This post isn't completely within Streetsblog Chicago's wheelhouse, but I thought many of our readers would enjoy it, and it's got a bit of sustainable transportation policy content, so I wrote it up over the weekend for fun.
When Chicago Critical Mass cofounder Michael Burton recently posted on a bicycle adventure email list proposing a Good Friday road trip to a Metra-friendly endpoint, a destination immediately sprang to my mind. I suggested the Heritage House, a Wisconsin-style supper club just south of the border in Harvard, Illinois. Located at the end of the commuter railroad's Union Pacific Northwest line, that town is the farthest northwest as you can go on the system, 63 miles from the Loop.
In case you're unfamiliar with the concept, the supper club is a beloved Midwest tradition. It's basically a fine dining spot for the everyperson, serving affordable, high-quality comfort food and cocktails (the brandy old fashioned is the standard) in a cozy environment.
I had been to the Heritage House before, and I'd rank it as perhaps the best Badger State-style eating establishment south of the Cheddar Curtain. Or at least, the best one not run by a celebrity chef like Grant Achatz of Alinea fame. Six years ago, his upscale, minimalist St. Clair Supper Club in the West Loop sold (reportedly excellent) prime rib for $75, the equivalent of $94 today. Ope, geez!
After we'd agreed on our target, a few of us decided to catch Metra's Milwaukee District West line to Elgin. From there we'd ride north on the Fox River Trail and Prairie Trail about half the way, before stair-stepping northwest on lower-traffic roads, for a leisurely, roughly 40-mile trip.
On Friday morning, SBC cartoonist Jonathan Roth, who lives in Rogers Park, picked me up at my home in Uptown. We took side streets like Wolcott Avenue and Leavitt Street almost all of the 6.5 miles to Metra's Western Avenue station at 420 N. Artesian Ave. in West Town. It was a pleasure to opt out of the morning rush hour mayhem on these quiet, spring blossom-filled residential roads.
We met up with Michael, a Logan Square denizen, at the train station, which serves the Milwaukee District North and North Central Service lines in addition to the MD-W. As is often the case at Metra stops, I found it difficult to determine for sure which of the two platforms we had to stand on to catch the outbound at 9:40 a.m. run to Elgin. I tried a few approaches:
• Looking for a “From Chicago” sign on one the platform entrances. The existing signage didn't even make it obvious that you couldn’t just board your train from either platform.
• Looking at the recently installed digital display signs, which showed what times inbound and outbound trains were scheduled to arrive at the the station but, bizarrely, didn’t tell you which platform they would would be boarding from.
• Asking a passenger who’d just arrived, who didn’t know.
• Looking at the framed printed schedules on display below Platform 1 and Platform 2, and marked as such. These signs didn’t mention whether the trains listed as arriving at those platforms were inbound or outbound, and it didn't occur to me to look more closely at them.
However, Michael was fairly confident Platform 1 was correct for us, so I threw up my hands and Jonathan and I waited with him on that one, which was the right choice. When I asked Michael later, he couldn't remember exactly how he figured out which platform was the ticket. But in retrospect, I'm guessing Michael looked more closely than I did at the posted schedule and saw that a 9:40 a.m. MD-W train was listed on the document for Platform 1. It's likely he was assured the run would head outbound to Elgin because that station was further to the right on the schedule, and had a later arrival time posted.
Granted, I’m not especially quick on the draw when it comes to trip planning decisions like that. That's been especially true during the past two years.
But even so, if a person who writes about transit for a living found it hard to figure out which platform to stand on, surely many civilian visitors or locals who don’t regularly use the station would find it nearly impossible. I assume most of these folks wind up asking daily commuters at the station for hep. But there’s probably often some panic involved, and it’s likely very common for Metra to get complaints from people who missed their train because of this issue.
Metra is currently spending lots of time figuring out whether to rename its train lines. After this trip, I asked Metra spokesperson Michael Gillis if the railroad is doing anything to make it more obvious which platform you need to catch your train from. For example, why haven't they simply added the correct platform number to the digital displays?
"We are actively working to add the platform information to those [digital] signs, but it's more involved than you might guess," Gillis replied. "It would be easier if [Metra] dispatched every line on our system and could automatically adjust platform assignments based on our operational needs and decisions, but we don't. And we don't have access to the dispatching systems of the various freight railroads that we interact with every day and whose decisions impact which platforms we use."
Gillis added that Metra has come up with a way to add platform info to the digital displays, but it requires updates to their scheduling and tracking systems, which they're working on. "We anticipate completion by the end of the year," he concluded. "In the meantime, I spent Friday adding platform information to every station’s webpage; see Western here."
All right, enough discussion of that annoying aspect of our trip – let's get back to the fun parts. I'll present those gallery-style, below, until after we arrived at the supper club.
One caveat: While the trails we rode are low-stress and lovely, the rest of our route on streets, picked via Google Maps and one of the Illinois Department of Transportation's (generally very useful) bike maps, was merely tolerable. I'm generally talking about two-lane roads with moderate amounts of moderately fast traffic and narrow shoulders.
All three of us are seasoned cross-country cyclists, so it wasn't that big a deal. But if you're a so-called "interested but concerned" bike rider interested in checking out this part of the region, you might want to mostly limit your ride to the paths. If you do that, you can catch Metra home from Crystal Lake, or go further north on the Prairie Trail to McHenry. (Be sure to double check that the train schedules at those stations work for your trip.)
Without further ado, here's the gallery...
The Heritage House opened roughly half a century ago, and as you can see from the above photos, it's got a trapped-in-amber ambiance, which I greatly enjoy. The red vinyl seating reminds me of places where I used to eat with my grandparents as a kid in the 1970s, in a good way.
Michael, Jonathan, and I finished our feast by sharing an extremely old-school grasshopper sundae, a tower of soft-serve vanilla ice cream in a martini glass, doused with minty creme de menthe liqueur and topped with a cherry. It was a refreshing ending to a memorable meal and bike ride.
After that, since my companions had stuff to do in Chicago the next day, they rode two miles north to the local UP-NW station. But I opted to maximize the three-day weekend by "credit card camping" at the cheap, reasonably nice motel next door. It's accessible from the supper club via a wooden pedestrian bridge.
I wrapped up the evening by lounging next to the motor lodge's pleasant swimming pool, rereading the "The Dead" from James Joyce's Dubliners short story collection. That's my default compact book to bring on road trips.
The next morning, after taking advantage of the motel's complimentary DIY waffle station, I continued rolling about 50 miles east with a tailwind across the entire width of the suburbs to coastal Lake Bluff. I savored an imperial stout at the local brewpub, then headed to the Metra station across the street to catch an inbound Union Pacific North train. Before I knew it, I was back home in Uptown.
Living in a metropolitan region with an extensive commuter rail system is a wonderful thing. If you value that, now's the time to lobby electeds to properly fund Chicagoland transit during the spring 2025 Illinois Legislature session. That's crucial for avoiding draconian service cuts next year due to the looming $770 million fiscal cliff. Head to the website "Support the Clean and Equitable Transportation Act!" to send letters to your state representatives.
Did you appreciate this post? Streetsblog Chicago is currently fundraising to help cover our 2025-26 budget. If you appreciate our reporting and advocacy on local sustainable transportation issues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here. Thank you!
