That’s from the caption in the main article linked by tree68 above. I can forgive the caption writer for that one, though - it sure looks like one, there’s no on on the ground to interview or ask - or to do the interviewing or asking, and even with an enlarged photo, it’s too hard to read the lettering or see any details that would tip anyone off or tell anything better.
[:-,] Besides - think of all the ‘get rich quick/ easy money’ people who are now going to lie awake at nights trying to figure out a way to get through the floodwaters to see if there’s any money left in it . . . meanwhile, it’ll evade them by going’ hi-rail’ and getting out of town ‘off-road’ that way ! [swg]
We made it out on the bikes today–even went to a visitation at the local funeral home (the guy with the flags asked us if we would be biking to the cemetery; didn’t keep that solemn face for too long). Great weather for Arbor Day; I hope we save a tree by not running the car.
There are a few–very few!–timid lilac blooms at Lilacia Park this afternoon; the Lilac Festival starts tomorrow. In about a week things should be looking and smelling pretty good! Craft show Sunday, art and sculpture show in the park next Saturday, concert in the park for Mother’s Day. (Big Parade is two weeks from Sunday.) Rumor has it that UP and Metra will be running a few trains right across the street from the park throughout the festival.
Materials for the signal bridge at the west entrance to CP Y019 have been delivered…no signal heads or poles yet, though.
Carl…Something reminded me, don’t know just what, but took the atlas and took a peek just where Lombard really is located in the Chicago area.
Upon looking and seeing, I’m thinking back in time several {or more}, decades about being in a great steak house and trying to remember just where it was, seems it should be in the general area of where you live…Name of the place was “Tom’s Steak House”…Seem to remember they prepared the steaks {filet’s}, where it was visible…kind of like an open brick oven of sort…One thing I do remember correctly, they probably were the best steaks we had had up to that time.
Just wondering if that name might ring a bell at all…Not sure how long you have lived in that area, and maybe it’s a thing of the past too…or if still there, under different name.
There is an incredible video on YouTube of a washout caught on tape! It’s called “CN Stackpool, ON washout April 14, 2011” captured by a CN employee (so obviously not my video!) Poor guy is so (understandably) scared, he gets a bit colorful in his language. (Link feature will not work right now or I’d post it–maybe it will cooperate for someone else?)
Quentin, I could be cheeky here and ask whether it was somewhere near the tracks, but to be perfectly honest, we’ve been in the area (Glen Ellyn or Lombard) for 38 years now, and I don’t remember any steak houses. There’s one out in the vicinity of Winfield, now known as Morgan’s Char House…we went for the live jazz trio one Saturday night, but were disappointed in the steaks: they covered everything with some sort of spice that left a disagreeable taste/smell with us.
But restaurants come and go around here…some are in their third or more incarnation in the same spot, and there are some places that have their third or fourth building on the same place. Preparation where the customer could watch doesn’t ring a bell with me, either. There might be a few people in the local Historical Society that we could ask, though.
We got all of our errands run (and the lawn mowed!) before the promised rain (still sunny for the moment), and I’m back to entering data for the unusual freight cars the we observed on our vacation (okay, I observed!). We saw some CSX coal hoppers that had been converted to aggregate cars (shortened body), NYC 86-foot hi-cube box cars that had been increased in height by a couple of feet (we saw those in Cincinnati, and wonder what they are assigned to), and some NS waste gons that were rebuilt from Airslide covered hoppers, of all things! At least in some cases, cars that were built to carry sugar for Coca Cola are now carrying the plastic bottles and aluminum cans, perhaps!
I think the scariest part is how fast it happened…and I doubt that it would care whether there was a train there or not. Amazing footage, and I hope he won’t get busted for taking this video on the job.
Yea, Carl, that was on my list, along with how close he was standing, that he kept going back up to the edge, that it keeps going multiple times, when he says he feels the ties moving under him, and when he says something like his crew is on the other side and he doesn’t think (emphasis mine) he should cross there right now. WOW-ZERS!!!
Carl…suppose about all I can say for the location, that it was almost due west from downtown Chicago, and quite a bit west…and right now I can’t remember how far west…Beyond Midway some distance, if I remember correctly.
Right now, can’t even remember why we were there…and the time element would be at least 40 years. Jean mentions, we were with another couple, and in our 1962 super sport Chevy, and we just {Jean indicates}, we {on this trip}, stayed east a bit of O’hare in a Howard Johnsons motel…Must have been there for the weekend.
Also remember on the way up to Chicago we stopped at Stromburgs Restaurant on rt. 30…at Valpariaso, In. and we can still laugh at the size of the Turkey legs we had there. And I remember they certainly were excellent in taste…!
I remember you talking about those turkey legs before, Quentin, and I believe Valpo Ed said that Stromburgs is still there. Something to check out, for sure (Pat has a quilt shop in downtown Valpo that she likes).
Midway is south and west of Chicago–we have to go several miles southeast to get to it.
To let you know how due west of Chicago we are: Madison Street is the north/south base-line in Chicago, as you probably know. We have a Madison Street (actually Madison Boulevard) here in Lombard, that lines up with the one in Chicago. And our house is one block north of it! And when I say we’re 20 miles due west of Chicago, that’s pretty literal, too…Milepost 20 of the UP main line is due north of us!
I can’t help but wondering that if the railroad knew enough about the location to have someone on-site, why had they not done some construction there to divert or at least mitigate the effects of the water flow. From what I can tell from the video, it sure looks like a location that has had water flow issues previously.
It reminds me of a tragedy near my hometown many years ago during a flood that washed out an earthen area (kind of like a bridge, as it gave the road access to an area, but solid–sorry, don’t know the technical term for that location) and about 7 people lost their lives.
Speaking of so very sad, the news this am reported that death toll is over 340 (not counting the 77 approx. who were lost in that earlier round) but that at least 600 are missing and many/most are feared lost. Too sad for words. They said we had 6 times the number of tornadoes than normal for April!
I was going to say that it was probably a culvert the blew out. There didn’t seem to be any other place for the water to go under the tracks there, yet it was clearly flowing in that direction.
I’d venture to guess that the replacement culvert will be larger.
I need your expertise here. Ever see one of these: http://flic.kr/p/9DDiSR ? There are a couple that seem to go between Green Bay, WI and Stevens Point, WI on CN’s A415/A416. Looks like a tanker or a hopper or a tanker…fish or cut bait, ya know? Any thoughts?
Carl…Pursuing our restaurant conversation just a bit further…We had Sunday lunch today, with the same couple that accompanied us years ago on our Chicago outing, and {Sherry}, advised me…{She has a steel trap for a memory}, the “Tom’s Steak House” was in Elmhurst. Just a bit east of you…and the restaurant was in a large older home…that had been converted to this establishment.
Still nothing that rings a bell, Quentin. I can think of three places in Elmhurst (all of them along North Avenue, Illinois Route 64) that would fit the old-house-turned-restaurant category. Two of them are gone, and the remaining one has been pretty much the same for years. And none of them were steak houses, to the best of my memory.
Melrose Park isn’t that far east of Elmhurst, and the suburbs do tend to blend in with each other. Coincidentally, this is on North Avenue as well. Look familiar?
We spent much of our afternoon after church volunteering at the Lombard Historical Society’s booth at the Lilac Festival’s arts and crafts fair. Historical Societies aren’t usually artsy and craftsy, but we had reproductions of the 1930s-era posters promoting the Lilac Festival, as well as a few handmade items from various LHS members (Pat made a lot of bonnets and “princess” doll dresses), among other things. We also had kid-sized “Future Lilac Queen” T-shirts (and we have a pair of granddaughters who now own them!). No hugs from this year’s Lilac Queen…we didn’t know her (it was last year’s queen who was a lifelong friend of ours…her life, I mean!). I could see the tracks from our booth, and things were fairly busy, but nothing spec
