Tuesday - 3 July 2007
It’s a sad day for us traction phreaques everywhere. The first of the “Big Three Insull Interurbans,” the Chicago, Aurora and Elgin Railroad, suspended regularly scheduled passenger train service 50-years ago today on July 3rd, 1957.
The Illinois courts plus federal and state regulatory agencies issued their final orders to suspend service shortly before lunchtime on that fateful day. As soon as word reached the railroad’s offices, the headquarters staff put out the word to all of the field personnel to close the stations and return the ticket cases, cash, and all equipment (including passenger motors and trailers) to Wheaton.
Thousands of commuters rode the “Roarin’ Elgin” to work that morning but were left without their usual and customary way of getting home. Thanks to quick action by George Krambles and his staff at the Chicago Transit Authority, posters were quickly distributed announcing the suspension of service and substitute buses made their way out to the Des Plaines Ave. station in Forest Park (the eastern terminal of C.A.& E. service since 1953) to pickup the stranded passengers. What a way to start the 4th of July holiday, eh?
The Great Third Rail lasted four more years on meager freight revenues before finally giving up the ghost.
There is one bright note to end this story: C.A.& E. 20, a wooden passenger motor that was in service on the first day of the railroad’s operation in 1902, also ran on its last day, and continues to run most summer weekends at the Fox River Trolley Museum in South Elgin, Ill. We sho
A rather marginal freight service continued until June 1959 but the railroad was not formally abandoned until August 1961.
CA&E was in the uncommon situation of being worth more dead than alive. It’s questionable how much longer it would have lasted even if the through service to Wells Street continued beyond 1953. The competing steam roads (especially C&NW) had dieselized and upgraded their suburban operations so CA&E was losing passenger traffic to them. CA&E had no money to re-equip its passenger fleet and subsidies were still several years in the future. Freight service was marginal at best and probably would have dried up within a few years anyway.
The rather well-known proposal by CTA to operate a Forest Park-Wheaton shuttle with modified pre-war PCC’s was practicable but was probably more of a public relations ploy than serious plan since nobody in suburban Cook County or Du Page County was willing to come up with the money to cover losses. The suburbs were also not too keen on CTA operating on their turf.
Wow! I didn’t realize it had been 50 years already. Thanks to the efforts of many people in the early 1970’s, most of the right-of-way of CAE still exists today as the Illinois Prarie Path. Even the Geneva spur that was abandoned @1937(?) and not part of the original IPP still has a large portion of the ROW there. When you ride the IPP on either the branches (Elgin / Aurora) or on the spurs (Geneva / Batavia) you get a good sense of how how rural the operations of the CAE used to be in those areas as surban sprawl still hasn’t taken over in a lot of places.
CC
Other good news includes operating cars at the Illinois Railroad Museum (there was a reenactment of the event there last week-end), and the museum at Villa Avenue, Villa Park in the old station building where the old station sign is being recreated. The Ardmore station still exists also.
Glen Brewer
There is another piece of the CA&E preserved by the Fox River Trolley Museum. The sub-station used to convert comercial AC power to DC voltage for the trolley wire originally powered the Batavia Branch of the CA&E. The founders of the museum purchased the sub-station from Commonwealth Edison, dismantled the building and the machinery and rebuilt everything at the museum. I have not stopped at the museum since its earliest days in the 1960’s, but I assume that the same station is used to this day.
It is an interesting piece. When used on the Batavia Branch it was shut down when no trains were on the power segment. When a train (or car) approached, the equipment started up. I am very vague on this but I seem to recall that the startup process goes through a couple dozen steps and takes close to a minute to get power up. In the process, one can hear the clanking of the big relays and the motor generator set wind up. I don’t have any idea as to the original installation date, but I am willing to bet that few of the original components have been replaced. “Don’t make 'em like that anymore.”
It has been so long that I no longer remember the names of the guys who started the museum, but one of the founding members was an electrical engineer with the knowledge of power transmissions necessary to rebuild the substation. I only had a very small part in the startup of the museum, but I recall one day working on the reconstruction of the building that houses the sub-station. It is nice to see that the museum continues on after over 40 years in business.
There is a very nice picture of the new Villa Park station sign at “the great third rail”, a yahoo discussion site for the CA&E – see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thegreatthirdrail/
The original may be seen on my web site below.
Glen Brewer
Remembering the ‘Ror’n’ Elgin**:** http://www.homestaydenver.com/cae
Glen Brewer:-
Great site! You really put a lot of work into creating that hommage to “The Great Third Rail.” Not only did I enjoy those last-years-of-passenger-service photos, but also the freight images ca 1957-1959. Seeing all of those 1960, '61, and '62 pictures of the line just wasting away brought up the melancholy I felt as a teenager when my dad and I paid a visit to Highwood after the North Shore Line gave up the ghost.
Forty-five years ago a man named Greg Heier (did I get the name right?) of Elgin, Ill. had quite a collection of C.A.& E. images. I think he operated a camera shop in that city too. Does anyone know what happened to his collection of photographs?
Hi Bob,
Greg is still around. He and his wife, Joy, are the current editors of the Illinois Railroad Museum’s magazine, “Rail & Wire” and he is quite an expert on both the CA&E and the CNS&M. They also edit “O-Scale News”.
Thank you for the nice comments on my pages. I also did one on the North Shore:
http://www.homestaydenver.com/Northshore
Glen