North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason. The screenplay was by Ernest Lehman, who wanted to write "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures". North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organization trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle out microfilm which contains government secrets; this is one of several Hitchcock films which feature a music score by Bernard Herrmann and an opening title sequence by graphic designer Saul Bass, it is cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography in its opening credits. North by Northwest is listed among the canonical Hitchcock films of the 1950s and is listed among the greatest films of all time, it was selected in 1995 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress as being "culturally or aesthetically significant".
At a New York City hotel bar in 1958, two thugs looking for "George Kaplan" see a waiter calling his name. Thornhill is mistaken for Kaplan, brought to the Long Island estate of Lester Townsend and interrogated by spy Phillip Vandamm. Despite Thornhill denying he is Kaplan, Vandamm thinks he is lying and has henchman Leonard arrange Thornhill's death in a staged drunken driving accident. Thornhill survives but is arrested for driving under the influence and taken to the Glen Cove, New York police station. Thornhill fails to convince his police of what happened. Journeying to the scene of the crime with police, a woman at Townsend's home says he showed up drunk at her dinner party, she claims that Townsend is a United Nations diplomat. While searching Kaplan's hotel room with his mother, Thornhill answers a phone call from thugs who are in the lobby, he escapes and visits the U. N. General Assembly building to meet Townsend, he discovers that Townsend is not the man he met on Long Island, that Townsend is a widower.
As Thornhill questions Townsend, one of the thugs throws a knife. Thornhill catches Townsend as he falls and grabs the knife, giving the appearance that he murdered Townsend. A nearby photographer captures Thornhill flees. Thornhill attempts to find the real Kaplan. A government intelligence agency realizes that Thornhill has been mistaken for Kaplan, a persona created by the agency to thwart Vandamm. However, Thornhill is not rescued for fear of compromising their operation. Thornhill sneaks onto the 20th Century Limited train, he meets Eve Kendall. Kendall and Thornhill establish a relationship. In Chicago, Kendall tells Thornhill. Thornhill waits at the bus stop. Thornhill is attacked by a crop duster plane. After trying to hide in the fields, he steps in front of a speeding tank truck and the airplane crashes into it, leaving Thornhill to escape; when Thornhill reaches Kaplan's hotel in Chicago, he discovers that Kaplan checked out and left before Kendall claimed she talked to him on the phone.
Thornhill goes to her room and confronts her. He tracks her to an art auction. Vandamm leaves his thugs to deal with Thornhill. To escape, Thornhill disrupts the auction; when he tells them he is the fugitive murderer, the police release him to the government agency's chief, The Professor. The Professor reveals that Kaplan was invented to distract Vandamm from the real government agent: Kendall. Thornhill agrees to help maintain her cover. At the Mount Rushmore visitor center, Thornhill negotiates Vandamm's turnover of Kendall for her prosecution as a spy; when "Kaplan" confronts Kendall, she flees. Thornhill and Kendall meet in a forest. Thornhill discovers Kendall must depart with Leonard on a plane; when Thornhill tries to dissuade her from going, he is knocked unconscious and locked in a hospital room. Thornhill escapes the Professor's custody, goes to Vandamm's house to rescue Kendall. At the house, Thornhill overhears that the sculpture holds microfilm, that Leonard discovered that the gun used by Kendall to kill Thornhill was filled with blanks.
Vandamm indicates. Thornhill warns her with a surreptitious note. Vandamm and Kendall depart the house to board the plane. Thornhill attempts to follow, but is stopped by a housekeeper, who holds him at bay with a gun until he realizes it is the one loaded with blanks; as Vandamm boards the plane, Kendall runs to the pursuing Thornhill. They flee to the top of Mount Rushmore; as they climb down the mountain, they are pursued by Vandamm's thugs and Valerian. Valerian falls to his death. Vandamm is taken into custody. Thornhill invites Kendall, now the new Mrs. Thornhill, into the upper berth of a train, which enters a tunnel. Hitchcock's cameo appearances are a signature occurrence in most of his films. In North by Northwest, he is seen getting a bus door slammed in his face, just as his credit is appearing on the screen. There has been some speculation as to whether he made one of his rare second appearances, this time at around the 44-minute mark in drag as a woman in a turquoise dress on the train.
In fact, the woman was played by Jesslyn Fax, who went on to appear in many episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She had ap
Croton–Harmon station
The Croton–Harmon station is a train station in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. It serves several Amtrak lines, it is the main transfer point between the Hudson Line's local and express service, marks the endpoint of third rail electrification on the route, it is served by all Amtrak trains on the line. It is 32.5 miles from Grand Central Terminal. Travel times to Grand Central range from 42 minutes to 71 minutes; the Metro-North shops those of the New York Central Railroad, are located at Croton–Harmon. It is the northern limit of electrification. Metro-North used to host an open house of the maintenance facilities every October; the last Open House was in 2008, with the event suspended indefinitely due to renovations of the Harmon shops. During the days of the New York Central Railroad, the station and shops were known as Harmon. Trains continuing north of Harmon, including the flagship 20th Century Limited would exchange their electric locomotive for a steam or diesel locomotive to continue the journey to points north and west.
The Village of Croton-on-Hudson operates the station parking lot. A great number of spots are reserved for long-term permit holders and village residents. There is ample parking for daily use; the station is accessed via the Croton Point Ave exit from US 9. As of August 2006, daily commuter ridership was 3368 and there are 1903 parking spots; the station has three high-level island platforms each 10 cars long. Some Hudson Line trains stop on Tracks 1 and 2. Media related to Croton–Harmon station at Wikimedia Commons Croton-Harmon, NY – Amtrak Metro-North Railroad - Croton-Harmon List of upcoming Metro-North train arrival and departure times and track assignments from MTA The Subway Nut - Croton-Harmon Station from Croton Point Avenue from Google Maps Street View Entrance from Google Maps Street View Croton-Harmon, NY Railroad History: New York Central Railroad Harmon Shops "Harmon Open House 2001," by Ron Yee
Passenger car (rail)
A passenger car is a piece of railway rolling stock, designed to carry passengers. The term passenger car can be associated with a sleeping car, dining, railway post office and prisoner transport cars. In some countries, such as the UK, some coaching stock to not carry passengers are referred to as "NPCS". Up until about the end of the 19th century, most passenger cars were constructed of wood; the first passenger trains did not travel far, but they were able to haul many more passengers for a longer distance than any wagons pulled by horses. As railways were first constructed in England, so too were the first passenger cars. One of the early coach designs was the "Stanhope", it featured a roof and small holes in the floor for drainage when it rained, had separate compartments for different classes of travel. The only problem with this design is that the passengers were expected to stand for their entire trip; the first passenger cars in the United States resembled stagecoaches. They were short less than 10 ft long and had two axles.
British railways had a head start on American railroads, with the first "bed-carriage" being built there as early as 1838 for use on the London and Birmingham Railway and the Grand Junction Railway. Britain's early sleepers, when made up for sleeping, extended the foot of the bed into a boot section at the end of the carriage; the cars were still too short to allow three beds to be positioned end to end. Britain's Royal Mail commissioned and built the first Travelling Post Office cars in the late 1840s as well; these cars resembled coaches in their short wheelbase and exterior design, but were equipped with nets on the sides of the cars to catch mail bags while the train was in motion. American RPOs, first appearing in the 1860s featured equipment to catch mail bags at speed, but the American design more resembled a large hook that would catch the mailbag in its crook; when not in use, the hook would swivel down against the side of the car to prevent it from catching obstacles. As locomotive technology progressed in the mid-19th century, trains grew in weight.
Passenger cars in America, grew along with them, first getting longer with the addition of a second truck, wider as their suspensions improved. Cars built for European use featured side door compartments, while American car design favored what was called a train coach, a single long cabin with rows of seats, with doors located at the ends of the car. Early American sleeping cars were not compartmented; the compartments in the sleepers were accessed from a side hall running the length of the cars, similar to the design of European cars well into the 20th century. Many American passenger trains the long distance ones, included a car at the end of the train called an observation car; until about the 1930s, these had an open-air platform at the rear, the "observation platform". These evolved into the closed end car with a rounded end, still called an "observation car"; the interiors of observation cars varied. Many had special tables; the end platforms of all passenger cars changed around the turn of the 20th century.
Older cars had open platforms between cars. Passengers would enter and leave a car through a door at the end of the car which led to a narrow platform. Steps on either side of the platform were used for getting on or off the train, one might hop from one car platform to another. Cars had enclosed platforms called vestibules which together with gangway connections allowed passengers not only to enter and exit the train protected from the elements, but to move more between cars with the same protection. Dining cars first appeared into the 1880s; until this time, the common practice was to stop for meals at restaurants along the way. At first, the dining car was a place to serve meals that were picked up en route, but they soon evolved to include galleys in which the meals were prepared; the introduction of vestibuled cars, which for the first time allowed easy movement from car to car, aided the adoption of dining cars, lounge cars, other specialized cars. By the 1920s, passenger cars on the larger standard gauge railroads were between 60 ft and 70 ft long.
The cars of this time were still quite ornate, many of them being built by experienced coach makers and skilled carpenters. In the United States, the so-called "chair car" with individual seating became commonplace on long-distance routes. With the 1930s came the widespread use of stainless steel for car bodies; the typical passenger car was now much lighter than its wood cousins of old. The new "lightweight" and streamlined cars carried passengers in speed and comfort to an extent that had not been experienced to date. Aluminum and Cor-Ten steel were used in lightweight car construction, but stainless steel was the preferred material for car bodies. Stainless steel cars could be and were, left unpainted except for the car's reporting marks that were required by law. By the end of the 1930s, railroads and car builders were debuting car body and interior styles that could only be dreamed of before. In 1937, the Pullman Company delivered the first cars equipped with roomettes – that is, the car's interior was sectioned off into compartments, much like the
Conneaut, Ohio
Conneaut is a city in Ashtabula County, United States, along Lake Erie at the mouth of Conneaut Creek 66 miles northeast of Cleveland. The population was 12,841 at the 2010 Census. Conneaut is located at the far northeastern corner of the state. Conneaut is located on an old Native American trail used by early westbound pioneers; the word conneaut comes from the Seneca language, has a disputed meaning. A Mississauga village was located at or near Conneaut, c. 1747. Conneaut was named Salem, the parts surrounding it were named "Lakeville" from 1944–1964, though these were combined into what is now known as "Conneaut". People still refer to parts of Conneaut as Lakeville or Amboy. Conneaut was described in 1833 as having a printing office, one meeting house, two taverns, several stores and shops. On March 27, 1953 a three-train collision near Conneaut resulted in the deaths of 21 persons. Conneaut is located at 41°57′N 80°34′W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 26.43 square miles, of which 26.36 square miles is land and 0.07 square miles is water.
Conneaut is situated along Lake Erie at the mouth of Conneaut Creek. Conneaut is located in the northeastern-most corner of Ohio, bordering the state of Pennsylvania to the east and has 27 square miles within its corporate city limits, making it the 15th-largest city in Ohio by total land area. Conneaut is a mixture of rural farmland; the city has over seven miles of shoreline along Lake Erie, with beaches, boating facilities and a healthy summer tourist trade. As of the census of 2010, there were 12,841 people, 4,740 households, 3,034 families residing in the city; the population density was 487.1 inhabitants per square mile. There were 5,702 housing units at an average density of 216.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 89.8% White, 7.5% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.4% Asian, 0.4% from other races, 1.8% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.8% of the population. There were 4,740 households of which 29.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.2% were married couples living together, 14.2% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.7% had a male householder with no wife present, 36.0% were non-families.
30.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 14% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.37 and the average family size was 2.90. The median age in the city was 39.6 years. 20.2% of residents were under the age of 18. The gender makeup of the city was 54.4% male and 45.6% female. As of the census of 2000, there were 12,485 people, 5,038 households, 3,410 families residing in the city; the population density was 473.4 people per square mile. There were 5,710 housing units at an average density of 216.5 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 96.33% White, 1.12% African American, 0.18% Native American, 0.47% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 0.23% from other races, 1.61% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.06% of the population. 19.7% were of German, 16.0% Italian, 13.7% English, 12.0% Irish, 6.2% American and 6.2% Finnish ancestry according to Census 2000. There were 5,038 households out of which 30.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.3% were married couples living together, 11.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 32.3% were non-families.
27.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.5% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 2.98. In the city the population was spread out with 25.2% under the age of 18, 7.7% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 22.4% from 45 to 64, 17.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 89.4 males. The median income for a household in the city was $31,717, the median income for a family was $37,955. Males had a median income of $31,964 versus $21,198 for females; the per capita income for the city was $14,703. About 10.7% of families and 13.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.3% of those under age 18 and 9.1% of those age 65 or over. Major industries within the city include CSP of Ohio, General Aluminum, CW Ohio; the city's historic business district and its harbor business district are not as thriving as in the past.
A few of the main businesses that anchor the downtown are Gerdes Pharmacy and Orlando Brothers grocery store. The city has been operated under a council-manager government since 1992. Transportation services Conneaut via Interstate 90, which bisects the city, along with an international shipping port and three railroads. Laura Boulton, eminent ethnologist and film-maker Mary L. Doe, first president of Michigan State Equal Suffrage Association Mildred Gillars, American radio personality during World War II, best known for her propaganda broadcasts for Nazi Germany Osee M. Hall, U. S. House Representative from Minnesota Joseph Russell Jones, appointed by Ulysses S. Grant as Minister Resident to Belgium Larry Kelley, football player for Yale University, second winner of Heisman Trophy Jean Lovell, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League player Mike Palagyi, MLB pitcher for Washington Senators John R. Pillion, Republican member of U. S. House of Representati
Englewood station (Chicago)
Englewood Station or Englewood Union Station in Chicago, Illinois' south side Englewood neighborhood was a crucial junction and passenger depot for three railroads - the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad - although it was for the eastbound streamliners of the latter two that the station was famous. Englewood Station served passenger trains of the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, which operated over the New York Central via trackage rights. Englewood Station stood at the intersection of several rail lines: The New York Central and the Rock Island shared trackage from Englewood to the north into LaSalle Street Station. At Englewood, they split: the Rock Island headed southwest, the New York Central east into Indiana; the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway crossed the Rock Island at this junction. To the north, its trackage headed into Union Station; the PRR closely paralleled the NYC for several miles into Indiana.
The Erie Railroad, Monon Railroad, Wabash Railroad and Eastern Illinois Railroad, Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad had a stop at 63rd Street and Wallace Street—west of this station. Nicknamed "Little Englewood" the platforms and canopies still exist, although the station building is long gone; the station itself stood near the corner of State Streets. Most famous for hosting the two most spectacular streamlined passenger trains, Englewood was the second stop eastbound, pentultimate such westbound, for both PRR's Broadway Limited and NYC's 20th Century Limited. In fact, both would leave their respective terminals in Chicago, stop to embark passengers at Englewood, leave the station each racing the other for several miles before they diverged. No less important were the westbound Rockets of the Rock Island. Connections could be made at Englewood between any of the railroads at that intersection. Upon the decline of intercity passenger traffic, PRR and NYC's merger into Penn Central, much of the trackage has been removed, the commuter trains on the Metra Rock Island District no longer stop at the station, closed in the late 1970s.
The former tracks of the Pennsylvania are now owned by the Norfolk Southern Railway and still carry freight and intercity Amtrak passengers to Union Station. The station has for the most part disappeared, but some scattered remnants are visible around the railroad overpass near 63rd Street and State Street. Welsh, Joseph. Passenger Trains of Yesteryear-Chicago Eastbound. Kalmbach Publishing Company. ISBN 0-89024-602-5. News Stand
Illinois
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
Chicago Union Station
Chicago Union Station is a major railroad station that opened in 1925 in Chicago, replacing an earlier station built in 1881. It is the only remaining intercity rail terminal in Chicago, is the city's primary terminal for commuter trains; the station stands on the west side of the Chicago River between West Adams Street and West Jackson Boulevard, just outside the Chicago Loop. Including approach and storage tracks, it covers about nine and a half city blocks — underground, buried beneath streets and skyscrapers; the station serves as Amtrak's flagship station in the Midwest, is the downtown terminus for six Metra commuter lines. Chicago Union Station is the fourth-busiest rail terminal in the United States, after Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station and Jamaica station in New York City, it is Amtrak's overall fourth-busiest station, the busiest outside of its Northeast Corridor. It handles about 140,000 passengers on an average weekday and is one of Chicago's most iconic structures, reflecting the city's strong architectural heritage and historic achievements.
It has Bedford limestone Beaux-Arts facades, massive Corinthian columns, marble floors, a Great Hall, all highlighted by brass lamps. In 2011, its lighting system was replaced with more energy-efficient light bulbs and motion sensors, reducing the station's annual carbon emissions by 4 million tons. Custom steel lighting covers were added to top these safety/light towers, helping them blend in with the overall neoclassical style of the station. Chicago Union Station was designated as one of America's "Great Places" in 2012 by the American Planning Association; the program recognized the station as a "Great Public Space" for promoting social activity and reflecting local culture and history. In celebration of the 2018 Illinois Bicentennial, Union Station was selected as one of the Illinois 200 Great Places by the American Institute of Architects Illinois component. Union Station is laid out with a double stub-end configuration, with 10 tracks coming into the station from the north and 14 from the south.
Unlike most of Amtrak's major stations, every train calling at Union Station either originates or terminates there. There are two through tracks to allow out-of-service equipment moves between the north and south side, including one with a platform to allow extra long trains to board. Between the north and south sides of the station is a passenger concourse. Passengers can walk through the concourse to get from any platform to any other without stairs or elevators. Odd-numbered platforms are on the north half of the station, even-numbered platforms on the south half; the north tracks are used by Amtrak for the Hiawatha Service and the Empire Builder, by Metra for the Milwaukee District West, Milwaukee District North, North Central Service routes. The south tracks are used for all other services. Two station management structures, one on each side of the terminal, monitor train-to-track assignments and the flow of traffic in and out of the station. Actual oversight and control of switching and signalling is accomplished by two "train director" positions, one for each side of the station, located in the Amtrak control center in the station's headhouse.
Inside the concourse are ticket counters for both Metra and Amtrak services, as well as three waiting rooms and a baggage claim for Amtrak passengers, a set of restrooms, offices for Metra and Amtrak. The concourse has a mezzanine level between platform and street level, containing a food court featuring local vendors as well as national chains. Located west of Canal Street, Union Station's headhouse occupies an entire city block. At its center is the Great Hall, a 110-foot -high atrium capped by a large barrel-vaulted skylight. Arrayed around the Great Hall are numerous smaller spaces containing restaurants and services, a wide passageway leading to the concourse. Above the headhouse are several floors of office space used by Amtrak. Original plans called for many more floors of offices; this was never completed. Numerous entrances provide access to Union Station's underground platform level; the main entrance is on Canal Street opposite the headhouse, but passengers can reach the platforms directly from the headhouse via an underground passageway.
Two secondary entrances are located in Riverside Plaza near the Jackson Boulevard and Adams Street bridges. On Madison Street, across the street, one block east from Ogilvie Transportation Center, are a set of entrances to the north platforms; the current Union Station is the second by that name built in Chicago, the third rail station to occupy the site. The need for a single, centralized station was an important political topic in 19th and 20th-century Chicago, as various competing railroads had built a series of terminal stations; the numerous stations and associated railyards and tracks surrounded the city's central business district, the Loop, threatened its expansion. The various stations made travel difficult for through-travelers, many of whom had to make inconvenient and unpleasant transfers from one station to another through the Loop. On December 25, 1858, the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad opened as far as Van Buren Street in Chicago, it built the first station at what would become today's Union Station on the west bank of the Chicago River.
On April 7, 1874 five railroads agreed to build and share a union station just north of the original Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, Chicago Railroad
Media related to 20th Century Limited at Wikimedia Commons
