I ride BNSF / METRA in Chicago to work and I was wondering if any trains still run over the St Charles Air Line to the CN (ex-IC).
There’s a connection to UP (ex-CNW) Wood Street Yard / Global 1(?) and the BNSF but I never see any trains on the ramp or the bridge itself over the south end of Union Station trackage.
Also, I’ve heard that developers were / are telling people the Air LIne is coming down and that they’ll be building condos in that area…
Well, as far as I know they haven’t built any new connections for IC so I would expect that the Air Line is still in service. Although I also have to admit that the last time I saw a train on the Air Line was in early 2005.
Amtrak’s City of New Orleans still uses it. It certainly looks like it will be a while until the old connection at Grand Crossing is put back in.
IIRC, the CREATE project was going to make the elimination of the St. Charles Airline possible. If that project doesn’t fly, then maybe the Airline won’t, too?
Yes the air line is still in use. Thier are still trains off the BNSF a lot of coal goes to 91st street as well a the m galcni.
Rodney
There are also CN trains from Glenn Yard that go south to either Markham or Champaign that use that routing. I think the daily trains frm Markham to Iowa are on that line also.
Rodney: What is the routing for the Galesburg - CN manifests? Do those go on the old Burlington line? Where do crews hand them off? Clyde Yard?
ed
Galesburg crews take them all the way to 91st street.
Rodney
Funny for all that I’ve read and heard, no one seems to question the motivations for replacing the Air Line, a really expensive project. I think it shows the power developers have in city hall. The question is there a quid pro quo? Just a few blocks east of the Air Line is Meigs Field, another example of how Mayor Daley sometimes exercises unchecked power. He literally ordered bulldozers to go in and plow up the runway one night to put it out of commission. I’ve used Meigs Field and thought it was a very convenient airport.
While I don’t agree with the way in which Meigs Field was shut down, I do feel that it was a misuse of park land on the lakefront and that the Mayor should not have backed down when it was closed the first time (briefly) a few years earlier. I do believe that the Mayor should have waited until 2004 to have closed Meigs in accordance with the agreement made at the time of the first shutdown.
Not for long, what with the national media watching every move and federal investigators and prosecutors breathing down his neck.
While I understand how convenient Meigs Field was for a very, very few privileged people, I agree with CSSHEGEWISCH that it was a total misuse of primo public land – probably because I never would use it as an airport in a million years.
The CREATE Plan for improving rail traffic flow in and around Chicago calls for the St. Charles Air Line to be abandoned, a move long sought by the Daley administration. The Air Line’s elevated tracks divide the South Loop neighborhood where the mayor currently lives, and it impedes real estate development (read that: “Pals of the Mayor would like it to go away so they can make even more millions.”)
Meigs Field is owned by the Chicago Park District, so there’s a loose connection to City Hall having some sort of jurisdiction. But the Air Line belongs to several railroads, and the fill its rails run on is so long and high and wide, Da Mayor’s Bulldozer Brigade couldn’t possibly close it down in the dark of night.
If the case for getting rid of the Airline had such a compelling commercial rationale, you’d see the railroads falling over themselves to tear up the tracks and developing the land themselves, using their own money. Instead, to get them to agree, the politicians have to come with an expensive scheme, one that sticks it to the taxpayers. That’s what smells to me.
I think what Daley really has as his druthers, in addition to the Airline, is all of the former IC lakefront tracks would be built over by condos and office buildings. That’s where the primo real estate is. The potential of Northerly Island for mass use is limited because it’s at the end of a narrow peninsula connected by a narrow road. Better to have privatized it. He could make the decision to destroy Meigs because it had a small constituency.
It’s really too bad. I see Meigs as a lost opportunity. Chicago really doesn’t have an in-close airport for small aircraft, even though general aviation constitutes 80% of all domestic flights.
General aviation may be 80% of all flights, but what is its percentage of passengers and passenger miles?
That’s like saying that 92% of all businesses are small businesses.
A small airplane takes up the same amount of airspace as an airliner and occupies it longer because it’s slower. Does it make sense to have them competing for landing or takeoff slots at O’Hare or Midway? It’s the slot that counts not the number of passengers.
We flew a small putt-putt plane into Meigs about 15 years ago on a picture-perfect day on the spur of the moment when flying back from Indiana. We had no difficulty getting clearance. I don’t think we affected any big airline stuff. It was MAGNIFICENT flying along the lakefront skyline. A real thrill.
The city’s plans for the IC won’t have much to do with the lakefront, because the Metra Electric line will still be there, below ground level. for the most part. You might get another strip of potential park land, but that’s about it.