I’m fairly new to this and looking for some good spots to photograph up in the northern suburbs…I’ve read through the guide on junctions and decided to visit rondout today. The guide said that about 50 or so trains total go through there a day…I was disappointed to say the least…nothing came through there while I was there, although there were some rusty looking boxcars on the tracks…So, does stuff actually come through here?? Do any of the trains ever spend anytime in the yard there? What’s up with that place and are there any other good areas that anyone would recommend that are not in the Illinois junction guide?..thanks
It’s been a while since I was in the Chgo area but Rondout is/was(?) a crossing at grrade w/ the EJ&E, a junction on the Milw mainline to Milwuakee and the suburban line (now Metra) to Fox Lake w/, as an added bonus, a North Shore branchline on an overpass )now long gone). I suspect you might have been there on a week-end which would probably be a light traffic time. Try checking an Amtrak and/or Metra timetable for optimum time. The 3 primary ingredients for a succesful railfan excursion are planning, patience and luck.
Well, I live right close.
Go check out the historical marker north of route #176. The last train robery in the U.S. was at Rondout. It was in the 1920’s. They stopped the Milwaukee Road’s “Fast Mail” there. Back then, it was “out in the boonies”. Now, it’s encompassed by the Chicago suburban sprawl.
I’d say about 20 freights per day on the CP. Maybe 2-4 on the EJ&E. Mean grade on a curve for the “J” west of the tower. Rondout sees the Amtrak “Hiawatha” service between Chicago and Milwaukee and the “Empire Builder” to and from Seattle/Portland.
Weekdays are busy. The Metra commuter line from Fox Lake, IL joins the main at Rondout. But people tend to not work weekends, so the commuter trains don’t run as often.
The old “North Shore” line through Rondout is now a bike trail and you can stand on a foot/bike bridge over the CP double track main. If you wanna watch trains, you gotta be patient.
IIRC Rondout was most famous for the Milwaukee Road’s “SLOW TO 90 MPH” sign at a level crossing of another RR, back in the Hiawatha days.
Between Metra, Amtrak and freights (both CP and EJ&E) I think about forty trains plus a day would sound about right.
FYI Rondout used to be a stop on the same Milwaukee Road - North Line that serves Glenview, Libertyville and Grayslake under Metra today. I don’t know what happened – perhaps suburbanization hadn’t hit yet – but in the 1960s (I am told) Rondout as a community pretty much ceased to exist and the depot was torn down.
If you make it up to Grayslake, it now has two commuter stations long walking distance apart from one another: the stop on the aforementioned line and another stop for the ten-year-old Antioch line; that’s the one that runs south to O’Hare. The older line has more commuter service, though.
Yep. Eola yard, west end at McClure Avenue, south side of tracks.
It’s to bad that rondout doesn’t seem to get much action anymore…I was really hoping to find some good areas up north here by where I live…So far though I’ve found the information about rondout very interesting, unfortunatly I guess there just isn’t enough industry this far north for much frieght action up here…
That’s about right, I guess. If you want guaranteed heavy action try the Elmhurst depot (gets all the freights out of Proviso as well as Metra), or along the BNSF racetrack, or Eola yard – all west or southwest.
I can think of one close-in place with no guarantees but an interesting variety of trains: either the triple-track at Des Plaines station on the UP-Northwest Line, or (much better), the so-called Deval Tower area about 3/4 mile northwest of there up Northwest Highway, which parallels the UP-Northwest Line. Just to the west of where Northwest Highway passes under the WC line you can find WC, CP and I think also some CN along with the triple-track Metra. CP definitely looks better from the far side of that junction; I think North and First Aves. in Des Plaines is a good public way to look at them. Be cautious, not only because safety is a virtue in and of itself but also because it’s really easy when approaching the junction from the Northwest Highway side to trespass.
Deval Tower was called “so-called” because didn’t it burn down recently? It had been unmanned for quite a time. - a.s.
If i recall correctly, the DeVal tower was in fact manned until a fire in 2004 or 2005 that damaged the controls and such inside. They then cut everything over to the CY tower for remote control.