Goose Island Photo in New Trains Magazine

[TBurke]

The September 2008 issue of Trains magazine features a two-page color photo spread of a Soo Line train on Goose Island in 1989.

The location of the train is on the northern end of Goose Island, just south of the Cherry Street bridge and at the point where the track to the Division Street team tracks branches east from the \"mainline\" which continues down dirt-paved Cherry Street.  It\'s being blocked by trailers and a tractor from Midwest Industrial Metals is moving the trailers out of the way.  

Midwest Industrial Metals was located at the northeast corner of Bliss and Cherry on the south end of Goose Island so they must have been storing trailers at the northern end too.  Midwest Industrial Metals was a rail-served Soo Line customer and it operated out of a former Lissner facility.

You can see another perspective on this Trains photo with one I took in 1988 at a similar location and also looking north.

http://www.chicagoswitching.com/v5/articles/article.asp?articleid=18

The switch in the photo shows the tracks lined for the Division Street team track lead though the boxcar is being pulled by the MP15.  Normally cars were pushed to the team tracks then pulled out since there was no runaround track between this cutoff and the team tracks that ended just north of Division Street by Hickory.  I wonder if the crew is waiting for the trucks to move to throw the switch that will send the train straight ahead, perhaps to Big Bay Lumber?

[TBurke]

In looking more closely at the picture in trains the track that is blocked by the Midwest Industrial Metals is the run-around track. It was roughly in the same location as today\'s run-around track just to the east of Cherry. It was a remant of the one-time Division Street Yard.

The lead to the team tracks at Hickory and Division is farther in the background, closer to the bridge.

[mark_k]

quote:Originally posted by TBurke

In looking more closely at the picture in trains the track that is blocked by the Midwest Industrial Metals is the run-around track. It was roughly in the same location as today\'s run-around track just to the east of Cherry. It was a remant of the one-time Division Street Yard.

The lead to the team tracks at Hickory and Division is farther in the background, closer to the bridge.

Any chance of your scanning the photo from _Trains_ and posting it here Tom?

A few of us here don\'t currently subscribe.

Thanks

[TBurke]

Mark:

I wish I could but there would be two issues, one of which is I might get sued or threatened by Kalmbach, Trains\' publisher, and the other is that scans of halftones create moire patterns which can really mar the quality of the scanned copy.

Now if Tom Mann as the webmaster were to contact Kalmbach for copy permission of a clean version...

Tom