ALL:
Today Chicago is playing at Green Bay. Did the CNW or MILW run passenger extras to or from the above towns? How did the Green Bay fans get to Soldier Field?
Just curious.
Ed Burns
The Packers seem to have used the C&NW - not particularly surprising as they provided about twice the service to Green Bay that MILW did. Chicago would be no problem - Parmalee Transfer coaches between Soldier Field C&NW’s Chicago Passenger Terminal.
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Don’t forget that before 1971 the Bears played at Wrigley Field.
Rich
Since the Bears or Packers would need to move lots of equipment they could either use the C&NW’s CPT downtown or C&NW’s Davis St in Evanston, where a baggage elevator was available.
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I’d be interested to know if they ran passenger extras from Milwaukee to Green Bay for Packers game. Hard to picture now where you have to put a kid on a waiting list when they’re born in hopes of getting Packers season tickets before they die, but at one time the Pack didn’t draw that many fans…and of course Milwaukee & suburbs are a huge chunk of Wisconsin’s population. (Of course up until recently the Packers used to play a home game in Milwaukee each year, so maybe Milwaukee folks were happy with that?)
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As I recall - back in the 50’s & 60’s the Packers played several of there ‘home’ games in Milwaukee each year.
I doubt either C&NW or MILW ran many extra trains - both of them had enough equipment to run either longer trains or extra sections if demand was there. After 1958 C&NW regularly “borrowed” 162-seat commuter coaches for their bilevel 400 service when needed - they just had to get them back to Chicago commuter territory by Monday morning.
Back in the 50’s and 60’s pro football crowds were more variable than they are in the 21st Century - back then most stadiums WERE NOT sold out with Season Ticket Holders. As such there was a lot of marketing to group sales - get Tweedledum High School to have 150-200 attend a game; Have the Fraternal Order of Eagles send 150-200 to the game - with that type of marketing - transportation to and from the game had to be a part of the package - be that on busses or trains. For the most part, existing train schedules would not accomodate the starting and ending times of games and if trains were used, Passenger Extras would be used operated to arrive before the game and departing after the conclusion of the game.
You are correct! When I looked it up, I found out the Packers played two or (most often after WW2) three “home” games a year in Milwaukee from the 1930s until 1994. Last was 12/18/94 against Atlanta.
In that vein, the first Super Bowl was NOT sold out. The Packers were huge favorites and the AFL as a whole was considered to be the weaker league.
I suspect in pre-Amtrak days you would find many more passenger specials being run for college football games than the NFL. I know Pennsy ran many special trains for the Army-Navy game each year for example. In the 1950s, except for San Francisco and Los Angeles, all NFL teams were in the northeast quarter of the US. In many areas, the state university was the big deal.
Quite true. Most people consider the 1958 NFL championship game to be the moment when the NFL hit the big time.
I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign between 1968 and 1972. The football team (not good at all) played a home game against Missouri. The IC line was
close to the Illinois football stadium. I remember seeing at least two IC passenger extras arrive from St. Louis and unload Missouri fans to see their team stomp the Illini.
The South Shore would run passenger specials from Chicago to South Bend so folks could watch the Fighting Irish.
In a time long gone (1970s-1980s) here in the U.K. on Saturdays soccer specials would take fans of soccer teams all around the country. 40 plus trains.
Then the ‘powers that be’ cancelled them all??? along with other services. It seems they wanted to sit in their ivory towers, get paid and do nothing.
Soccer supporters now travel to games by buses.
David
Greetings, fellow alumnus! Oskee-Wow-Wow!
Yeah, the Fighting Illini football team usually sucks, but the 1962 team (just a little bit ahead of my time there) did win the 1962 Rose Bowl.
Living in Chicago, we would ride the IC trains back and forth between home and school. We would board the train at 12th Street at Central Station in downtown Chicago. The station in Champaign was only a short walk from the campus.
Rich
Unrelated to the railroading aspect, but my favorite aspect of games in Milwaukee was that the 2 teams sidelines were next to each other, not across which made for some interesting sideline fun. That’s why we have those excellent pictures of George Halas and Vince Lombardi standing next to each other looking grumpy. (They’re discussing how much the Vikings suck is what my friends and I always said) Or the shenannigans that Ditka got into.
Remember his roller skating stunt before the Vikings game?
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LOL
Living in Chicago, I will never forget the day on the local news when the sports came on and there was Mike Di-Di-Dit-ka roller skating around indoors and trashing the Vikings. And Da Bears beat dem too.
Rich