Ogilvie Transportation Center

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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.

Image:C&NW Terminal ca 1912.jpg

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 in 1987. The station was re-named in 1997, two years after the C&NW merged into the Union Pacific Railroad, 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, parent agency of Metra. The station remains known colloquially as North Western Station or North Western Terminal.

[edit] Services

Image:C&NW Terminal approaches.svg 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.

Preceding station		Following station
Terminus	Union Pacific/North Line	Clybourn
Terminus	Union Pacific/Northwest Line	Clybourn
Terminus	Union Pacific/West Line	Kedzie

edit Major intercity railroad stations of Chicago
Active terminals:	LaSalle - Ogilvie (North Western) - Randolph - Union (CUSCo)
Former terminals:	Central Station - Dearborn (C&WI) - Grand Central (B&OCT) Central Depot - Galena and Chicago Union - Nickel Plate Wells (C&NW) - Wells (CA&E) - Columbian Exposition
Other stations:	Englewood