., one could watch 400’s pass over Hiawathas.
The CN&W depot’s architecture was classic, understated monumentalism. The mediocre glass box like a pimple on the remainder not destroyed. The far greater vandalism was the removal of the classic CUS concourse to be replaced by more glass boxes.
Charles, the toilets are on the lower level (Canal St. level) about midway along the concourse just south of the escalators. (At least, that’s where they *used* to be when I regularly commuted to downtown. Now, that was well over 20 years ago, and the only thing constant is change, so….)
Too bad the classic CNW depot was replaced with a mediocre glass box.
Knocking it down wouldn’t have been so bad if they at least extended the tracks down to Union Station’s headhouse to make it worthwhile.
Actually, Curtis, Ogilvie is a great glass box for an office building and a high-end shopping mall. As a train station, Ogilvie isn’t idea but it’s about 100 Billion times better than LaSalle, which is a disgrace to humanity.
Does Ogilvie have toilets for train passengers? If it does, I have never found them.
Across the street at Union Station, countless millions of dollars in rehabs has meant it’s gone from wholly inadequate toilets to (so far at least) to wholly inadequate toilets. Maybe the job isn’t finished yet and more toilets are to come. Last I was there, the line for the Women’s was about twenty long and it was midday.
They always need twice as many stalls for women. Men just walk up to a urinal and “get it done.” Women have to sanitize everything, laydown their toilet tissue butt gasket, and then get on with business. When they rebuilt the football stadium at Utah State in Logan, Ut, they put in twice as many women’s toilet stalls as men’s toilets for that very reason so that they could encourage more women to attend games… Things that make you say “Hmmm”