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The western half of Wacker Drive used to be known as Market Street. The Chicago L used to have a stub terminal that ran down Market Street and terminated in front of the Civic Opera House. It was torn down in 1948.

Both photos from

http://thetrolleydodger.com/

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GM&O Commuter Train: “The Plug”

This train ran between Chicago Union Station and Joliet. It ran once each way, each weekday. Two images by Richard Koenig; taken December 27th 1977.

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As classy as it gets without coal and water!

Silver Metor, A CB&Q E5A, 9912A by Marty Bernard In St. Paul on June 27, 1964. Her name, “Silver Meteor” has been scraped off her sides, probably because it was black, like her fake nose grills and window were before chinese red became the Q’s favorite color. CB&Q E5As were called slant noses to distinguish them from the earlier Zephyr power shovel noses. My preference would have been to stay with shovel nose.

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poor b-body Oldsmobile

Chicago Crash by Joe McMillan On August 2, 1988, the Santa Fe staged a crossing accident in Chicago (Hodgkins) as an Operation Lifesaver event to demonstrate the need for grade crossing safety. A large crowd was on hand to witness the crash and hopefully the demo made a lasting impression on them. Homer Henry, system road foreman of engines, was operating the locomotives. Photo by Joe McMillan.

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Headed for New Orleans by atsfrun8 ATSF 560 With BN-1 & BN-2 on train O-KCNO1-22 at Hackney, KS on 1-22-97 headed for Super Bowl in New Orleans

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RTA Rock Island - Root Street Tower

CRL- Blue Island, Il

In the years following the demise of the famed Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad, many of its Chicago based locomotives found themselves right back on home rails. Former Rock Island #4804 is seen in RTA(Metra) paint at Root Street(40th st.) on the former Rock Island Main Line. The little switcher survives today as Metra’s #1 and is now the oldest diesel locomotive in the country still in regular service outside of a Museum. The Robert Taylor high rise buildings in the background were demolished in the 90′s, and the old Chicago Junction Railway bridge in the background was demolished in the mid 2000′s.

We then see a pair of ex Rock Island GP7′s  now owned by Chicago Rail Link in Blue Island. They are probably on a transfer run between the old Rock Island Burr Oak Yard and the Indiana Harbor Belt Riverdale Yard. the transfer to this yard involves a long reverse move, so it was common for the Rail Link to put a locomotive at each end of the train. The second locomotive was still in service for Chicago Rail Link until a few years ago. It was scrapped maybe two years ago.

photo credit: d.w.davidson

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This pair of Gresley 4-6-2′s hardly breaks a sweat as they haul their train uphill. Drafting the stramlined A4 is the infamous Blue Peter that nearly blew up while climbing a hill on a rainy day in 1994. It is seen here still in the land of the living in 1998.

Super power ! by keith.mcgovern1 on Flickr.

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Classic view of Dearborn Street Station. The old Station Headhouse on Polk Street is all that remains of this iconic station.

Chicago & Western Indiana diesel switcher switching Monon Railroad passenger equipment near Dearborn Station. Note the “Grand Trunk Western Freight House” logo on the building wall in the upper right, above the classic sedan.

Chicago

http://www.monon.monon.org/bygone/chicago-dearborn.html

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“Wtf the fuck is this train based 1984 bullshit“

ha the last two lines are gold! The shit is nostalgic and all but there are some shady\creepy undertones there for sure. The author even drops the N bomb in one of the original books. People call the show racist and sexist for all of the wrong reasons.

“Awdry's story Henry's Sneeze (in The Railway Series book Henry              the Green Engine ) originally described some soot-covered boys as              being "as black as niggers". After complaints were made              in 1972, twenty years after first publication, the description was              changed to "as black as soot".”

My favorite thing about Thomas the Tank Engine is that it canonically takes place in a train post-apocalypse where the Island of Sodor is the only safe zone in a totalitarian dystopia in which steam trains are routinely killed and their body parts are sold or cannibalized for repair

If you think I’m kidding you need to read the original books

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Bloomington, Indiana is a neat little city, I do wish they still had reliable(or for that matter existent) passenger rail service. It is definitely the coolest of the 3 midwestern towns called Bloomington(that I know of and have visited)

Monroe County Courthouse

A northbound Amtrak Floridian makes a station stop at Bloomington, Indiana. Image by Richard Koenig; taken 16 October 1977.

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AT&SF - 26th Street 

photo credit: d.w.davidson

In this undated photo (likely from the early 90′s or late 80′s), this Santa Fe GP7 is in charge of the old Illinois Northern RR local. Here it is seen passing Cook County Jail at 26th and California. At this point the line curved in a southeasterly direction, crossed the Chicago River, crossed The Illinois Central Iowa Sub, and ran right into Santa Fe’s Corwith Yard. The line was last served by now the defunct Central Illinois Railway in 2009, it was served one time by the BNSF in 2011, and the rails were all pulled up in 2013. This trackage was originally part of the Chicago and Southern Railway. they used it to access Dearborn Street Station(so did Santa Fe when they first bought it. Santa Fe later leased the line to the Illinois Northern Railway(a shortline owned by and mainly created to serve the nearby International Harvester Reaper Works. The only photo I have of this line was taken in early 2009 around 31st and St. Louis of the Central Illinois Railway’s locomotive in storage.

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GG1s in freight service !!! Must have sounded neat.

Love these prehistoric beasts!!!

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After the Blizzard of 1979 RTA(Metra) rebuilt these old Illinois Central Heavyweight Electric Passenger Cars into “Snow-Fighters” They were apparantly never used, and by 1988 they were stored in the old IC 83rd street yard where they were vandalized. They were eventually moved to Blue Island Yard and scrapped. Photo Credit : Lou Gerald and John Smatlak

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The Belt Railway of Chicago’ TR5 515B is working like a slave and doing a pretty good impersonation of a steam locomotive at the old rail to water transfer terminal. The Belt Railway was one of the last companies using EMD cow-calf switcher sets. These old workhorses were shown the door along with all of the belt’s other first generation diesels just after the turn of the century.

photo credit: John Smatlak

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BN Lumber District Lead-2010. Its early fall of 2010 and the Western Avenue Yard Crew is easing their rebuilt GP50 down the Battaglia Distribution Spur near Cermak and Ashland. They would continue down this alley way in very tight quarters for several blocks before squeezing into the old Battaglia warehouse. BNSF had only just resumed service over this line after the shortline carrier that leased the line went bankrupt. The rain visors on the sides of the cab got hung up on the garage door frame to the Battaglia distribution warehouse. As you can see the track is in rough shape. It was not uncommon for the shortline’s SW9 to derail on this spur in the winter. This old CB&Q trackage is likely not long for this world either. BNSF has been running it for the past 5 years, but several customers have ceased rail service, and their rails have been paved over.

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Three now rare items I am glad to have checked off of my trainspotting bucket list. I really liked the look of those wide cabbed MARC Geeps. Note the HLCX(Helm) leaser SD40 behind the Santa Fe warbonnet. Those have all but disappeared now too.

Red Noses at St Denis by Don Kalkman MARC GP40WH-2 67 rolls P844 past a waiting CSX V970 with a BNSF fakebonnet leader at St. Denis in 2000. The Bawlmer hangout has seen some oddball things over the years, and this scene is yet another one that we can never see again.

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What do all these shots have in common? 

They’re all from 1968. 

It was an incredible year for railroads in North America. In Canada the TurboTrain was debuting, in Mexico and points south, steam was still alive, pulling revenue trains. 

Passenger train service was on the decline in the US, up in Canada and finding a rebirth in Mexico with the purchase of large fleets of ex-US streamlined cars. First generation diesels met second generation diesels and the beginning of what we would recognize as the modern era of railroading dawned.  

TOFC began to dethrone boxcars, the dawn of containerized freight and other innovations that would become commonplace today began here. It’s the pivotal year where you can still see the past from the future. 

This is Railroad Earth, 1968.