I was reading about the Pullman strike in 1894. Something interesting caught my eye. It mentions the General Managers Association, an organization of 24 railroads that had terminals in Chicago.(!) By use of the word terminals, is that to suggest that this was 24 railroads that hauled freight into Chicago? Given the year, would all railroads at that time haul both freight and passengers into Chicago?
Anybody able to name the 24 railroads?
I don’t have any 1894 resources for Chicago, but out of curiousity I was able to pull from a 1953 atlas (when they still showed rail lines instead of highways) some 17 railroads (or at least different key numbers). Given some mergers/takeovers within that period, it makes sense. Some of the numbers were hard to read, so I’m probably missing a couple.
The railroad key list for Illinois had NYC twice, so really my list is only 16 railroads. I’m guessing there was a merger/takeover by NYC in there somewhere and the atlas people just changed the name for that railroad.
From 1953:
Soo
C&NW
Milwaukee
North Shore
IC
Burlington
BOCT
IHB
ATSF
GM&O
Wabash
RI
PRR
NYC
Surely, one of the names would be: B&O
Pere Marquette
Michigan Central
Lake Shore & Michigan Southern
Grand Trunk Western
Wabash
Chicago, New York & St. Louis (Nickel Plate)
Erie
Baltimore & Ohio
Pennsylvania - May have been represented by two subsidiaries GR&I and the Panhandle.
Chesapeake & Ohio
Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville (Monon)
Chicago& Eastern Illinois
Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati & St. Louis (Big Four)
Illinois Central
Chicago & Alton
Chicago & Rock Island
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
Chicago & North Western
Chicago Great Western
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
Wisconsin Central
The Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, and the Indiana Harbor Belt didn’t exist yet, at least under those names and in their final form.
New York, CHICAGO, and St. Louis (that’s the NKP name) There was no Chesapeake and Ohio of Indiana in 1894. GR&I went nowhere near Chicago. I wanted to say Chicago, Attica, and Southern but that line didn’t quite make it to Chicago.
BOCT is Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad, which was probably a subsidiary of B&O.
The date (1894) is key to this. Consider:
B&OCT and GM&O were Alton RR at that time
Chicago & Strawn (Wabash)
Chicago & Western Indiana
Chicago Heights Transfer & Terminal
Lake Shore & Michigan Southern
Did the Panhandle or Vandalia get in there?
Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati & St. Louis (Big 4)
Most likely all 24, or maybe all but one or two, would be running passenger trains and/or commuter trains into Chicago. It’s hard now to fathom how many trains there were at that time. St.Paul (Minnesota)'s Union Depot at that time had something like 280 scheduled passenger trains a day - add in another 100 or more freight trains that went by the station each day and you’ve got a lot of trains. Multiply that by maybe 8 or 10 and you get an idea of what Chicago was like then!!
(Remember too that some of the railroads that reached Chicago probably would have been granting trackage rights to other railroads, or hauling other railroad’s passenger trains into Chicago - many passenger trains travelled over more than one railroad back then.
Pere Marquette didn’t make it to Chicago until about 1903. I don’t think the CGW was around, either.
What later became the NYC would have been three separate passenger railroads then: LS&MS, Michigan Central, and Big Four.
Yes, the Panhandle made it there, as did the PRR proper (PFW&C). No “Fishing Line” (GR&I).
The Chicago Heights Terminal Transfer did not run into Chicago. It only operated serving the industries in and around Chicago Heights, a far south suburb of Chicago. IIRC it was a subsidiary of the C&EI.
The closest the Big Four got to Chicago was Kankakee. They did not have trackage rights over the IC into Chicago. Their trains were run with IC crews and engines between Chicago and Kankakee.
Mark
The Erie, C&O, and Monon used the Chicgo & Western Indiana to access Chicago (when they finally made it into Chicago). I can’t say when, but as was stated above, C&O from Cincinnati, was 1911 or so.
Showing my ignorance here: Today, I could fly into O’Hare on Northwest, and fly out to New York on United, or something similar. Let’s say, in 1894, if I rode into Chicago on the Milwaukee, and needed to catch a train out to New York on NYC. How did I get from one of the 24 terminals to the other? Horse drawn taxi? Trolley? Walk? We have life so easy now, that we forget how much harder life was in the past.
Yes.
I believe several of the stations served more than one railroad. The only way you could do a “cross concourse” transfer would be if you happened to be travelling on two railroads that did share a station. Otherwise it becomes a function of how far apart the stations are and how much you have to carry.
Other Notes- The EJ&E was in existence, having been merged into it’s full loop around Chicago in 1888, but it did not go into Chicago proper or northern Indiana until 1899. IHB was incorporated in 1896. The B&OCT as noted came about after a series of consolidations in 1910. The North Shore was not organized until 1916 and in 1895 was just a predecessor streetcar line in Waukegan. I would think since it only means the railroad operated into a terminal and not per se their own trackage- I’d add the Big Four to list even though they didn’t have their own unique route into town. The Chicago General managers Association was formed in 1886 and was comprised of 24 member roads in 1893-4 at the time of the Pullman Strike. These railroads operated service in and out of the Chicago terminal- when the strike occured 20 of the 24 member roads were impacted by the Pullman boycott- so it is likely to say that 4 of those roads were perhaps terminal roads that did not operate Pullman cars in their trains. (As the strike progressed though, all the railroads became affected due to the gridlock created.)
Here is an excerpt from the Pullman Strike papers listing 13 GMA member roads that were affected by the Pullman Strike-
“Thirteen roads centering in Chicago were now completely tied up, the Santa Fe, Chicago & Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Chicago & Western Indiana, Pan Handle, Monon Route, Chicago & Grand Trunk, Chicago & Erie, Illinois Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Chicago & Great Western, Wisconsin Central and Cincinnati Southern, and the General Managers had begun to realize the futility of carrying on the fight, and if they had not received encouragement and aid from outside sources, would have in all probability ended the strike at once by dropping the Pullman cars”
p. 32-22- Burns, W. F.; Debs, Eugene V.; Altgeld, John Peter.
nordique72: Thanks-you just gave me another interesting sounding book to go looking for.[:)]
Chicago & Northern Pacific ? What was that?
Fortunately, not 24 terminals. With multiple companies operating out of almost all the stations, things narrowed down to (some of the companies listed-it changed slightly over the years so I know the list of who was where is not correct for 1894):
Chicago & North Western Station-The exception to the rule. One terminal all to themselves.
Union Station: The Milwaukee Road, two Pennsy subsidaries and the CB&Q (owners) and the Chicago & Alton (tenant).
Grand Central Station: The B&O and Soo Line(?)
Dearborn (or Polk) Street: Erie, Santa Fe(?), Wabash, Monon, Grand Trunk.
LaSalle (Van Buren) Street: Rock Island, Nickle Plate(?) and some NYC.
IC Station (not Central Station yet?): Illinois Central and other NYC.
So, yes, you could walk, streetcar or cab between stations. One company,
When travelers needed to move between Chicago railroad terminals, they frequently used local transport, which after the Civil War progressed from horsecar to cable car to electric trolley and elevated train (the “El”), and ultimately included the bus and of course, taxi cabs. Most popular in 1894 would have been the fabled “omnibus” which could handle passengers and their bags. For years, they crowded Chicago streets until motorized cabs came along.
Those traveling from one coast to the other had to switch railroads in Chicago because none ran through. Sometimes the passengers were stressed for time, sometimes not. (Those whose time differences were very short between arrival at one station and departure at another helped foster the scene where they were jumping into the back of a taxi yelling “Union Station, and step on it!”
Press agents also used the stopovers in Chicago to set up reporters with interviews and photo sessions (and later, radio shows) with famous people between their changing railroads.
According to the Chicago Historical Society, just as the city boasted of being the railroad capital of America, its intracity transport facilities could also be described in superlatives. For instance, the largest, and on the whole the most important, cable system in the nation was the Chicago City Railway, which operated from 1882 until 1906 along the principal commercial streets.</
Murph-
The C&NP was a predecessor road to the B&OCT in Chicago- it was a station terminal road with freight and passenger interests around Grand Central Station in Chicago. Tenant roads were the B&O, the WC, and the CGW. The book in name is a good read on the Pullman Strike and gives a good account of how far the gridlock spread during the Pullman Boycott- “ripple effect” is a good way to describe it.
The Chicago & Northern Pacific was leasing the Wisconsin Central. In my 1893 Official Guide, through trains were not in the time table. You had to get off and get on at either St.Paul or Minneapolis.
The Northwestern Station at Madison was still in the future. The Northwestern Station was across the river on Wells Street, the original route of the CNW into Chicago.
In 1893, the New York Chicago and St.Louis also had a station to itself, sort of squeezed in between the Van Buren station (later to become LaSalle) and Dearborn station.
Part of the G&IR (Galena & Illinois River) was used by the Panhandle, finally to become the Pittsburgh Cicinnati Chicago & St.Louis. It entered the Chicago Union Passenger Station from the north using the Milwaukee tracks. As it wandered northward along Western Avenue toward the Milwaukee Road, it had a commuter station around Madison Ave; through trains to the east ignored it
In 1893 the ‘Chicago Railroad Association’ had 23 members, among them the Goodrich Transportation Company that ran a bunch of steamships on Lake Michigan.
In the index of stations, Chicago had 22 railroads using 7 stations: Dearborn, Grand Central, Union, C&NW, Van Buren (later LaSalle), NYC&StL, and Central (at 12th St).
The railroads: ATSF, B&O, C&A, C&EI, Chicago & Grand Trunk, Chicago & Northern Pacific, C&NW, Chicago & Western Indiana, CB&Q, Chicago Great Western, CM&StP, CRI&P, CCC&StL (Big 4), Erie, IC, Lake Shore & Mich.Southern, LNA&C (Monon), Michigan Central, NYC&StL, Pennsylvania, Wabash, Wisconsin Central.
Art
Forgot to add, before AMTRAK, Parmalee Transfer provided free transportation to and from the various stations. But it was slow; I hiked from Dearborn to LaSalle to be sure I made the connection.
Art