Goose Island Photos
Posted by tom burke on 13 November 2010
Goose Island at one time was a major hub of railroad activity for the Milwaukee Road with a yard on the north side of Division Street with more than two dozen, parallel tracks and a full-time switcher. Transfer runs were made to the Division Street Yard by trains led by road units over the Bloomingdale Line from the Galewood Yard. During the 1970s Goose Island fell into decline as one by one industries relocated or went out of business. In the early 1990s the City of Chicago began redevelopment of Goose Island by rebuilding the streets, many of which had been unpaved, and attracting light industry that was served by trucks. In 1985 Milwaukee Railroad holding company Chicago Milwaukee Corporation (CMC) sold the railroad assets to CP Rail subsidiary Soo Line which took over operation of the North Side rail operations on the first day of 1986. CMC, later renamed Heartland Partners, held onto former Milwaukee Road real estate that was no longer directly needed for railroad operations including the former Division Street Yard, the largest real estate tract on Goose Island. Heartland Partners-CMC sold off the Division Street Yard and by the 2000s it had been transformed with a new street grid overlaid on it and all-new, light industrial buildings constructed where the tracks and freight facilities once were. In 2010 remarkably there is still rail service on Goose Island to survivor Big Bay Lumber on N. Cherry Street at Division Street. In the fall of 2010 a second rail customer emerged with a shipment to Serious Materials near the corner of Hickory and Cherry, in the former Republic Windows facility. This set of photos was taken during October of 1980 on Goose Island by employees of the Milwaukee Road for an internal study regarding lines for abandonment candidates.
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This photo shows a gondola on a spur that came off Hooker Street south of Division Street. According to a 1971 Milwaukee Road engineering diagram the customer at this location was the Glendale Coal & Material Company though by 1980 the site may have changed hands and become a scrapyard. This view looks southeast toward the now gone Ogden Avenue overpass.
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This photo shows a gondola on a spur that came off Hooker Street
south of Division Street. According to a 1971 Milwaukee Road
engineering diagram the customer at this location was the Glendale
Coal & Material Company though by 1980 the site may have changed
hands and become a scrapyard. This view looks southeast toward the
now gone Ogden Avenue overpass.
tb_mrha_gooseisland_10_1980_02
We’re looking southeast across the intersection of Haines and Hickory on the southern end of Goose Island. Ahead is another scrapyard though the 1971 Milwaukee Road engineering diagram shows that the Ozite Corporation was located there. Note the puzzle switch ahead which could go direct trains in multiple directions. The track to the right past the puzzle switch crossed North Branch and connected to the track that ran along North Branch. This track was valuable as another way back to the yard if freight cars were blocking the way back along parallel Hickory. The track in the foreground went into the former Wieboldt’s warehouse, now used by Pickens-Kane. Wiebold’s was a Chicago department store chain which went out of business in the late 1980s.
tb_mrha_gooseisland_10_1980_02
We’re looking southeast across the intersection of Haines and Hickory on the southern end of Goose Island. Ahead is another scrapyard though the 1971 Milwaukee Road engineering diagram shows that the Ozite Corporation was located there. Note the puzzle switch ahead which could go direct trains in multiple directions. The track to the right past the puzzle switch crossed North Branch and connected to the track that ran along North Branch. This track was valuable as another way back to the yard if freight cars were blocking the way back along parallel Hickory. The track in the foreground went into the former Wieboldt’s warehouse, now used by Pickens-Kane. Wiebold’s was a Chicago department store chain which went out of business in the late 1980s.
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This view looks southeast toward the Division Street team tracks at Hickory just north of Division Street. The team tracks saw railroad cars dropped off here as late as 1996. By 2000 this area had been completely redeveloped and the tracks removed. A trace of the lead to the Division Street team track-and beyond it, the one-time track down Hickory Street, was still visible in the dirt just south of the Cherry Street bridge. Elsewhere on the Chicago Switching website you can see a train with covered hoppers and a truck engaged in a transload from 1996.
tb_mrha_gooseisland_10_1980_03
This view looks southeast toward the Division Street team tracks at Hickory just north of Division Street. The team tracks saw railroad cars dropped off here as late as 1996. By 2000 this area had been completely redeveloped and the tracks removed. A trace of the lead to the Division Street team track-and beyond it, the one-time track down Hickory Street, was still visible in the dirt just south of the Cherry Street bridge. Elsewhere on the Chicago Switching website you can see a train with covered hoppers and a truck engaged in a transload from 1996.