Passenger Trains > Amtrak Homewood (IL) Closing For Renovations

HMW is closing for several months so the City of New Orleans and the Illini / Saluki runs to Carbondale (during the pandemic, it goes south as Illini in the afternoon; returns as Saluki in the morning) will skip this stop.  There will be bustitution from Kankakee (KKI) the next station to the south.  Looks like this begins on Monday (27).

I don't know what Metra is doing as their platform is accessed via the same tunnel.  I suppose they could build steps and a temp pedestrian crossing over track 1 but that would require a crossing guard.  I could see them doing that during the day and skipping the stop at night but that is not reflected in the slightly adjusted pandemic schedule taking effect Monday.  Guess we will find out soon enough.

The improvements will eat some existing parking spaces so they are carving out a new lot north of the station.  This required moving the vintage Geep & caboose on display a bit farther north (and eating up *those* parking spaces).  They were digging so deep into the ground I thought I misread the plans and they were building a multilevel structure not a lot but, no, it's just a parking lot.  I'm guessing they will say tests showed the soil was not substantial enough.  If that is the case I wonder how it supported a locomotive.

Wow, if this is what they are actually doing it is going to be really nice.  Hopefully they replace the awful amtrak platform also

https://www.village.homewood.il.us/business-development/current-projects/homewood-train-station-renovation

 

I hope they are not tearing down the historic station itself but only renovate it.

In looking closer at these images, it looks like this is renovating the east side of the tracks.  It looks like on the west side they will be putting in some new ramps maybe

How deep did they excavate for the parking lot? If only 2-3 feet, they could be installing a pervious pavement parking lot. The lower portion will be a open graded stone that stores runoff and lets it percolate into the subgrafe. If deeper, they may be installing an underground stormwater storage system.

Posted from iPhone

Homewood is (was) a very busy station for the downstate trains. Hopefully they will also fix the platform which in spots are in horrible disrepair.

Posted from Android

Yes, a permeable surface is a possibility. They did go down 3 or 4 feet. My limited online research says only a foot is needed but we’ll see. They did install drainage piping but at this point (only subgrade filled in) I only see drains at the edge.

58 barreled on through this morning a minute or two earlier than the old stopping time.

The parking lot backfill appears to just be dirt.  Looks like there is room for about 10” of gravel then a few inches of asphalt to bring it up to match the curbs.  Or permeable pavers instead of asphalt.  So while that is still a possibility it does not appear to be the reason for the deep dig.  #governmentcontracts

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That platform Amtrak uses needed help bad when I started twenty years ago.  My understanding was that the hangup was in the ownership of the platform, but I don't know the details 

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

Can’t imagine IC would want to give up ownership of a piece of land amidst their tracks so probably they (now a CN subsidiary) own the land but Amtrak owns the platform. But you’re right, that would complicate things. Not that CN doesn’t want a new platform but all the legalese about liability, tracks out of service, etc.

Just to follow up, it’s been paved with asphalt.