MAYWOOD, Ill. — Track construction is scheduled to begin Tuesday, Oct. 8, between River Forest and Union Pacific’s Proviso Yard as UP and Metra close one of the two gaps in the otherwise triple-track Union Pacific line from downtown Chicago to Elburn, Ill.
The project will build a third track in a 1.8-mile stretch between Vale, near the River Forest Metra station, and Provo Junction at the east end of Proviso yard. Metra says the construction is scheduled to continue through spring 2020. As part of the work, inbound Metra passengers boarding at the Maywood station will be asked to use a temporary platform west of Fifth Avenue while the third track is built through the current platform area.
The Fifth Avenue grade crossing will also be closed beginning Oct. 8, with reopening anticipated by Oct. 11.
Preliminary work is under way to close the other gap in the triple-track main line, a 6.1-mile section through Geneva, Ill., extending from Kress in West Chicago on the east to Peck, near La Fox, on the west. [See “UP aims to begin triple-tracking near Geneva, Ill., in spring 2020,” Trains News Wire, May 14, 2019.]
From the picture it looks like there’s another bridge to the left. Is that a new one or an old one? Was this triple tracked at one time before and then removed?
@Curtis Larson: Simple. The previous owner Chicago & Northwestern was too darn cheap. They spent most of the 60’s tearing out switches and sidings on this sub to save on track maintenance.
Most of the traffic east of Proviso was headed to/from Global 1 (former Wood Street Yard).
The bridge over the Des Plaines River has supported more rails since the 1920’s. They just never used it until now.
As for the gap in western DuPage County/eastern Kane County.
The bridge over the Fox River has the wide pylons in the water for more tracks since an update in the 1920’s, but the supports at each end date back to the 1880’s. The stone work was updated with reinforced concrete buttresses when the second rail was added in the 1920’s, but to add a third or fourth rail would require all that 1880 stonework to come out at great expense.
Pre-UP, CNW just couldn’t justify the expense based on traffic alone. So nothing changed that is until Metra moved operations west of Geneva. Now UP has no center track to move Powder River drags during Metra operations.
With Global 3 in Rochelle closed, I was wondering if this was still going to happen, but it appears so.
It would be interesting to know the C&NW’s rationale for the gaps.
If you drive down 1st Avenue, you will see the same graffiti on the retaining walls that has always been there. The view from Lake Street it looks like they simply put a new cap on the original piers to raise it so the girder plate didn’t have to be so tall.
On a historical note. The predecessor line Galena & Chicago Union for a brief time (1848) used to terminate at the Des Plaines River. In what was probably the first transload facility, small river barges used to line up here to offload goods to go into Chicago.
Besides Global 1 (likely closing on favor of Global 2 at Proviso) UP runs manifest and unit trains east of Proviso via the Western Avenue Corridor to interchange with CSX and NS at Ogden Jct and 15th Street, as well as trackage rights to reach the C&WI thence Yard Center and their ex-MP line to Texas.
And even when Global 1 closes in favor of Global 2, steel wheel Intermodal interchange blocks (some swapped at Global 3) will continue to use this route.
For them to just announce the beginning of work on the Vale-Provo Junction stretch, an awful lot of work has been accomplished. A lot of that new track is laid, just waiting for connecting switches and a shift in the main tracks just east of the Melrose Park station (west of there the new track is south of the other two; east of there it’s to the north).
The piers for the new track over the Des Plaines River were completely replaced; that’s a whole new bridge span next to the existing tracks. If the rail hasn’t been laid on it yet, they soon will be. The old bride may have had wide piers on it, but there were only two tracks crossing the river since the 1970s. Waiting until now to put the third track in may have had more to do with an increase in connecting-line traffic with NS and CSX than it has with CNW cheapness. When I hired out, the line between Vale and HM (Elmhurst) was all double-track–in the railroad sense of the word, meaning directional traffic. It wasn’t until the late 80s or early 90s (pre-UP) that the line there became CTC. The third track from Park (formerly HM) to Provo Junction was built after the UP merger.
With Metra making noises about increased commuter service on this line (to the tune of a dozen trains or so during the weekdays), it makes sense to have three CTC tracks the entire distance west of Kedzie, regardless of whether PSR dictates as many freights or the coal traffic disappears.