LOL, you da man, Ed!
Great photos.
Rich
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Very interesting. I would see that connection all the time, riding the Metra Rock Island commuter train downtown, but I had no idea how or why it was used.
Thanks for that post.
Rich
I don’t know for sure what rcdrye used for his aerial tour, but I simply use Google Maps. Unless someone is familiar with Chicago, its railroads and its streets setup, it may be difficult to do this, locating turntables, that is. Even when you know the approximate location, the turntables are not always easy to find. Here is the Calumet turntable as another example.
Rich
I did use Google Maps. I just kind of forgot the Blue Island area as I “flew” over.
Several of the yards used in the past to service passenger equipment are now intermodal yards. It’s hard to see any evidence of former steam facilities on those sites at all.
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@gmpullman what a fun bit of history. Hopefully no one was hurt
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Speaking of yards and turntables, the following track diagram illustrates the C&WI yard and turntable at 55th Street in Chicago. The Chicago & Western Indiana owned the track running to Dearborn Station at Polk (8th) Street. Three of the roads that owned Dearborn Station, Erie, Wabash and Chicago & Eastern Illinois (C&EI) shared the turntable. AT&SF owned its own yard and turntable at 21st Street. Grand Trunk Western used the turntable at Elsdon Yard at 43rd Street, several miles west. Monon had its yard and turntable in South Hammond, Indiana. The C&WI yard and turntable was on the west side of the Pennsylvania RR mainline. The PRR yard and turntable was on the east side of the PRR mainline as seen in the same diagram.
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Except for the AT&SF that turned its locomotives and passenger cars around at its 21st Street coach yard, the five Dearborn Station owner roads all turned their locomotives and passenger cars around the CJ wye at 40th Street.
On the map of the C&WI yard you can see the GTW line turn west along 49th St. The ROW east of the B&OCT is out of service, but the Elsdon sub is leased by CSX, and connects to the B&OCT main at Western Avenue. The ROW is shared part of the way with the CTA Orange Line. The former GTW Elsdon Yard was on the site of the Amazon distribution center near 49th and Elsdon, directly south of AT&SF/BNSF’s Corwith Yard.
If you want to post that map on the freight houses thread, there is some great stuff there to talk about.
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Twelve were injured on the Liberty Limited.
This was on March 11, 1954. The ‘Trib’ says 42 were injured:
Regards, Ed
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I would except that there are no freight houses in those yards to talk about.
This thread, and the freight house thread fascinate me not only because I am a native Chicagoan and still live in the suburbs but also because I model Dearborn Station in downtown Chicago. I cannot get enough of photos, maps, track diagrams and discussion of railroading in Chicago.
Rich
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B&O/PM trains coming from the east entered joint B&OCT/Rock Island track at what is now known as CP509, crossed the Rock Island main line before sharing the Suburban Line to Beverly, then heading north on the B&OCT Western Avenue main line to 14th St. The short, shared section along 89th Street and the B&OCT passenger line north to 81st St, which parallelled the PRR’s Panhandle, were among the few lines in the city that were almost exclusively used by passenger trains, not counting actual downtown station approaches. It’s hard to pick out the route on Google Maps as some of it has been built over.
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I will have to look at my maps. I cannot figure it out from your description because I am not totally familiar with the names of some of the locations.
Rich
Well, that was more challenging than I first thought to trace the route of the B&O/PM into Chicago. The terms CP509 and PRR Panhandle threw me, so it took some time to find both locations.
For anyone else who might be interested, CP509 refers to the Belt Railway junction just west of the Calumet River train bridges near the Illinois/Indiana border.
The PRR Panhandle is a whole different railroad legend. According to the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the legend is that the line is called Panhandle because of a dispute over a bridge needed in the panhandle of what was then Virginia (now West Virginia). It took an act of Congress to settle the panhandle dispute.
Explains the conservancy: The Panhandle Railway Company “reached Chicago in 1869 (through lease of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago), and the Panhandle was a vital link in its push toward Cincinnati and St. Louis… By 1870, the PRR boasted its coveted route to St. Louis, which would not have been possible without another predecessor known as the Columbus, Chicago & Indiana Central Railroad. It had been created in 1868 through the merger of smaller systems, running west from a connection with the Panhandle at Columbus, reaching Chicago (via Bradford, Ohio and Logansport, Indiana offering a secondary route to the Windy City) and Indianapolis.
A Chicago Tribune article in 1890 noted that a set of railroad tracks in West Englewood was named the “Pan Handle” crossing. The tracks ran north and south along the Chicago Union Transfer company’s yards, which were being “rapidly improved and brought into usefulness.” The now abandoned Pan-Handle Yards were located further north by the stockyards.
https://blog.chicagocityscape.com/the-pan-handle-railroad-yards
Back to the B&O/PM, the route to Grand Central station took the passenger trains west from Indiana into Illinois across the Calumet River bridges, then running northwest for a short distance to CP509 and turning back west to Rock Island Junction around 81st Street where trains headed north crossing the South Branch of the Chicago River at Western Avenue and 31st Street, then east at 18th Street until the route crossed the BOCT bascule bridge back across the South Branch of the Chicago River once again before turning north to Grand Central Station.
So typical of passenger train routes into Chicago, circuitous at best.
rcdrye, check out my geography, if you will. I think that I got it right, but I am willing to stand corrected.
Rich
You got it right. Conrail abandoned the Panhandle route, which went all the way north along Western Avenue to join the Milwaukee into the north side of Union Station. Panhandle passenger trains (The Union, South Wind and others) used the South Chicago & Southern (at Bernice Junction) and the PRR Ft. Wayne Line (at Colehour Jct) rather than the long grind via the Panhandle. Today’s track ownership along Western Avenue is B&OCT/CSX and NS because of the Panhandle’s presence there in the past.
Maybe the only route more circuitous than the Panhandle’s was the Grand Trunk Western’s.
Soo Line’s 1963-1965 route via the IHB and IC’s Iowa line had relatively few crossings with other railroads, but had hand-throw switches onto the IHB at Franklin Park and onto the IC at Broadview.
By comparison the pre-1963 route via the B&OCT only went by three towers, in Forest Park, at Ogden Tower and at the B&OCT/St Charles Air Line Bridge Junction.
Yeah, so noted. As a kid, we lived 6 houses down from the GTW mainline that ran along Central Park Street on the southwest side of Chicago in the West Lawn neighborhood. That was many miles west of the C&WI mainline.
Rich
How did GTW wind up with such a circuitous route from the state line to Dearborn Station?
Rich
According to some sources the GTW initially connected with the PFW&C(PRR) at Valparaiso via the subsidiary Chicago & Lake Huron. The extension from Valparaiso to Thornton (crossing with the C&EI) was completed in 1880 by C&LH, meeting a railroad from there to Elsdon already owned by GTW.
Today’s Amtrak Cardinal uses about 6 miles of ex-GTW from Munster Indiana to Thornton IL, and then uses the former C&EI/C&WI route to 21st street. The three miles or so of C&EI trackage rights that would have been needed to get to the C&WI at Dolton, plus C&WI costs, were probably costly enough to make running over their own rails make sense, especially as the C&WI wasn’t fully developed in 1880.
OK, this clearly makes sense, although I like the Amtrak Cardinal route, much more direct to reach Dearborn Station. That said, I hadn’t considered the Elsdon Yard which was used by GTW for other purposes, so I suppose that the circuitous route made economic sense. Thanks for that post.
Rich
Here’s a fun and informative ride. A good bit of this view is still visible today.
Cheers, Ed
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Ed, many, many thanks for posting this video.
When I first watched it on my IPhone, I had the volume turned all of the way down, and I was struggling to place the locations along the way.
When I reached the end of the video and saw that it was narrated, I went back to the beginning with the volume turned up. What a great view that was as the train passed all types of landmarks that I was familiar with.
The video basically started at Archer Avenue around 21st Street. I was wishing that the video had started back around 63rd Street at Englewood Station. That way, all of the coach yards and engine servicing facilities for roads using Dearborn Station would have been visible.
The camera was facing west as the train headed north, eventually crossing Alton Junction and the PRR vertical lift bridge on the way to Union Station. I wonder if the narrator filmed a return trip headed south with the camera facing East to capture Grand Central Station, LaSalle Street Station and Dearborn Station.
What a great video. Thanks again, Ed.
Rich
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