Old north side switching video

[cg33]

Lots of great, old footage!

Starts at 7:50

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84fySywecEw&feature=relmfu

[TBurke]

Great catch.  Thanks for posting it.  Seems like just yesterday I was down there watching this crew switch out Kingsbury and Goose Island on a regular basis.  I recognize the brakeman from his voice and appearance-his name was Paul though I never did catch his last name.  Very friendly to any railfans.  He worked the line from the 1980s into the early 1990s then apparently retired.

Elsewhere on this site are still photos of freight cars at Plibrico and Midwest Zinc from that same era.  I noted the narrator calling the street at one point "KingsBERRY" instead of "Kingsbury." 

This video sounds and looks like a Pentrex production.  The narrator is used in other Pentrex videos.  It's too bad there is not a better way to transfer from VHS to digital format.  The original VHS versions of Pentrex videos are crisp on a TV so something must happen during the conversion. 

[12bridge]

The clip is from Pentrex's Todays Chicago Railroads, and is available on DVD, having just watched it.  Its is one of there best DVDs, lots of great action thats now gone, especially the Goose Island portion.

[TBurke]

Another good Pentrex video is "Juice" which documents the last then surviving electric freight operations including East Troy, WI, the Pearl Brewery in San Antonio, and the Iowa Traction.  Only the Iowa Traction as of 2012 is still a common carrier of electric freight.