We’re from the suburbs, and for the suburbs: since 2002, The Yard Social Club serves suburban Chicago by making transit fun. Tag along on one of our Train Crawls, or dive into our resources to plan your own suburban excursion. Give your car a break this weekend and see where transit can take you!
Train Crawl Resources
Get out and explore the suburbs on a Train Crawl: buy a Metra $10 Weekend or Day Pass, grab a schedule, and be merry throughout the six-county region all while your car rests comfortably in your garage or on your driveway.
Getting Started
Not sure where to begin planning your day riding the rails? Check out our tips and tricks based on our years of experience planning train crawls throughout Chicagoland.
The Ultimate Train Crawl Map
Check out our interactive map detailing every commuter rail station in the Chicago area with basic schedule information, station-area amenities, and some of our favorite stops throughout the region.
Travel Guides and Train Schedules
Basic information about each of the commuter rail lines serving the Chicago area, with direct links to official schedules by the service providers and our line-by-line weekday and weekend guides to help you plan your trip from start to finish. Our guides include bidirectional schedules, fare information, recommended venues, transit connections, and more.
Train Crawl Schedule Archive
Grab one of our off-the-shelf full train crawl schedules from our previous outings.
Maps and Schedules
The Map
Just about every bar within walking distance of a weekend Metra station. Explore the map, or open on your mobile device for an interactive guide to bars while you’re on your train crawl.
Travel Guides
Our Travel Guides include schedules, transfer information, fares, recommended venues, and more. Click on a line name to download a PDF. NOTE: Current Travel Guides should be considered depreciated and have not been updated since 2022. Updated Travel Guides may be released in the near future. Visit metra.com for current schedules.
System Guide
Union Pacific North
Union Pacific Northwest
Union Pacific West
Milwaukee North
North Central Service – Weekday (pre-pandemic)
Milwaukee West
BNSF Railway
Heritage Corridor – Weekday (pre-pandemic)
SouthWest Service (pre-pandemic)
Rock Island
Metra Electric – Suburban Main Line
Metra Electric – City Main and Branches (pre-pandemic)
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Diverging Approach
The way to really blog.
Diverging Approach: Six Degrees of Separation (Part 3)
Over the past few weeks, this blog has explored what we’ve been calling the “Grand Corridor”, what should be a high-performing intermodal transit corridor straddling Chicago’s Northwest and West Sides as well as suburban Cook County that, ideally, could connect these working-class neighborhoods to Elgin, O’Hare, and the Loop with fast and frequent transit service, … Continue reading Diverging Approach: Six Degrees of Separation (Part 3)
Diverging Approach: Six Degrees of Separation (Part 2)
Welcome back to the ongoing Diverging Approach profile of the Grand Corridor, one of Chicagoland’s most underutilized transit assets. In Part 1 of this series we defined the current lay of the land of Metra’s Milwaukee West corridor between Grand/Cicero and Mannheim, a stretch of nine stations straddling the city of Chicago and the Cook … Continue reading Diverging Approach: Six Degrees of Separation (Part 2)