Metra Commuter Train

Date Modified: 07/18/2009 7:20 AM

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University Park
Kankakee County residents can take advantage of commuter rail service to Chicago via the University Park Metra station. It is located about 20 miles north of Kankakee on Governor's Highway (Illinois Route 50), and the stop is the southern-most stop of Metra's Electric line. The train route travels north to Chicago and ends at Randolf Street in downtown Chicago. Schedules are available for Monday-Saturday inbound from University Park to Chicago, Monday-Saturday oubound from Chicago to University Park, Sunday inbound and Sunday oubound. Once in Chigago, it is possible to transfer to other public transportation or connect to another train on Metra, which is a 495-mile system serving 230 stations in Cook, DuPage, Lake, Will and McHenry and Kane counties.  

Note that there is regular service bus provided by River Valley Metro that links with the University park Train.

History of the legendary "City of New Orleans" Train

"Good morning, America, how are you? Don’t you know me, I’m your native son. I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans. I’ll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.”
The 1999 Amtrak train wreck put a tragic punctuation mark on one of the legendary passenger train names of all time. Founded in 1947 during the postwar passenger train boom, the original Illinois Central City of New Orleans was an all-new diesel-electric designed to speed from Chicago to New Orleans in a single day, covering 921 miles in 16 hours, ripping through the “Main Line of Mid-America,” as it was called, at an average speed of a mile a minute. Top speeds on dead straightaways could reach 100 miles an hour. The IC locomotive on the run was an E7-type passenger diesel in the eye-catching chocolate, yellow and orange livery.

The City of New Orleans itself replaced the Panama Limited. Through service from Chicago to New Orleans ran back to the opening of the Cairo Bridge from Illinois to Kentucky in 1889. In 1916, the Panama Limited became an overnight sleeper train, which continued, with the interruption of two years during the Great Depression, until the City of New Orleans took over. The City was a day run, with the idea that you could have bacon and eggs in Chicago for breakfast, ribs in Memphis for lunch and gumbo in New Orleans for dinner.

Even as passenger trains declined throughout the nation, the City of New Orleans remained a popular train. Vintage Rails described the old City of New Orleans as the bread and butter of the Illinois Central, the train that paid the bills. As late as 1967, the IC was adding dome coaches, with the glass bubbles on the top for sightseeing.
Amtrak took over the IC passenger service and the legendary train May 1, 1971. That was the same year that folk singer Steve Goodman immortalized the train with his lyrics. Al Bunetta, manager for Goodman, told the Associated Press that “The majority of that song was written in 15 or 20 minutes, right on the train.” “Riding on the City of New Orleans, Illinois Central Monday morning rail, Fifteen cars and 15 restless riders, three conductors and 25 sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey, the train pulls out at Kankakee ...” Kankakee, on the Illinois Central mainline, is 54.5 miles south of Chicago. By late 1971, though, Amtrak renamed the City as the Panama Limited and changed it back to overnight sleeper service. A decade later, Amtrak kept the overnight sleeper schedule but renamed the train to The City of New Orleans to take advantage of the better-known name. From the California Zephyr (Rio Grande) to the Empire Builder (Great Northern) to the Sunset Limited (Southern Pacific), many Amtrak trains have historic names, even if the original owners are gone and service hours have changed. Indeed, the Empire Builder and the City of New Orleans share the same cars, with the train being renamed in Chicago before it heads to the West Coast.

Today’s City of New Orleans takes 3 1/2 longer to make the same run than the IC streamliner did more than half a century ago. “It’s known to be a party train, but it’s even more so around Mardi Gras time,” Steve Grande told The Associated Press. Grande writes train reviews and has traveled over 126,000 miles on Amtrak routes over the past four years.

Goodman’s song was turned into a hit by Arlo Guthrie. Only 21 when he wrote the song, Goodman died of leukemia at age 36 in 1984. Turns out the train had more than one tragedy.