Okay, I know that Conrail and CSX served Chicago from the East and took over from their component companies… BUT who else please?
The big one I’m trying to work out is NS…
Did Either Norfolk & Western or Southern serve Chicago? Would that have been NW or N&W? I’m completely bemused by this one.
Then again, I could probably expect PC jade green cars… what about PC locos? Would they have got this far west? (Assuming that they weren’t all repainted blue by the 80s).
Chessie included B&O, C&O and WM IIRC… would any and all of these companies’ locos have got to Chicago? Some and not others? [%-)]
PC was the NYC and PRR, both served Chicago, when they got repainted is another thing, Illinios Central Gulf was there, I think the N&W took over the Monon and served the area also.mike h.
N&W did not get to Chicago, until they leased/purchased the NKP and Wabash railroads. The PRR and NYC were merged into Penn Central(engines were black, some passenger cars were painted green). Erie(later Erie-Lacawanna) got to Chicago from the east, as did B&O, and the C&O(bought the Pere Marquette). Southern had no direct route to Chicago. L&N got to Chicage via thier joint purchase of part of the C&EI anong with MP. IC & GM&O also came in from the south. Monon was seperate until purchsed by the L&N…
By 1980, PC was gone(part of Conrail), as was the ex-Erie mainline. Conrail repainted engines quite fast or scrapped them, so 4 years after the Conrail merger, you might still see black PC engines(no Jade Green that I am aware of). N&W had bought up NKP/WAB. The Chessie component railroads mixed their engines and you would have seen them in Chicago. Southern engines would have been rare until N&W/SOU merged into NS(after 1980).
Don’t forget the Belt Railway of Chicago and the much larger Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad. IHB ran southeast to Hammond, and ran a lot of transfer jobs. And they employed my grandpa in the summers!
N&W reached Chicago from 1964, after it merged with the Nickel Plate and the Wabash. Monon also ran into Chicago, although it was a part of the Family Lines from 1971 - there would probably still have been equipment lettered for Monon, though.
The Chicago, South Shore and South Bend also ran out of the city to Michigan City (which is in Indiana, just as Kansas City’s in Missouri) and to South Bend. They were using old Insull-era interurban cars until 1982 - I rode one of the last rides with my dad, who was born in Harvey on the South Side. The South Shore used “Little Joe” electric motors in freight service that were built for Russia but diverted to the US - externally, almost identical to the ones the Milwaukee Road used in Montana. They ran two of them into the early '80s.
I have no clue what Norfolk Southern did but I can imagine they would have made it to Chicago. As you know Penn Central had already been absorbed into Conrail by the `80s. By 1985 Conrail had pretty much repainted every component company loco that wasn’t going to be scrapped or sold. As for the jade green freight cars some still appear in PC paint and markings even today 7 years after the split of conrail between Norfolk Southern and CSX. Another railroad operating in the area at the time was the Eljin, Joliet, and Eastern. It’s a smaller railroad now owned by the Transtar company but still operating. Chicago and North western along with Illinois Central Gulf were also hometown railroads to the Chicago area.
B&O had a direct line to Chicago. C&O bought Pere Marquette lines to get into Chicago. B&O also had it’s own Belt Line to reach the western suburbs.
N&W bought the NKP & Wabash in 1964. The NKP line goes East to Fort Wayne. Wabash had a line East & another line south to Decatur. N&W steam ran on these lines for excursion service. I was on a 611 trip to Fort Wayne. Another trip used C&NW track west to Sterling.
As for PC, I’m not sure how soon NYC trains may have used PRR rails to Union Station. It would take a long time to get all the PRR & NYC subsidiary lines sorted out.
One line you may not expect from the East is CN, serving Chicago via GTW rails. CP had nothing, even if they owned Soo Line. We had regular service Chicago-Toronto.
I now have masses of sorting out RR companies to do. [:-^]
Two quick questions…
Why was the Monon so called please? (Just learnt this morning why the Soo was called the Soo [:)])
Despite not making it into Chicago in its own right would CP locos have wandered there? (Oddly I’ve only found one CP loco for my collection despite my prefering their red over CN’s schemes [how else do you choose Foreign Road locos?]. Might they have wandered into town on a BN drag?
Here is list of railroads serving Chicago in the early 1900’s. Most of these, with few exceptions such as merged lines, were still around into the 1950’s. I don’t have the photo of the whole map right now, but I think I know where it is. If I find it, I’ll post it.
The Grand Trunk Western was an American subsiduary of Canadian National from the early 1900’s as I recall. The Grand Trunk provided access to Chicago via a tunnel between Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia’ Ontario, then on through Flint, Lansing, Battle Creek, and on to Chicago. To access the Detroit market there was a branch that ran south east from Durand Michigan through Pontiac and then into the north central porton of Detroit. There was comuter service from Pontiac to Detroit, I do not recall when it was discontinued, probably the mid 1980’s or 1990s. There were daily passenger trains between Chicago and Detroit and Toronto tlhat I believe were split at Durand for Detroit and Toronto.
It has only been of late that the mundane CN black has replaced the better looking blue GTW locos. GTW box cars still roam the US and Canada in GTW blue.
Hope this somewhat accurate and helps with your question.
The connections from Chicago & into Indiana get complicated. I’m not sure when C&O built their connection into Chicago. It’s possible they used trackage rights on somebody else’s rail. It gets to be a very tight squeze to get around the bottom of Lake Michigan.
The “Grand Trunk Western” was always part of the pioneer Grand Trunk built in Canada in the 1850’s. It became easier to run the Michigan-Indiana-Chicago portion under US paper ownership. Durand, Michigan was the heart of the GTW where the Michigan Lines crossed the Chicago-Port Huron-Toronto main. Lines served Grand Rapids & a carferry at Muskegon. The car ferry unloaded in Milwaukee. Amtrak/GTW service continued as the “Blue Water Limited” and some Chicago-Toronto runs. Many GTW trains from Detroit connected with Chicago trains at Durand. There is a section of GTW rail from Detroit to Port Huron a young Thomas Edison worked for. Lack of state money ended the GTW Detroit commuter service. It may have been the 1980’s when downtown Detroit was rebuilt?
I don’t know if many CP units were used on Soo Line Trains. That seems to be a recent agreement. I’m not sure where any CP rail is between Detroit-Buffalo. That corridor seems to be mostly used by CN, C&O, WAB, NYC trains. There may have been some recent swaps between CN & CP to give CP better routes in eastern Canada. It would be fun to find a route for NEW EMD units to be delivered to CP from LaGrange or London.
Conrail, Chessie (CSX) and NS are the Class 1s coming in from the west.
Indiana Harbor Belt (Controled By Conrail) and The Belt Railway Of Chicago (Controled by a consortium of railroads) would be switiching
Metra would be doing commuter rail, as would South Shore Line which also does a bit of freight.
The southeast corner of Chicago is also where the Port Of Chicago is, and just over the state line is Gary Indiana so plenty of heavy industry. This could be quite an ambitious layout, the meeting of all the Eastern Class 1s, major switching, heavy industry and electrified commuter rail to boot. Good luck and hope it turns out well!
In the late-1980s most of the power on the SOO trains was lettered for SOO, but of course the Canadian Pacific controled the line. There were tons of Black Bandits back then, as the Milwaukee had just been taken over.
SOO line got the hand-off from CP at Portal, North Dakota, ran the trains down though the Twin Cities, La Crosse and Milwaukee to Chicago. In the mid-80s CP negotiated a deal with CSX to let the SOO trains then continue on CSX trackage to Detriot to meet up with the CP again.
So yes there would be SOO trains going east out of Chicago, but only on CSX track.
I guess that I sort of got it right as far as Port Chicago being at the south end of the lake goes.
The South Shore Electrics would really complicate the issue [:D]. Does anyone make models of them please? Any links for the South Shore please?
If this heads in a layout drection I will model a “hotspot” where lines funnel through a bottleneck. The trackwork will be fairly simple. If I go completely nuts and add overhead (the sort of thing I like to do [(-D]) I will probably set it on a raised grade and operate it as (almost) passenger traffic only… plus MoW.
The original purpose of my question was simply to try to work out what locos might show up at least occasionally in ones or twos anywhere around Chicago. NS in particular had stumped me. I don’t have anything NS but a weathered NW U25B (Stewart) crept into the collection and a green and white Southern Geep59 (Athearn) somehow appeared… [:-^]… would/might these have wandered around Chicago in the 80s?
What would anyone recomend as an NS representative? (H0). …and a GTW representative to look for?
Oh; and I have a Monon U23B… (was going to repaint it for my shortline)… Can I get away with one of those gorgeous grey L&N locos? How about an e
Dave, you should visit Shy-town: the best way to see the parts you’re interested in is via Amtrak. Just fly from Heathrow to Dulles, take a bus into Union Station in DC, and take the 5:30 Capitol Limited to Chicago. You’ll be there by noon the next day. You have to take the return trip to really see Sand Patch, because the westbound trip goes up it in the late evening, so it gets dark, but you’ll see Gary and lots of interesting stuff in Chicago.
Only Joes I know of are in brass, I would check Caboose Hobbies (in Denver) website.
I’ve been thinking that if this year goes well I might actually get myself a passport and cross the pond, maybe for Christmas (could be cold… but no leaves to block views) or next year…
Maybe I now have a start for an itinary… If I have time, where do I sleep?
Chicago is cold, windy, wet and dark in the winter - but it’s hot and sticky in the summer, so it just sort of depends on what you like, I guess. You should get a sleeper on the train (it’s more expensive, but meals are included), and I would just look for someplace downtown, hotel-wise: if you want to ride the South Shore, the Michigan City line was a nice ride (when I last took it, 25 years ago). You can probably take some of the Metra trains from downtown, and I would think you would want to check Carstens Publications’ website for their rail atlases - they have them for every part of the U.S.
And of course, to get the air of 1970-1980s Chicago, you should probably watch “My Bodyguard”, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
you have a layout idea? B&OCt, IHB, BRC are all Chicago local lines, never ran out east.
Comments above are pretty accurate of the area.
I have in the planning a layout encompassing a lot of this in my layout, obviously adapted to fit a small space. Consider I will pack in… N&W, VGN, NYC, CSS&SB,CNS&M,BRC,CTA, CA&E in a 50’s era., oh and throw in some Narrow Gauge and a freelance electric switching…
Chicago is your Railroad town with lots of action.
