Randolph Street Terminal

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Millennium Station

Station statistics

Address

Michigan Avenue between South Water & Randolph Street
Chicago, IL

Lines

Metra Electric

South Shore Line

Other information

Rebuilt

2005

Accessible

The Randolph Street Terminal renamed "Millennium Station" after the 2006 completion of its rehab and location underneath Millennium Park (sometimes called the Randolph Street Station or the Randolph-South Water Street Station) is a major commuter rail terminal in downtown Chicago that serves the Metra Electric Line to University Park, Blue Island, and South Chicago; and the South Shore Line to Gary and South Bend, Indiana. The terminal was built by the Illinois Central Railroad and is now owned by the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation, or Metra.

Because the tracks leading to the station go through Grant Park in an open cut, the Illinois Central was required by City Council to electrify its suburban services in 1926.^{[citation needed]} As a result, all lines now terminating at Randolph Street use electric multiple units rather than Diesel push-pull trains like all of Metra's other lines. During peak periods, trains leave the terminal as frequently as twice a minute.

The station was torn apart from the mid-1980s until just recently - 2005 - initially because of construction on the adjacent street, but continued unrenovated for 20 years due to budget constrictions and, eventually, the planning and building of Millennium Park (a project that also took longer than expected to complete). Its steel girders covered with flame retardant material, badly painted plywood, unrelieved concrete floor, construction/utility lights, and cave-like environs which prevailed for two decades have now been transformed into a modern-looking rail station.

[edit] See also

Randolph/Wabash (CTA)

[edit] Gallery

|Randolph Street Station 1895

Commuter lines terminating at Randolph Street, shown in Panama Orange and Dark South Shore Burgundy on this schematic, serve Chicago's southern and eastern suburbs in Illinois and Indiana

[edit] External links

Maps and aerial photos Coordinates: 41.88594° -87.62345°
- Street map from Google Maps or Yahoo! Maps
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- Satellite image from Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth

Previous station	Metra	Next station
Terminus	Metra Electric	Van Buren Street toward University Park, South Chicago, or Blue Island
Previous station	NICTD	Next station
Terminus	South Shore Line	Van Buren Street toward South Bend

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