Metra plans on closing one of its last staffed towers in the Chicago area next month. Metra officials tell Railfan & Railroad that the 16th Street Tower, located south of downtown Chicago, will be closed in mid-April, and the railroad’s Consolidated Control Facility will take over control of the junction. The tower is located at mile 1.1 on the Rock Island Line, where Canadian National’s Chicago/Freeport Subdivisions and the St. Charles Air Line cross. 

“The signal infrastructure is antiquated and being replaced with modern solid-state automated electronic systems that will enable remote operations,” said spokesperson Meg Thomas-Reile. “The current machines can no longer be maintained efficiently as there are no existing manufacturers of replacement parts.” 

The 16th Street Tower was built in 1901 and was once controlled by the New York Central. After NYC successor Penn Central moved its passenger trains to Chicago Union Station in 1968, the tower was handed over to Rock Island. The wood tower sees an average of 120 Metra moves per day, along with ten CN trains. 

The closure of 16th Street Tower will leave just one other manned tower on Metra in Chicago: A-2 at Western Avenue.

For more information about Metra’s towers, see the July 2022 edition of Railfan & Railroad. —Justin Franz 

Just shy of the midnight hour, 16th Street Relief Operator Madelyn Gonzalez jots down the passage of the last inbound Rock Island District train of the operating day. Various pieces of technology work side by side here, from early pistol-grip levers to more contemporary push-button hardware, as seen in the upper right of this November 2013 photo. —Photo by Marshall W. Beecher.