Quite true; the Florida-bound trains continued down the original main as far as Jackson, Tennessee. They reached Birmingham on a combination of trackage rights (over three different roads) and new IC track. For some reason, I did not think of them.
I do not know if the
The Florida trains left the main at Fulton KY. That line went through Jackson TN and Corinth MS and ended at Birmingham. IC owned that trackage. The C of G took over at Birmingham, and of course the ACL and FEC further along the route into FL.
The only track that the IC owned between Jackson, Tennessee and Birmingham was between Ruslor Jct., Mississippi (just above Corinth), and Haleyville, Alabama. As was posted earlier, it had trackage rights over the M&O (GM&O) between Jackson and Ruslor Jct., over the Northern Alabama (Southern) between Haleyville and Jasper, and over the Frisco between Jasper and Birmingham.
You can check this if you have the SPV atlases for Appalachia and Southern States-also, if you have IC, GM&O, SLSF, and Southern ETT’s for these lines.
The four platforms at IC’s Central could have accomodate many more trains in my opinion. Look at photos of the train shed when it existed and the platform area afterward and see if you can find even one photograph with all tracks occupied. The layout of the station, unlike the other Chicago temrinals, if my memory is correct, is that a train unloaded and then continiued north, wihout the need of backing out of the station, having a swtcher couple on the rear end and the locomotive being a second light move. That is if my memory is correct on this. Similarly, a loading train would pull into the station to load, again without the need of the locomotive being a seond move.
Even in 1952 it was rare to see more than two trains in the station at one time, and one was more frequent.
I’m just going by the Official Guides of the day. None of those other roads were ever listed, and the map shows the Fulton-Birmingham line as owned by the IC.
Could be we’re looking at different time periods. I notice you say M&O, and not GM&O. That’s well before my time.
I understand now your reasoning. The passenger timetables in the Guide do not show trackage rights. I could name many more instances in which a railroad used another road, via trackage rights, to reach this place or that place–and neither maps in the Guide nor the timetables show any evidence.of such trackage rights.
For instance, the C&O operated freight and passenger trains into Washington, D.C.–and used the track of the Southern from Orange, Virginia, to AF Tower, just below Alexandria, then used the RF&P to the bridge across the Potomac, and then used the track of the the PRR to a junction just south of the tunnel into the station, and then the station track. (The freights ran to Potomac Yard, just north of Alexandria). Even though the Southern (originally Orange and Alexandria and, later, Richmond and Danville) actually began just below the station in Alexandria, the mileposts read from Washington.
Balt, correct me if I am in error on the roads/junction points between AF and the Washington station.
The Southern used ACL track from Hardeeville, S.C. to Jacksonville (and the KC-Florida Special used the ACL from Jesup, Georgia, into Jacksonville)
.The L&N used the Southern bridge at Decatur, Alabama, to cross the Tennessee River there.
I could go on and on, but I will stop with these examples.
As to the M&O/GM&O, after the M&O and the Gulf Mobile a
The photo of the first poating on this thread was scanned from a print that went with me in my 1996 big move. Now there are scans from the negative roll, and more pictures have been added. Posted here without editing. Not certain all the interior photos are all of the Capitol Limited. A section sleeper? Possibly the Canadian? “Newfie Bullet?”
How many section sleepers were built with those hard partitions and slide-in doors? Fluorescent ceiling lighting indicates ‘postwar’ to me.
The expression on the passenger’s face sums up the experience.
Or modernization?
B&O stopped using section sleepers on their feature trains in the middle 1950’s with the arrival of the ‘bird’ cars - roomette & bedroom cars from Budd named for birds.
I did make an overnight Chicago - Toronto trip around that time. Both ways by train. My memory is that I used a roomette both ways. But a photo of a section sleeper on the CN-GTW International waould havev been a natural. Can any reader check to see if the vInternational carried such a car in 1969?
And here is boarding the roomette-bedroom sleeper I did use on that last Capitol Limited from Chicago’s Grand Central Station:
The International carried 6 Sec 6 Rmt 4 DBR sleepers. The cars were built in 1954 as part of the large upgrade of CN services. The open sections in the photo look like other CN open sections of the era.
Then that is it! Thanks!
going back to the Capitol Limited sleeper I rode, I did some photo editing, taking lessons from Richard Allman’s fine, and I think readers will prefer this version:
But bI see it can be improved further, when I have time.
Lounge and diner, very minor editing on these
And the sad joke of it all is that after the completion of demolition in November, 1971, the property remained completely vacant until 1984 when a 17-story apartment building was erected near the south end of the site, nowhere near the intersection of Harrison and Wells where the station itself once proudly stood. The land at the corner of Harrison and Wells, the lot on which the station itself stood, remained vacant until early 2020.
You could fairly blame the politicians for the failure to preserve the station. At least that dignity was granted to nearby Dearborn Station when it closed. It is hard to find many older buildings in downtown Chicago because its politicians seem obsessed with tearing everything down, and now, post-pandemic, downtown Chicago is becoming a ghost town with tons of vacant office space and very little residential housing.
As a lifelong Chicagoan, having been raised on the southwest side and employed in the south end of the “Loop” for most of my working 45 years, today’s downtown area is nearly unrecognizable to anyone who last visited or worked in the area back in 1965 when I first began working downtown.
Rich
I do remember that there were a number of proposals for the property before anything actually occurred. Dearborn Station was also factored into the plans for the Dearborn Park development. Such a situation is more the exception than the rule since most developers would prefer to have complete control over what gets built without having to work around anything.
Except you ‘decapitated’ the Porter in the edited photo.
[oops]
Huh? I see his head clearly in the edited photo. He is shorter than any of the photo’s passengers, and has his cap snugly over his head and ears. All much clearer when edited the Richard Allman way.
I hate reviving old threads, but this one popped up, and it is an interesting read for anyone who is interested in Chicago passenger train stations.
Rich