In an article posted today:
Tollway spat with Canadian Pacific heats up over land for O’Hare bypass
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20161213/news/161219563/
The following photo was presented, what year do you this this is from?
That is laughable.
Let’s see - a loose car Virginian coal hopper, outside braced wood box cars, a plethora of boxcars… Wish I could read some of the other reporting marks.
Maybe 1950’s?
BC or AD?
Oh, the horror of seeing track workers without orange safety vests! How did they survive the day?
No yellow hard hats either!
I’ll bet CShaver will be real interested in those old cars !
“+1” on the trackworkers and their lack of safety equipment.
Looks like they’re ‘straight-railing’ (removing) a turnout - note the longer ties/ switch timbers towards the bottom of the photo, but no rails out that way, though you can see where they used to be - it appears the tie plates may still be on the timbers. To the right is the switch portion of the TO - the lower ballast where the movable points were is another clue, as well as the longer switch timbers/ ‘headblocks’ where the switch stand was mounted. Also, the pile of loose rails above and to the right of the track.
- Paul North.
Looks like the tie plates are neatly stacked … I bet this is to make room for the new toll road!! [:D]
Yeah…I wish my binoculars could be used on a picture like this!
One of the responders to the news article said that the photo was from 1942. It could be one of those Frank Delano shots (he took a lot of them in Proviso, just south of there).
Having said that, I think the CP is protesting a bit much on this. The UP managed to rebuild its doube-track bridge over the yard with very little disruption to CP business, and the place where the tollway wants to cross has even fewer tracks.
My view on this might seem strange to someone who knows my always-pro-railroad stance, but I just don’t see this as a big, non-solvable issue. The highway would be a good one for the area, moving a lot of traffic off I-294 near the entrance to O’Hare, but might be even better in the future, when a western entry to O’Hare is built. From what I remember of the map I saw (yes, a map should have been included with the article!), the new road will have an exit on Green Street, the road that goes along the south side of Bensenville Yard. That would be an amazing benefit for truckers headed to or from that intermodal facility–they now have to negotiate a few corners and a busy highway to get to the expressway system. This could take some long, slow miles off their route if done right.
The photo is by Jack Delano, May 1943 for the Office of War Information…the photo is of Bensenville yard, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific.
Delano did a lot of railroad stuff, and a lot of photography for the alphabet agencies of FDR and the New Deal
See the link below for the image…
http://www.shorpy.com/node/2729
or
http://www.shorpy.com/jack-delano-photos?page=10
for more of his work.
Wow! Thanks for that link, Ed.
This shot is before Carl’s time but still interesting at the Proviso hump tower.
Check out the track plan over his head…
Classic! Love that Virginian Hopper car I thing I have that in O Scale somewhere in my basement.
The Daily Herald is a low-rent newspaper focused on suburban news.
Great find Ed … I like the pencil sharpener at the ready in the tower. The detail you can se in the photos are amazing.
And the outside braced wood box cars.
Ya know - Maybe it was the intention of the newspaper to foster a view of the railroads as archaic, and standing in the way of “progress.”
Oh, the tales I could tell (and probably have)!
That’s the original board in Tower B, and it looks like the original track plan and numbering. Besides the group retarders, the operator had three intermediate retarders he also controlled (mostly just set-and-forget). Those were gone by the time I was there, but the holes for the levers were still in the board. The tracks controlled by Tower B then were numbered 27 through 59. By the time I arrived they had been added to, and renumbered to 32 through 69. In fact, the board had been extended by one section to add the switches for 67 and 68.
This is the first of three control panels that have been in Tower B. I worked all three of them. With this old one, there could be a bit of running from one end to the other as the cars came down. The operator toggled all of the switches (the lower levers, where his left hand is), and set up and released the retarders (right hand…notice that it’s resting on a bar that keeps it from slipping down and bumping a swtch lever).
The second and third panels were arranged more schematically, and–because they were more electronic than electrical–were much more compact. But to this day, the operator still has full control over the switches and retarders (and full responsibility for the foul-ups!).
Hand-cranked pencil sharpeners–almost a bygone thing now. I do not doubt thst there was one in every school classroom.
Took awhile, but I found it. Now if could just get the link to it to work…
FINALLY!