Palatine station

Palatine Station is a commuter railroad station on Metra's Union Pacific/Northwest line in the Village of Palatine, Illinois. It is officially located at 137 West Wood Street, however there are parking lots for the station scattered within its vicinity, such as those on Smith Street, Colfax Street, Brockway Street, Slade Street, Railroad Avenue, and Palatine Road. Palatine is the outermost station on the UP-NW line to have three tracks, serviced by two platforms - inbound (towards Chicago Ogilvie) trains serviced by the north platform nearest the station with outbound (towards Crystal Lake and Harvard) and center track express trains serviced by the south platform. Due to the UP Northwest Line's schedule, it is common to see an outbound train and an inbound train arriving in Palatine simultaneously; in fact, with respect to time, Palatine is the halfway point between Ogilvie and Harvard. In Metra's zone-based fare system, Palatine is located in zone F.HistoryThe original Palatine train station was a Chicago and North Western Railway structure, located between Plum Grove Road and Bothwell Street north of the tracks until 1971 when a station with an attached strip mall and restaurant was built across Smith Street from the present station. Today's station was built by DLK Civic Design, an architecture firm based in Chicago, in 2001. It contains a clock tower and an outdoor Starbucks cafe, a pedestrian concourse, and decorative canopies, as well as concession facilities. The original station site has been replaced by a mixed condominium/business complex while the 1971-2001 site was razed to make way for a parking garage, an office building, and a new location for the Durty Nellie's restaurant and nightclub.