OGILVIE TRANSPORTATION CENTER

The 'Richard B. Ogilvie Transportation Center' is a passenger terminal in downtown Chicago, Illinois, currently serving the three commuter rail lines of Metra's Union Pacific District, which approach the terminal elevated above street level. The building occupies two square blocks, bounded by Randolph Street and Madison Street to the north and south and by Canal Street and Clinton Street to the east and west.

The Chicago and North Western Railway built the 'Chicago and North Western Terminal' in 1911 to replace their Wells Street Station across the North Branch of the Chicago River. In 1984 the Renaissance Revival-style head house was razed and replaced with the glass-and-steel 42-story Citicorp Center, which was completed three years later in 1987. The station was re-named 1997, two years after the C&NW merged into the Union Pacific Railroad, the station was renamed Ogilvie Transprtation center for Richard B. Ogilvie. Ogilvie had been a board member of the Milwaukee Road and a lifelong railroad proponent, and as governor of Illinois created the RTA, which is the parent agency of Metra. The station remains known colloquially as 'North Western Station' or 'North Western Terminal'. One of the bloodiest days in the center's history occurred on Dec 8th 2006 when a total of four people, including the killer, were killed over a dispute with a patent attorney firm located above the center. All rail services were suspended for many hours that day during the Friday afternoon commute.Source

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Services

Since its opening, the Chicago and North Western Terminal has served as a terminal for all the commuter and intercity trains of the Chicago and North Western Railway. In addition, on November 9, 1969, the day after Grand Central Station closed, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and Pere Marquette Railway, Grand Central's two remaining users, moved their remaining intercity services into the C&NW's terminal. Those trains, which used the C&NW's branch to the St. Charles Air Line west of Western Avenue, last ran April 30, 1971, the day before Amtrak took over most intercity passenger trains in the U.S. Subsequent Amtrak services over the lines of those two railroads have run into Union Station.
Metra's three Union Pacific District lines - the Union Pacific/North Line, Union Pacific/Northwest Line and Union Pacific/West Line - now provide regular commuter rail service to the station along three former C&NW lines. In Metra's zone-based fare schedule, Ogilvie is in Zone A.

External links

References

★ Kevin P. Keefe, City of Six Stations, Trains July 2003, p. 69

★ PRR Chronology