Hello and happy 4th of July, commuters! To celebrate America’s 250th birthday, I have a special treat for you all! Today we will be reviewing Libertyville station! *checks notes* … Oh wait, I already reviewed that one. Shoot. What should I do now? *whispering* … What do you mean there’s another station in Libertyville? 2 of them?! Where?? *whispering continues* … There’s nothing but prairie out there. Who’d put 2 stations in the middle of a prairie?

What better way is there to celebrate this grand occasion than by reviewing a rather mediocre train station in the middle of the prairie. Prairie Crossing/Libertyville, shortened to simply “Prairie Crossing”, is located on the very northwest tip of Libertyville, near the diamond crossing of the Fox Lake Subdivision and the Waukesha Subdivision, operated by Metra and Canadian National respectively. It’s one of the few places on the Metra network where you can transfer between 2 separate lines outside of Chicago city limits, those being the Milwaukee District North and North Central Service lines. Other examples of transfer stations include Blue Island and Joliet, however Prairie Crossing is the only one in the northern half of Chicagoland.

Alright, now to address the elephant in the room. Is this one station, or two? Metra takes ridership data of each station independently, making them 2 independent stations. However, the transfer between the two stations is quite easy, there is only about 0.2 miles separating them, and they’re advertised by the city of Libertyville as simply “Prairie Crossing station”. To get a completely comprehensive review of this station(s), I will review them both as individual stations and as a unit.

Service & Connections

As mentioned before, Prairie Crossing is served by both the Milwaukee District North line and the North Central Service. The MD-N is by far the more frequent service of the 2, with as frequent of service as the main Libertyville station at all parts of day. As a refresher, that means 18 inbound trains and 21 outbound trains on weekdays and 9 trains per direction on weekends as of July 2026. Ok, that is 1 less train per direction on weekdays as Libertyville, since one train originates and terminates at Libertyville, but let’s not get too far into the weeds. Once again, I must commend the MD-N for having such remarkable service on a single tracked line. That really shows the benefits of owning the tracks you operate on.

Unfortunately, the complements get sparser as we move on to Prairie Crossing NCS. The North Central Service is on tracks owned and operated by Canadian National, and as a result has a very limiting schedule. Only 7 trains operate per direction on weekdays only. 6 trains per direction run peak service, and only 1 train per day runs counter peak service. That means only one train per day runs outbound in the morning and inbound in the afternoon. I discuss this more in my review of Mundelein station, but the NCS is in desperate need of more service, it’s a shame how few trains run on this line.

Both Prairie Crossing stations are in Zone 4 of Metra’s fare system. Prairie Crossing MD-N is 39.2 miles away from Chicago Union Station. The journey to CUS is a bit longer on the NCS, with Prairie Crossing NCS being 40.7 miles away from Chicago. Either way, the journey will take a while, with either train taking about an hour and 20 minutes to reach Chicago. Both lines offer services that express through certain stations, cutting the time down to about an hour and 10 minutes each. I too was surprised to learn the NCS has one train a day per direction that expresses between Wheeling and Western Ave. Anyways, in terms of ridership, Prairie Crossing MD-N received 368 weekday boardings as of 2018, making it Metra’s 128th most used station. As you’d expect, Prairie Crossing NCS received significantly less ridership, with only 87 boardings, placing it as Metra’s 194th most used station.

Lastly, this station does not have any connections to other services apart from being connected to one another. At least, no connections advertised by Metra. Technically, the Pace 574 bus has a stop about half a mile away from the station on Casey Road and Route 45. However, there are no sidewalks on that intersection, you’d have to stray off a bike path to get to a very hostile intersection in the middle of the prairie. It also doesn’t help that the 574 also has stops at both Libertyville and Mundelein stations, so this transfer at Prairie Crossing has very little value.

The only connection you’d reasonably make is the connection between the 2 Prairie Crossing stations themselves. Given how infrequent the NCS is, I’m unsure of how many people are using this station as a transfer point between the two lines. There are actually some well-timed morning inbound transfers from the MD-N to the NCS, but not the other way around. Evening outbound transfers between them are a bit dicier, but literally none of this matters if you’re taking these trains all the way to Chicago. They both terminate at Union Station, so simply choose which is more convenient to take, which most often is the MD-N. Except for the niche scenario of needing to get from Fox Lake to Buffalo Grove, for example, there’s no reason to need to transfer between these two lines. If you must transfer or are simply doing it because you’re a transit nerd like me, they’re somewhat inconsistent timing wise. Some have headways of only 5 minutes or less, whereas others are 30 minutes to an hour. I’m not sure if Metra had some inclinations to tailor the schedules with a transfer at Prairie Crossing in mind, but I can assure you that it was not a top priority when planning these schedules. Oh, and all of this is completely irrelevant on weekends, since the NCS doesn’t run.

Amenities

As I discussed in both the Libertyville post and now this post, the Fox Lake branch of the MD-N is single tracked, so there’s only one platform at Prairie Crossing. What I have not discussed is how the NCS is also single tracked at Prairie Crossing, unlike in Mundelein. The double tracked Waukesha Sub converges into a single track just north of Mundelein and continues as single tracked up until Round Lake Beach. Don’t ask me why that’s the way it is, I just tell you guys what I observe. As a result, the NCS station stands alongside its MD-N counterpart in having only one platform, making this review a bit simpler for yours truly.

We’ll begin with the NCS station, since it has a theme of being the inferior station, and in this regard it doesn’t disappoint. The platform exudes a “less is more” energy that isn’t completely unwarranted. The platform has a small, enclosed shelter with not much more than benches and a clock to check if your train is late. It provides respite from the elements and not much more; functional is the best word to describe this shelter. There’s also a smaller sheltered area further down the platform, but it’s not enclosed like the main structure. There are no ticket machines at this station, which is a commonality amongst all NCS stations for some odd reason. At least there’s bike parking at this station, although I wouldn’t say it’s the most glamourous place to park in the world. It looks as if you could just pick up the bike rack and take it home with you, but please don’t try to do that, I’d be very disappointed in you personally. Yes, personally.

After getting a glimpse of the NCS platform at Prairie Crossing, we get to take the quick trek over to the MD-N platform to see what some TLC does to an inanimate piece of infrastructure. With a visually appealing brick platform, the MD-N platform is the clear favorite of the 2 stations. It has a pretty little warming house for its shelter that actually got quite warm as I waited in it. The house not only has benches as one would expect, but it also has a small collection of books from the local library. If you’ve read these reviews than you know how much I’m a sucker for a good book collection at a train station. Not stopping there, the platform also has ticket machines that exist AND legitimate bike parking! If I haven’t mentioned yet, the brick platform and lampposts give the station an aesthetic I enjoy quite a lot. It’s charming and authentic, much unlike its brutalist NCS counterpart. I suppose the MD-N platform doesn’t have a second covered shelter, so if there are any diehard NCS Prairie Crossing fans, that’s the one thing they have over diehard MD-N Prairie Crossing fans. Assuming they also exist.

Surroundings

Now it’s time for the fun part. Both stations have incredible spacious parking lots, which is always a negative but makes far more sense once you realize there’s not much else surrounding these stations. The sheer emptiness of the vicinity is exemplified quite well by the NCS station, as it is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. There’s not much to look at while waiting for your train besides some tall grass and trees. The MD-N platform once again comes out with the better bargain, with at least some signs of life present in the form of some condos and a busy stroad. “Better” being subjective in this case.

This station was not meant to be walked to, as indicated by the enormous amount of parking available at both platforms. The only thing feasible to walk to in the surrounding area is the aforementioned condos. These condos form a small community in which I was not able to explore, however they do seem expansive and welcoming. They have their own charter school for first through eighth grade, and a gazebo worthy enough to be marked on Google Maps. A quick search on Zillow shows one on sale for just under $275k, so it may not be that bad an idea to move into Prairie Crossing, so long as your comfortable living in the middle of the prairie.

Although the Prairie Crossing condos are a neat little community, they aren’t worthy of their own train station(s) alone. Looking through a wider scope, Prairie Crossing serves a few other far-flung suburbs, but not nearly as many as I would’ve hoped. Gages Lake is the nearest community without other transit options. Otherwise, there’s Grayslake, Mundelein, and Libertyville nearby, all with Metra stations of their own. According to Google Maps, Ivanhoe is a small, unincorporated community near Mundelein in which Prairie Crossing may be a viable transit option, but it’s closer to Mundelein which once again has its own NCS station. If the NCS is too infrequent to be considered a reasonable option, then you could include parts of Mundelein and Ivanhoe in Prairie Crossing’s potential service area. However, even that is stretching it a bit considering that Libertyville station is the far more reasonable option to consider, as even it is nearer to Mundelein proper than Prairie Crossing. So, apart from small community of condos near it and Gages Lake if we include park & ride commuters, I’m not really sure who else this station is designed to serve.

If you know me, you may have wondered why I didn’t criticize the fact that there are bike racks at these stations at all. No one would bike here if there were no bike trails. I say that, yet there are some bike trails accessible via this station. These bike trails don’t lead to anything practical necessarily, just more condos and empty land. But if you’re looking for a nice hike or bike ride to take, consider the prairies of Prairie Crossing. I actually went here on a day trip about a year ago, and I had a pretty enjoyable time walking through the peaceful fields of grass and shrubs. It’s certainly not a conventional place to find natural beauty, but it’s far from terrible. If you have a bike and a sense of adventure, Prairie Crossing may be somewhere you want to look into.

Conclusion

I have something I have to confess to you all. If you haven’t noticed, this was not originally meant to be a 4th of July special, let alone one to celebrate America 250. This review was meant to be published a while ago, and along with the Libertyville review, it’s only coincidental that these reviews came out around Independence Day. However, as I mentioned in the intro, it befits me quite well to celebrate this grand occasion by putting in so much effort into reviewing a station so mediocre. To the potentially existent superfans of the Prairie Crossing stations, as well as everyone else, I truly wish nothing but the best for this weekend and every weekend afterwards.

With that being said, it turns out I had a lot to say about this random station that many people may not even know about, and which I certainly don’t use often. While seemingly impractical for the vast majority of commuters, these stations certainly have a charm to them that I can’t deny. They have some great scenery around them if you look in the right places, and the MD-N station in particular is quite aesthetic, minus the large busy road nearby. I’d like to reiterate how happy I am these stations exist, how it’s even an option to transfer between 2 commuter rail lines way out in the sticks. In order to score these stations, I’ll actually be splitting the scoring into 3 different scores. One per station individually, then one for both stations together.

Beginning with the NCS station individually, ouch. This station couldn’t be further away from anything useful, and combined with the terrible frequency of the line it’s on and the sorry state the platform is in, this station will probably be the lowest review thus far on the blog. If it weren’t for the MD-N station adjacent to it, this station would have no reason to exist at all. This station is nothing more than a joke between myself and I, and while it does have a small soft spot in my heart for existing, that won’t save it from a damning score of:

1.5/10

As for the MD-N station, it scores far better! With solid amenities, much more frequent service, and being nearer to the bike trails and condos, I feel much better about calling Prairie Crossing MD-N a legitimate station. That being said, it still gets points deducted heavily for being in the middle of nowhere and having a massive parking lot and loud road in its immediate vicinity, but it gets carried from being terrible by the amenities and charm of the platform. I’ll justify giving it a score of:

4.5/10

Lastly, as one unit, both Prairie Crossing stations as a whole are greater than the sum of their parts. Transfers between the two stations are possible but must be timed in advance, and their dwell times are a bit unpredictable. But once again, I’m very glad that this transfer is even possible way up here. While their ridership is quite low even including the MD-N station, together they aren’t completely terrible, and do serve a purpose to the 455 people who use both stations in total. Whether you drive in from a nearby community or use these stations to explore the expansive prairies of northern Illinois, Prairie Crossing can be an option for you. Although I wouldn’t classify this station as elite, or even good, they still deserve a serviceable score of:

5.5/10

Thank you for riding with us!