Construction and Projects

Naperville will be getting new platforms, construction is expected to begin April 11th. http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2011 ... 703299972/

As most know, 35th Street opened today on RI. There are some great pictures of the station on Flickr... link to the page is below.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vxla/sets/ ... 422544334/

A friend of mine sent me a photo on my phone yesterday from Naperville, they have begun tearing up the old north platform west of the Washington Street bridge. Also as part of this construction, the decking on the bridge over Washington Street will be repaired/replaced, which will cause Washington Street to be reduced to one lane each direction for five weeks while construction is occurring. They will be replacing the platform in four phases, the first of which will be replacing the western half of the north platform, including over Washington Street.

Time lapse video of a new railroad bridge being lowered into place at Belmont Road. Work is really going fast these days, with the goal of having Belmont road running under the new railroad bridge by October 2011.

http://youtu.be/t0FzwumtBYY

The new railroad bridges carrying tracks 1 and 2 over Belmont Road are now in place. Belmont Road was closed this weekend in order to install new panels at the temporary grade crossing for track 2, which has now been aligned in its final position. Excavation work is also taking place on both sides of Belmont Road where the road will lower and pass under the new railroad bridge. BNSF is taking the Belmont station out of service for one day on Saturday May 7 so that track 3 can be taken out of service and temporary platforms installed so that work on the bridge and new south platform can begin. Crews are really working fast.

Lots going on with the BNSF right now.

Main 3 at Belmont has been relocated next to mains 1 and 2 and the temporary platforms have been put in on the western half of the south platform over extending over main 3 up to main 2. The Eastern half of the south platform is currently closed to allow room for construction equipment. The plan is to have all three mains operating on their new alignments by the fall and to conclude all track construction by that point. After that, all work will shift away from the tracks and over to getting Belmont Road under the new bridge.

I also heard a interesting thing that is scheduled to happen from the manager of the BNSF suburban operations. He said that right now the area around Downers Grove has three crossovers (East Lisle, Downers Grove, and Fairview). He said once they are done with the Belmont project, due to the Fairview crossovers being located a few blocks down, the crossovers at the Downers Grove plant are going to be deactivated and removed, and one switch will be left in to get in and out of Downers Grove Yard.

The east half of the platforms at Highlands have been finished. I would guess they will start replacing the west half of the platforms there now. They are also doing switch work at the Highlands and West Hinsdale plants New relay cases have been put up at both of those plants so I'd expect they to begin putting up new signal bridges too.

The western half of the north platform at Naperville have been removed and they are now doing maintenance work on the bridge over Washington Street on the north side.

The Downers Grove control point is unique in the sense where two of the turnouts are parallel to one another. Going east toward Chicago, the turnouts from tracks 3-2 and 2-1 are parallel. In the past I have seen some westbound Metras, after making a station stop in Downers Grove, cross over 3-1. And some eastbound movements on track 1 have crossed over to 3 at that interlocking. But, a westbound move from 1-3 on a single pass and 3-1 eastbound is impossible. A good example is westbound Metra train 1245. When that train completes its run at Downers Grove Main Street, it crosses over 1-2, pauses, then goes east 2-3 thru the interlocking back to the station. A reason for this particular move is to allow easbound 1276 to pass thru before 1245 flips. East Lisle was removed, then reinstalled to accomodate movements during the Belmont project. If a control point were to be removed, personally, I'd remove the East Lisle ones once the Belmont project is finished. Some eastbound freights using the middle track that stop would be in the interlocking, making them useless.

Well if they remove the Downers Grove crossovers and have Belmont going under the tracks, couldn't they move the holding point from Belmont to just west of Forest Avenue in Downers Grove? If they did that, even the longest freights should be able to clear the East Lisle plant.

Looks like they are starting to put the new west half of the north platform in at Naperville as of yesterday. They are now also working on rebuilding the east half of the platform at Belmont. The new platform as expected has been moved north along with main 3. They are also working on the new passenger shelters on the north side of the Belmont station.

Major work in progress right now at B-12/Franklin Park on the Milwaukee West. For the last few weeks, some new turnouts and crossovers were being built in adjacent streets and parking lots. This morning, lots of people standing around ready to work. This afternoon (getting towards the end of rush hour), the tracks leading to the IHB had been torn up and a couple of cranes were in the process of moving the crossover (assembled north(!) of the tracks) towards the construction area. Meanwhile, Metra trains operating through at full speed (full being relative - with all but three trains stopping at Franklin Park, most aren't doing track speed (only 45 due to the CN crossing) but I was on one of them doing the 40mph 3 to 2 to 1 cross).

I suspect this is part of the CREATE project to let freights get from the IHB to/from the bypass tracks around Bensenville yard.

Belmont Road station was closed this weekend for track 3 and south platform work. Since track 3 was realigned and set on the new bridge and the platform rebuilt, gone is the wide gap between tracks 2 and 3 than ran the length of the platforms west of Belmont through several hundred feet east of the old grade crossing. The passenger shelters on the north side platforms are really coming along.

For the period 10/31 through 11/3, CUS-N tracks 3 and 5 will be out of service (Metra had flyers about this out at Union Station tonight - I assume this is for the next phase of the Madison Street viaduct reconstruction - a previous phase had track 7 closed for a week earlier in the month). For the most part, this appears to be their "standard" seven (instead of eight) track plan which tightens the turns (moves in from the yard come a little later than normal) with the interesting addition of having MD-N train 2137 at 5:15 departing from Track 21. I will be interested to see how Track 21 works since unless I'm missing something, there's no platform with, I assume, all boarding being through a single train door adjacent to the concourse. It also involves crossing Track 19.

Construction has now begun on the final phase of the Naperville platform replacement, which includes the eastern half of the inbound platform. This construction includes the area the station itself is in, so the track side entrance to the station is closed until construction is completed.

Also BNSF cut in new signals between Highlands and the intermediate signal bridge between Clarendon Hills and Westmont over this past weekend. The CB&Q signal bridges at Highlands, West Hinsdale and on the curve west of Clarendon Hills have been retired, but still stand with their signals removed for now. This leaves the signal bridge at the Westmont station as the Eastern-most one left on the line.

Also the underpass at Belmont is officially open, but only two lanes are open under the bridge at this time. The crossing is still in place to allow construction vehicles to cross the tracks. In addition, the south platform at Belmont is entirely reopen, but work continues on the new passenger shelters on both sides and new lighting on the south platform, as well as the pedestrian tunnel.

lstone19 wrote:For the period 10/31 through 11/3, CUS-N tracks 3 and 5 will be out of service (Metra had flyers about this out at Union Station tonight - I assume this is for the next phase of the Madison Street viaduct reconstruction - a previous phase had track 7 closed for a week earlier in the month). For the most part, this appears to be their "standard" seven (instead of eight) track plan which tightens the turns (moves in from the yard come a little later than normal) with the interesting addition of having MD-N train 2137 at 5:15 departing from Track 21. I will be interested to see how Track 21 works since unless I'm missing something, there's no platform with, I assume, all boarding being through a single train door adjacent to the concourse. It also involves crossing Track 19.

For completeness and to correct my bad assumption, I did get to take a look at this one of the two days they did send 2137 off Track 21 (of course 11/3, the day of the CN Spaulding derailment, there was no need with half the rush-hour West trains cancelled). It was a single-door boarding via the door at the east end of the north concourse but there was no need to cross a track as 19 and 21 merge into a single track just north of the concourse. So much more workable than I first thought.

Over on RI, work continues on the new station at 80th Avenue. Phase 1 of the project is expected to be done in April. Phase 2 will include a pedestrian underpass west of the station.

Outbound platform is being extended to fit 10 cars. This is the last mainline station to recieve a full platform on track 2. Metra could switch to all right hand operation when this project is complete.

New and Old:

Where a pedestrian underpass will be built next spring: