N&W / Wabash Commuter Train Route into Chicago (Map)

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"Despair of All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here." So reads the first line of Dante Aligaieri's narrative poem, The Divine Comedy (1321 A.D.)

And thus it was with two centers of railroading in the east: the New York area, and Chicago. Both places were like maximum security prisons: once transferred there, you never got out. And only "lifers" knew all the passwords. Actually, Chicago was the more desparate situation of the two, because of the large number of railroads involved in the bubbling, seething mixture.

So, when it came to figuring out the route of the N&W's post-merger commuter business in Chicago, I turned to a "lifer" - my friend Mr. Carl Barkeyback, who worked many of the towers there, train dispatched much of the territory, and retired as Asst. Superinendent of Operations on the Indiana Harbor Belt RR ("the Belt.")

Carl graciously sent this flat-land hillbilly a simple, color-coded map, and it is attached. The map identifies (... hold on to your chair) 35 railroads in Chicago! The map shows the Wabash trains used the C&WI (Chicago & Western Indiana RR) for the last 8 or 9 miles, for a straight shot into Dearborn Station.

But what, pray tell, was the Chicago & Western Indiana RR ? It was a small railroad owned by five big railroads, which constructed the last 36 or so miles into downtown Chicago, sparing each of the larger railroads from constructing its own R/W. The C&WI also owned Dearborn Station.

Here the menagerie grows into a migrane, and if you want to know more about the Great Chicago Railroad Mess, consult the good Wikipedia article titled Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad. (But only lifers will really understand it...)

Enjoy the map. Perhaps its simplicity and perspicacity will save you the migrane.

Me...? I want nothing more to do with big cities. My little cave up on the mountain suits quite well.

-- abram burnett
Turnip Squeezin's - the Golden Ratio in Nature !
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