Brighton Park crossing

The crossing consists of the CN's two-track Joliet Subdivision in a roughly east–west orientation intersecting five north–south tracks operated by NS and CSX.

For the PRR the Panhandle Route connecting Pittsburgh and Cincinnati via Indianapolis was of secondary importance to its Main Line via Fort Wayne, Indiana, with the latter having direct access to Chicago Union Station from the south, while the Panhandle route ran west of the city to loop around and access the station from the north.

For both the B&OCT and PCC&StL, Brighton Park was one in a string of non-interlocked railroad crossings at grade with others at Ash Street, 26th St and 12th St.[4] Maximum speed on the route was between 20-30 mph.

With the formation of the Penn Central and later Conrail, the PCC&StL and CR&I lines through Brighton Park were united under a single railroad.

Since the PRR era crossing agreement with the Alton successor Illinois Central Railroad was still in effect, Conrail had little incentive to upgrade the signaling on the line.

The modernization effort to automate the Brighton Park crossing was undertaken as part of the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE) in 2007.

It involved Safetran Systems, (part of Invensys Rail) with the crossing's application development, site mock-up, and preliminary factory testing taking place in Rancho Cucamonga, California in an in-house project called "Brighton Park / Pershing Main."

This was all done in conjunction with a centralized traffic control project on both the ex-Conrail and B&OCT lines, upgrading them from dark territory and automatic block signaling respectively.