But I've been asked what my thinking is, so I'll share it with you here. Keep in mind please that nothing in Chicago is guaranteed, and if the City of New Orleans comes into Chicago very late, we could end up doing nothing.
Here are the limitations we have to work with:
- City of New Orleans could arrive early, on time, or late.
- Some, including myself, will be leaving on the Cardinal that evening, which has an earlier departure time than the other trains to the east. So we can't be too far from Union Station later in the day.
- We want to ride rail lines that this group has not yet ridden.
- Some Metra lines don't run on Saturdays, or have very limited service on weekends.
For CTA, what we have left is the Blue Line, the southern segment from Clinton/Congress (closest station to Union Station) to Forest Park. Also, the Pink Line. Only 3 of us rode it 2 years ago (and 2 of them had my DNA) after coming back from SoCal Fest 2009, so I've left it on the table as unridden with the group.
On Metra unridden by the OTOL group are the following:
- UP North, Evanston to Kenosha. We rode between Ogilvie TC and Evanston back in 2003. The layover at the Kenosha end works best, believe it or not, on Sundays when coupled with riding the streetcars, so we won't be doing that one this time. (See proposed Midwest RailFest!)
- UP Northwest, entire line. We have not yet ridden the main line out to Harvard, nor its short branch to McHenry. The problem with the Saturday schedule is that the dwell at the far end (Harvard) between the outbound and inbound trips is more than one hour, so it's a waste of time. We can get that another time when in town on a weekday or Sunday when the wait is more conducive to our riding out to the end of the line.
- UP West, Geneva to Elburn. We rode Ogilvie TC to Geneva back in 2003. That was before the line was extended to Elburn. This one is a candidate.... and there are 2 possible scenarios in the bi-hourly schedule.
- NorthCentral Service, River Grove to Antioch. The segment between Union Station and River Grove is on the Milwaukee District West line, which we already covered in 2005 (Eagle Fest) on the way to and from Big Timber Road in Elgin. The missing segment only has service on weekdays, so it's out for this visit.
- SouthWest Service, 179th Street (Orland Park) to Manhattan. We rode this one as well while in town during Eagle Fest 2005, but at the time it terminated at 179th Street. The service on Saturdays does have one possible midday turn, and it does go all the way to Manhattan. So this might work as well. The only drawback is that it gets to Union Station at 4:40 PM, within an hour of the Cardinal departure.
CTA could be done first, but again it's dependent on when we arrive in town.
So once more we need to play it by ear, but at least the exploration is done in case we do have the time to ride the rails in Chicago.