Quote Originally Posted by baralheia View Post
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Ah that's cool! My husband is from Wheeling and he's told me how commuter systems like Metra and the CTA made getting around the Chicagoland area so much easier than it would have otherwise. I never got to live in a place like that for any significant amount of time, but when I was a kid, I did live in the DFW metro when DART opened the Red Line from downtown Dallas to Park Lane. My parents and I rode it into downtown and back the day it opened for service! We ended up moving to Houston later that same year, unfortunately.
Oh yeah, the L was great - took it from work up to the north side to hit Reckless Records and others during lunch breaks, or around the Loop to hit Tower, and we'd come in to Chicago at Union and then get on the L to go to clubs or restaurants around the city. And Downers Grove was on the BNSF Metra line, which had 3 lines, so there were expresses and locals and freight and Amtrak all flying through there at once, it was crazy at times. When I lived here before we moved up there, I used to beat the train at Western/Britton many times, could see the headlight waaaaaay down the tracks and knew it was slow enough that I could do that (young and stupid). After being up there for a few weeks, never ever ever ever again did I try *anything* when the gates were down and the lights flashing, not with 3 tracks and 60 MPH trains (or more tracks than that in Hammond, IN), or at any crossing anywhere up there, whole different ballgame.