I’ll bet you saw the price in the upper right corner. LOL
The Trib sold tens of thousands of those maps.
Rich
According to the above-mentioned Train Watchers’ Guide, the C&EI’s roundhouse was at the southwest corner of the yard, near the Illinois 83 (Sibley Blvd) overpass. Looks like that area is used for spine trailer storage today.
C&EI entered C&WI rails at Dolton Crossing at the north end of the yard. The C&WI has a complicated history, including co-ownership with the Belt Railway of Chicago. In the final dissolution of the C&WI in 1994, UP got the section from Dolton Crossing to Belt Junction at 80th Street. NS got the section from State Line to Belt Junction, the rest went to Metra or was abandoned. Amtrak’s Cardinal operates over the former C&WI from Dolton to a junction with the NS Chicago Line at 47th St.
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Thanks.
Rich
The beauty of the C&WI is that it provided the mainline tracks for the 5 owner roads (C&EI, Wabash, Erie, GTW and Monon) to reach Dearborn Station far north of Dolton Crossing. Only the AT&SF coming in from the southwest did not use the C&WI mainline, although the Santa Fe did meet up with the C&WI mainline when it turned east at Alton Junction at 21st and Canal.
Rich
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Maybe that’s why AT&SF was satisfied to be a tenant of C&WI. All of the other users were part owners. Grand Trunk Western only used about 3 miles of the C&WI main line north of 47th St. and often used its own 0-8-0 and RS1 switchers at Dearborn.
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Now I knew that Santa Fe used its own switchers at Dearborn, but I did not realize that GTW did so too.
I thought that the C&WI switchers handled those chores for all five owner roads.
Rich
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I think GTW relied on C&WI at Dearborn “most of the time”, even though they handled servicing their own trains at Elsdon yard. I know I have seen photos of GTW switchers working at Dearborn (finding them being the problem…), but I wonder now if C&WI just “borrowed” them at peak times. Santa Fe’s three H-12-44TS switchers were backed up by RS1s in later years, extending into at least 1973 when the Texas Chief and Super Chief servicing moved to the 14th St former PRR coach yard.
OK, I will take up the challenge of finding a photo of a GTW switcher at Dearborn Station. I do not recall ever seeing one, but that does not mean that it didn’t happen. Say tuned.
Rich
Not finding any GTW switchers at Dearborn in my initial search but, as you say, lots of GTW switchers at Elsdon Yard.
Rich
I have been unsuccessful not only in trying to find a photo of a GTW switcher at Dearborn Station but also how GTW passenger cars got moved back and forth between Elsdon Yard and Dearborn Station.
Is it possible that a C&WI switcher did it as it did for Wabash, Erie and C&EI passenger cars? Also, how did Monon passenger cars get moved back and forth between Dearborn Station South Hammond?
Rich
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Is it possible the GTW Road crews ferried the GTW trains between Elsdon and Dearborn? Inbound crew taking the train to the yard, with the Conductor controlling the movement via a Back-up Hose in both directions. I have no idea of the running times on the GTW runs as the 16 hours rule was changed to 14 hours in 1969 and the 14 hours until it was changed to 12 hours in 1976.
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I posted some info in the Passenger Station thread.
Yeah, you had me looking all over the Classic Trains forum. LOL.
Rich
This comment?
I think the switching breakdown for freight houses was simple - the owning railroad switched their own in-and-outbound freight houses, other railroads’ transfer runs came by to pick up or drop off LCL. From some articles I remember reading, but can’t locate at this point, the transfer LCL car was often an older boxcar used only for transfer purposes, since its loads only moved from one Chicago freight house to another .
The Chicago Switching District was set up so any railroads’ trains could operate on other railroads’ tracks, subject to axle count and mileage rules (probably an accountant’s nightmare). This explains things like the Nickel Plate delivering interchange to the C&NW via the Union Station bypass tracks.
Imagine doing this in an era with no radios, and with many junctions “stop and proceed” or under a flag man’s protection.
There don’t seem to be a lot of photos of transfer runs, at least compared to passenger trains.
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Yeah, that is becoming clearer to me. C&WI switched the owners passenger cars at the station, and the owner roads switched LCL cars at the freight houses.
Thanks for the comment as well on the Chicago Switching District.
Rich
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That is true for the lack of photography on the structures like freight houses. I guess that the passenger trains were too glamorous to waste time taking photos of other stuff. 
Rich
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Taking pictures was expensive for ‘the ordinary person’. Only a true diehard went the extra mile. Unfortunately there were very few of them.
Wherever you go have camera handy, be it on your phone or wherever, be ready for the unexpected.
David
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Yeah, I have to wonder if it ever crossed the minds of railfan photographers to memorialize the surrounding structures.
Rich
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I was reading through one of my favorite websites, industrialscenery.blogspot, and came across a series of photos of the Erie freight house complex at Dearborn Station in Chicago.
The first photo is a 1930s photo of the entire complex. The freight house interchange building is in the foreground, and the inbound/outbound freight house is in the background. The 4-story building at the end of the inbound/outbound freight house is the Erie Freight Office. Notice the caption below the photo which cites some interesting LCL statistics.
The following photo shows the seven tracks between the freight houses packed with LCL box cars.
The next photo provides a clearer view of the Erie Freight Office. In the foreground, you can see an Erie switcher which answers my question about whether each railroad switched it own freight houses. At one time, I thought that the C&WI handled all of the switching for the 5 owner railroads at Dearborn Station.
The final photo is the decrepit Erie complex at the end of its useful life. You can also see the sad state of the C&WI mainline in this 1977 photo.
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