You are correct, of course, and I considered that and should have known, having worked with dynamic URL assignment and all that, back in my working life. I was just mad at having to relink. I see they also have a CTA view now, too, although I have no clue as to exactly where it is looking. Doug
I finally figured out the CTA view. It's looking east starting just east of Canal Street. You Chicago guys might laugh at this Minnesotan's odd/silly observations and that's OK. Doug
GP15 switcher #UPY728 hauling 13 (11 of which are visible) to the yard on a rainy Saturday morning at about 9:35 AM. Oh, and that building to the right they have been working on I thought was the old Cassidy Tire building? It's a brand new building, part of the tower behind it called "Cassidy on Canal". It's an apartment complex and the building in question is probably the parking accommodations. The reason it looks like an old brick building is because an official (I forgot who) requested that the facade of the old Cassidy building be recreated. I think that's cool. Doug
Trackwork, tracks 2/3 (looks fairly major), CNW #90 on track 5, and train departing track 11 - about 2:35 PM 10/14/2023: Doug
Switcher #728 on its way to tying up for the day at its usual spot in the corner, a little after 4:00 PM, 10/14/2023: Doug
Boy, we sure don't get too long to edit. Anyway, I used the wrong term above. I should have written "track maintenance" or "track repair" instead of "trackwork". Trackwork is the actual layout of the track. Doug
Here is a neat video on YouTube of a cab ride on Metra, Des Plains to Chicago in August. It's neat to see the approach to the train shed from the perspective of being on the train and seeing all the sights, the puzzle tracks, structures, and other items we see from the railcams. It seems to be a very smooth ride. Train finally terminating on track 10. This is a long video but you can skip to the end where the train is in Chicago. EDIT: Bah! I was thinking of the wrong video when I wrote this Although the video is 24 minutes long, it's nowhere NEAR the over and hour and twenty minutes of the one I was thinking of! Doug
And here's one approaching Union Station on the Milwaukee Road tracks as seen in the north railcam view. Near the end, we see it passing under the C&NW tracks and there happens to be a train on those tracks passing overhead. Then, as it curves south on the tracks that were, long ago, out in the open, now disappear under city expansion and finally emerge into semi-sunlight at the end where we see some Amtrak trains. This video is a bit long, too, but you can still skip to the end. Doug
Aww, that's neat! Thank you, I hadn't seen this. That's "my" line, rode it hundreds of times in the late '60s and throughout the '70s. Still a fine looking railroad. At times I can hear recorded announcements of stops, no more do we hear Conductors calling them out. Crossing of the MILW main at Mayfair is at 9:45, tower used to be on the right. Shortly thereafter, get a load of that bumper-to-bumper gridlock on I-90 to the left. At 15:30 is Clybourn and CY Tower which still stands! Makes me happy. Here the C&NW's North and Northwest Lines converge. A branch of the Soo Line once crossed at CY, but that track is gone now. In this era, CY also controls Mayfair. This made my night @Doug Gosha . Again, thanks a bunch for posting it.
Dan, I was thinking about you and your most probable familiarity with this route since you have mentioned you were from that area and traveled to Chicago. I would have loved to live in an area where train travel was so accessible. I noticed the traffic on the freeway but didn't realize it was Mayfair. There was an article featuring Mayfair in a long ago Model Railroader. Doug
I have that issue somewhere. Yep, a very nice feature story with a lot of historic information and a detailed track diagram that answered a lot of questions.
Here's a picture of the "Northwest Passage" from the outside on the same site that has a picture of it on the inside that Dan posted. You can see it was constructed where track 1 was and relaid after the "Passage" was removed in the nineteen nineties, as Dan indicated: It's appearance reminds me of Ellis Jr. High School where I went from 1965 - 68. This photo is from 1986 when it was destroyed by fire. A lot of track repair/maintenance going on lately. The other day, they were working on track 2 again and then, a bit later, just south of track 7 and today, in front of the Lake Street Tower and under the CTA bridge. Doug
Undated Lake Street Tower interlocking diagram at: https://www.jonroma.net/media/signa...ake Street, Chicago, IL. [color; undated].pdf
Wow! Look at all those double slip switches! The diagram looks even more complex than in real life! OK, maybe not. Doug
Are the streamlined Metra locomotives F59PH Is? I read on Wikipedia that Amtrak sold 21 of them to Metra in 2018. Thanks, Doug
My era in C&NW railroading started to fade in the latter '70s when I went off to college in another state and ended in 1980 when I moved away, so the last change I'm familiar with was the alarming arrival of the F-40PHs. These are from March 1978 at Barrington, IL on the "Northwest Line".
