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

[NW Mailing List]

To add more to Abram’s mention of the C&WI, the five railroads owning it and where their passenger trains came on to C&WI tracks were the Wabash (74th St from Decatur, State Line from Detroit), Chicago & Eastern Illinois (Dolton), Erie (State Line), Monon (State Line), and Grand Trunk Western (47th St). Also in Dearborn but a tenant was Santa Fe which had its own tracks all they way to Dearborn Station (despite crossing the C&WI at the monster 21st St (AKA Alton Jct.) interlocking where the Pennsylvania crossed Santa Fe and Illinois Central on tracks shared through the interlocking while C&WI coming from the south parallel to the PRR turned in the interlocking first crossing the SF/IC tracks and then the PRR to run north of the IC tracks with more than 20 diamonds and half a dozen slip switches in the interlocking (today’s 21st is a simple 2x2 crossing)). A 1948 diagram of the interlocking is attached.

Today’s Metra Southwest Service still uses remaining bits of the C&WI (but now Metra owned) from 21st St until reaching Landers Yard where it enters former Wabash tracks.

-- 
Larry Stone
lstone19 at stonejongleux.com


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> On Nov 26, 2024, at 6:13 AM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> "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 !<N&W Commuter Route Map in Chicago.pdf>________________________________________
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