CHICAGO - J.D. Danton's shift at Metra's 16th Street Tower on Friday night and Saturday morning (April 11-12, 2025) was certainly nothing new. And yet, the dilapidated structure had never seen ...

The tower operators sitting at the board pressed buttons along the track lines, setting routes through the interlocking for oncoming subways as radio chatter crackled from their crews. One door ...

There we met Dyanesha Pryor, one of the roughly 300 tower operators who control train traffic at interlocking machines. She was merging Manhattan-bound A express trains and C local trains onto a ...