Franklin Park Metra Station & Tower B-12

Franklin Park works as a base with three watching points within walking distance of each other. The Metra station at 3148 Rose Street has two platforms (one side, one island) serving four tracks, a waiting room open 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., and five village-run parking lots. One block west, in a small park on Calwagner Street, stands Tower B-12 with a red Milwaukee Road caboose — the railfan park the village created when the tower was moved here in 1997. Oak Park and Beyond calls it the spot with "comfortable access to the east-west mainline", and the tower and caboose give a bit of shade.

For the diamond, walk east: the park beside the Franklin Park Police Department at 9545 West Belmont Avenue gives, in the same guide's words, "the best angle on the diamond crossing itself". The Chicago Rail blog adds that at Edgington Street you "can remain on public property and see plenty of action", and that parking is on the south side of the tracks. Railfan Guides also places parking on the south side.

The station is 13.2 miles (21.2 km) from Chicago Union Station in fare zone 2, so the Milwaukee District West line gets you here without a car. Bring a scanner and something to sit on.

This is a working suburban junction, not a scenic line. The four tracks run through the centre of a small industrial village a few minutes from O'Hare, with CPKC's Bensenville Yard spreading out to the west and the Norpaul, Schiller Park and Proviso yards of the IHB, CN and Union Pacific in the surrounding area (Railfan Guides lists five major yards nearby). The skyline is low: a brick commuter station, the preserved interlocking tower with its caboose in a pocket park, the village water tower to the east-southeast, and industrial spurs fanning off around the diamond. Every June the village turns the station area into a railroad festival, Railroad Daze.

Tower B-12 was built in the 1890s to control train movements for the Milwaukee Road at Franklin Park. It closed on July 19, 1996, and on November 11, 1997 it was moved about half a mile west toward the downtown to create the railfan park, where it now houses a small museum, sheathed in vinyl siding.

The line itself is the former Milwaukee Road route west of Chicago. The railroad sold its Elgin line to the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation in 1982, Metra bought the whole Milwaukee District from the Soo Line in 1987, the Soo Line was absorbed into Canadian Pacific in 1990, and Canadian Pacific merged with Kansas City Southern in 2023 to form CPKC, which still dispatches the line. The present Franklin Park station opened in 1950.

Few places in the Chicago area put commuter trains, a Class I freight main line, a second Class I crossing at grade and a busy belt railway within a 10-minute walk of each other — Oak Park and Beyond lists four operators here. The original interlocking tower survives, restored with a caboose, in a free public park, and RailStream runs a camera from it ("B12 Tower catches CP, IHB and Metra!"). It is also reachable by train from downtown Chicago.