Mendota Union Depot

You stand on the single side platform that Amtrak shares with the museum, right beside the brick waiting room of the old Union Depot. Two BNSF main tracks run past the platform edge, with the 8th Street grade crossing immediately to the north and further crossings at 6th Street and 5th Street to the south, so the bells give warning of every movement.

Because the depot is also a working Amtrak stop, a visit mixes three things: through freights on the double track, passenger trains calling at the platform, and switching around BNSF's small yard next to the station. The California Zephyr runs through without stopping.

On weekend afternoons the Mendota Museum and Historical Society opens the depot as the Union Depot Railroad Museum, with an HO layout of 1930s Mendota and railroad artifacts inside, and preserved equipment displayed outside. Outside those hours the platform is still a public Amtrak station, but behave as a guest of a working station: keep behind the platform edge markings and do not wander onto the yard tracks.

Mendota is a small prairie town in LaSalle County, approximately 85 miles (137 km) west of Chicago. The depot sits in the downtown grid, between Main Street (US 34) and the tracks, with 8th Street crossing the railroad at the north end of the platform.

What remains of the 1888 station is the waiting room and ticket office section of a much larger building; the rest was demolished in 1942. The flat Illinois landscape means the line is straight and open through town, and the scene around the platform is dominated by the depot, the preserved cars on display, and the BNSF yard tracks alongside.

Mendota exists because of a railroad crossing. In the summer of 1853 the Illinois Central Railroad was completed across the existing Chicago and Aurora Railroad at this site, and within a year the new town had more than 1,000 residents (Wikipedia). The Chicago & Aurora became part of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.

The first Union Depot opened in 1853 and burned in 1885. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy opened its replacement on February 23, 1888: a grand station with a hotel, restaurants, waiting rooms and rooms for railroad employees. Much of it was torn down in 1942, leaving little more than the waiting room and ticket office (Wikipedia). Volunteers of the Mendota Museum and Historical Society restored the surviving portion, and Great American Stations dates the restoration to 1997.

According to the museum, the CB&Q, the Illinois Central and the Milwaukee Road were all major passenger carriers here, and in the early 1940s the town saw up to 40 trains a day. Today only the ex-CB&Q line remains in service, as BNSF's Mendota Subdivision.

Few places combine a working Amtrak stop, a double-track BNSF main line and a railroad museum on the same platform. The museum's outdoor collection, listed on its own website, includes a 1923 CB&Q steam locomotive, a 1911 CB&Q caboose, a 1937 Illinois Central mail car, a 1949 dining car, a 1938 Milwaukee Road combine and a Fairmont motor car, so a passing BNSF freight can be photographed alongside equipment of all three railroads that once served the town.

A live railcam operated by Steel Highway Railcams streams the Mendota crossing on YouTube, which lets you check the traffic before driving out.