Probably my favorite fallen flag / abandoned railroad I like to speculate what the Chicago North Shore would be like if it could have survived to the era of public funding. I suspect the railroad would be running in the freeway median on the south side of Milwaukee. I don’t really know what the rolling stock would be like today. Maybe some others have thought about this.
Years ago flying towards Milwaukee and noticing the recently abandoned North Shore ROW…I can remember thinking to myself of why was such a thing done as to look at the straight ROW down below…Surely, that must have been a great way to get down to Chicago…Perhaps it could have been great with modern equipment. I really don’t know the details of what happened to it.
I would like to think it would be just like the South Shore is today.
www.nictd.com
The chances of getting three States and Metra (IC electric lines) to work together would be slim. Perhaps it could have gone to Randolph Street Station, but then again Boston can’t get their lines together.
The old CMStP&P Lakewood Branch (now CP) might have provided a good right-of-way to bring the North Shore trains into downtown from the “El” connection at Wilson Ave. It ran at ground level right along the west side of Wrigley Field. But that line now runs only as far north as Diversey. Of course, to be effective for passenger service today it would have to be elevated to eliminate many grade crossings. More details on that line at these websites:
http://www.mannresearch.com/chicagoswitching/working/articles/?menu=0&locationid=1&proxyid=
http://www.chicagoswitching.com/chicagoswitching/v3/
Thanks for the links, Lincoln. Trains magazine has published conflicting maps over the years about those CMSP&P lines and its been frustrating.
I want to put in a plug for CTA’s “Skokie Swift,” which runs nonstop from Howard Street and Paulina on the Chicago/Evanston boundary to Dempster near the Edens Expy (I-94) in Skokie – five miles in seven minutes.
The route includes, cut, trestle, and ground level views. Just recently the Skokie Swift was taken off the catenary, but the stancions (sp?) are still there. Up until then the Swift took bimodal electricity: shoe in Evanston and pantograph in Skokie.
I am posting this because this is the last operant piece of the old North Shore. Most people think the North Shore went thru Linden Street in Wilmette and followed C&NW footage north, which it certainly did, but the Skokie Swift is part of the old “Skokie Valley” cutoff.
One of the smartest, most proactive things the CTA ever did back in the late sixties was to revitalize this one last stretch (abandoned since 1963). And it MAKES money!
PS–The Swift dosn’t run on weekends, unfortunately.
It is used very much as a day-and-evening commuter service.
Would be nice to have it still travel to the loop on the EL. Rather seamless transportation to and from much of Chicago.
Maybe Amtrak would only operate the Empire Builder to Milwaukee if the NS existed?
The North Shore would have never survived intact. There wasn’t enough freight service to cover losses until the political climate changed. But, it’s fun to speculate and I’ll throw out a few thoughts.
Before North Shore was abandoned, a median strip right-of-way on I-94 had been proposed. If this proposal was built, I could see a service between Milwaukee and Kenosha along the likes of Philadelphia & Western or Shaker Heights Rapid Transit with light rail equipment. I’ll leave it to others to suggest a location for the Milwaukee terminal.
On the Chicago end, the Skokie Swift provides a good basis for what might have been. I would see a Howard Street-Mundelein/Edison Court operation on weekends and off-peak with through service into the Loop during rush hours over the CTA. Deadheading of equipment between the Loop and Howard Street to and from midday layovers could be a bit of an operating problem, though. Equipment would be lightweight rapid transit married pairs built to CTA specs but with pantographs and pilots.
Through service between Chicago and Milwaukee would be discontinued and freight service would be passed to the North Western or Milwaukee Road as appropriate. Since the Shore Line had already been abandoned in 1955, I’m not considering that service at all, besides, the C&NW North Line paralleled it very closely. I would not consider moving the service into one of the existing steam road terminals because of the incompatibility of North Shore’s old equipment with steam road equipment and the expense of electrifying the appropriate lines.
I missed the North Shore very, very much, and the CA&E too.
What killed the interurban in the Chicago area during the late 1950’s & early 1960’s? The car. In fact, they built the new West Side Expressway (name?)(now the Eisenhower) in the mid 1950’s using the Chicago, Aurora & Elgin right-of-way! Service to Chicago was severed and the end was near. Funny thing is, now we have too many cars and need transportation alternatives in the Chicago area.
CC
If the North Shore Line had survived another year or so, it would have become eligible for some sort of federal transportation funding (as actually happened with the Skokie Swift).
Had the North Shore Line survived until 1969 as an operating company, it would probably have become the core of the “Railpax” system, taking over the other railroad’s passenger operations. The Chicago - Milwaukee route would still be running in all its glory today. Some things would be different, like the equipment (two generations of new cars). But a lot would have been the same, like the catenary towers on the Skokie Valley route.
I couldn’t see the North Shore becoming part of Amtrak, even if it lasted until 1971, what with its non-standard equipment and slow entries into both Chicago and Milwaukee.
There was a fairly well-documented proposal by CTA’s planning staff to resume operation over CA&E between Forest Park and Wheaton using pre-war PCC’s equipped with third-rail shoes (!) and other modifications. Since funding was still an unanswered issue, it has been questioned whether this was a serious proposal or merely meant to mollify critics.
The only Federal funding involved with the Skokie Swift consisted of grants for upgrading the line as a demonstration project. No operating subsidies were included. Government operating subsidies in the Chicago area didn’t become a factor until the early 1970’s.
There still isn’t suburban service on the CNW/Metra north of Kenosha. 2 routes would not have survived.
randy
It’s a bit hazy because I was only a kid, but I remember them switching coal cars to coal dealer sidings at Berwyn and Thorndale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the CMStP&P didn’t actually use the El tracks but had gauntlet tracks. In addition to the at grade problem another problem would have been that the CMStP&P ran on the west side of the El tracks. At that point the El is 4 tracks wide. The northbound North Shore trains would have had to have had some way to cross to the eastmost track. Crossing over opposing traffic was something that was very rare on the CTA. The Ravenswood line is the only instance that comes to mind.
North of Howard Street there was quite a junction, and the North Shore Skokie Valley trains did in fact cross over the southbound track of the trains from Evanston as well as the North Shore Shore Line Trains. It was quite a busy place, but the headways were not so tight as to make the job completely impossible.
In New York City, much the same happens just north of 135th Street on the Lenox Avenue (ooops! Malcome X, Avenue today) where the 2 and 3 lines diverge, each having about a 5 minute headway during rush hours in both directions.
Forgot about that. The Howard-southside trains, which comprised the great majority of the line’s traffic terminated at Howard so the junction, which was north of it, didn’t have to contend with nearly as many potential conflicts. The CMStP&P reached the El’s level between Lawrence and Wilson, a much busier place. In addition, this was a single track. They would have had to add another track and run it some way to the east side of the four tracks because that single track was southbound, used by the Evanston Express and North Shore to bypass the Wilson ave. station. Amazingly, in the '50s the CTA could find money to build that elevated bypass just to accommodate the Evanston and North Shore trains. I’ve come to the conclusion that running the North Shore into downtown on those tracks would not have been feasible. A lot of people depended on the convenience of using the loop stations. I also think that the C&NW and CMStP&P would have done everything they could to block such a plan had it been attempted in the '50s.
The straight section between Wilson and Loyola is about 3.5 miles (the northbound tracks are straighter). The Evanston and NS trains used to go all out on that section. A driver once told me that they typically reached between 65 and 70 mph.
Even going back to the pre-Amtrak era, Kenosha was always the end of the suburban service, although most suburban trains terminated at Waukegan. Service north of Kenosha was part of C&NW’s intercity service.
Stating that the C&NW North Line and CNS&M’S Shore Line were parallel would be an understatement. Their rights-of-way ran side by side through much of the area from Evanston to Waukegan.
Just to update–The Swift and the Evanston “purple line” (which can be rush-hour service to the Loop or just a Wilmette-Howard shuttle) do had to cross each other’s path until fairly recently. And while Swift patrons do have the hassle of changing trains at Howard, it’s an easy across-the-platform move and almost always during the day a Howard “Red Line” (to 95th Street) train is waiting; unless it’s rush hour than normally an Evanston Express.
but do they still have an across the platform transfer northbound in the evening?
Note that frieght did move in both directions on the southbound, outer, most west express track used by southbound Evanston trains and all nearly all North Shore trains. But the freights ran during off peak or at night, and if there were any North Shore trains running at that time, the southbounds could use and did use the local track and still not loose much time.