FYI - Bill Denton\'s Kingsbury Website

[Charlie S]

Bill had his N-scale MILW Rd. hosted by AOL Hometown and it\'s now gone.  AOL permanently dumped this part of AOL and gave all Hometown users ample warning over the past month or two that it would be disappearing.  

Hope Bill can find a new host for this nice reference site.
The \"Wayback Machine\" on Internet Archives is broken too - no images.





MLW North Line Fan since 1954

[TBurke]

That\'s too bad.  I used to enjoy taking a virtual tour of his amazing Kingsbury layout online.  

Hopefully Bill backed it up locally and can upload the information to a new hosting site.

[Charlie S]

Bill, are you \"listening?\"

:-)
 
Charlie
 


MLW North Line Fan since 1954

[cnwnorthline]

I too have been morning the loss of the website, I just hadn\'t said anything.  Please bring it back!

[TBurke]

You can still view Bill Denton\'s amazing Kingsbury layout on this section of the Chicago Switching website:

http://www.mannresearch.com/lakewood/kingsb1.html

Bill no longer takes Kingsbury to shows due to the difficulty in moving it to and from his house.  It is quite large in size and takes several people to move, even in sections.  I believe its last public appearance was at the Milwaukee Road Historical Association convention in Elgin in June of 2007.

For several years I exhibited alongside Bill with my much more modest \"Lakewood\" N-scale layout set from Belmont Avenue south to Wellington circa the 1960s/1970s.  After having it get damaged each time I took it out I no longer bring Lakewood to shows.  

The same goes for my work in progress new layout, \"Wrigley,\" which features the Milwaukee Road where it crossed in front of Addision and Clark circa 1973.  \"Wrigley\" and \"Lakewood\" where both at the same Milwaukee Road Historical Association convention.  \"Wrigley\" was damaged while moving it out of the hotel meeting room.

With both of the layouts the buildings are all scratchbuilt to match the prototypes using historic photos of the neighborhoods.

My next layout, name TBD, will close the gap between the two layouts and feature the Milwaukee Road line in N-scale from Newport south to past Racine Avenue, including the CTA line that crossed the C&E at Racine Avenue.  

So one day Milwaukee Road trains will again travel from Wellington north to Wrigley Field though in N-scale!

Tom

[skytop35]

Hi Guys,

You\'ll be happy to know I\'m working on moving my Kingsbury site over to Comcast. It will be part of a new site which will bring together my other sites and projects. I\'ll post a notice and link when it\'s back on-line. Look for it around the first of the new year if all goes well.

Tom - Sorry I missed your phone call but thanks for alerting me to this thread.


Bill Denton
The Kingsbury Branch

[Jeff Wingstrom]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but this seems like the right place.  Have long been fascinated by the C&E tracks near Wrigley and industries on the line.  I was surfing for old pictures showing Collins & Weise Coal (?) which was located on the triangular shaped slice of land bordered by Clark, Waveland, and the ball park.  Found a couple decent ones..

http://snurl.com/uboj2
http://snurl.com/ubolc

..and then was watching the 15 year old \"Remembering Chicago\" piece on WTTW.  A very interesting program all around, and it includes a bit of Clark & Addison footage.  I grabbed this still from my Tivo - pretty cool, haven\'t ever seen the intersection at that date from this angle.  You can sense how gritty the neighborhood was at the time (30s?):

http://grab.by/grabs/21a6b88618cb55f72348dc1f694eb1b6.png

Any idea what equipment might be sitting on the C&E tracks?

Tom are you still developing your \"Wrigley\" layout??

-Jeff

[robertmroman]

I played around with Photoshop (mostly contrast and brightness). As an amateur, the results were not especially revealing, but it looks to be a string of boxcars. Which would make since as the structure behind them appears to be grain storage, and that\'s how grain was moved back then.

But I could be way wrong.

Interesting stuff. Thanks.

be well,
bob roman

[Jeff Wingstrom]

Just tried that as well in Photoshop .. it\'s probably my eyes wanting to see it, but could that be a GP9 in MILW black/orange with high-hood up against Clark St?  That would put the date into the early 50s at minimum, and I seem to recall reading that the line only carried EMD switchers..  I\'m sure someone here in the know will chime in.

brightened snippet:  
http://grab.by/grabs/388c6c542968928a16e3a95a4df42bb0.png

[D. Kaniuk]

Good pictures, just a couple of items: 1. the box cars look more like reefers. 2. the silos are for coal, that company was a big coal dealer. 3. There was a siding at the ballpark, located about where the players park their cars today.
The field received supplies (mainly beer) by railroad into the late 1960\'s. In 1964, a number of us would sneak out of high school an go to the cubs games. Sometimes there would be a box car or reefer on the siding. You could be right about the loco, definitely a diesel, your guess about a high nose GP9 would fit. I used PSP and, it still was hard to make out the motive power. Nice pictures of the area.

[TBurke]

My information is that the C&E line indeed only used EMD engines including GP-9s and various SWs and the MP15s in the Milwaukee Road era once they bumped steam locomotives.  

Crews would sometimes tie up outside Wrigley Field and watch the Bears practice prior to moving to Soldier Field around 1971, especially in the steam era when they would have to wait to take on more coal and water from the Collins and Weise yard.  

Moving trains through on days when the Cubs were in town was a real hassle.  At times the Wrigley Field announcer would have to ask fans in the ballpark to move their cars to allow a train to pass through. Other movements included inbound loads of hot dogs and baseball bats to Wrigley Field on the spur (team track) outside Wrigley Field.

Former crew member Frank Urbanowicz recalled that on one occasion someone set a switch for the spur-as a prank apparently-that ran alongside Wrigley Field and the train wound up hitting several cars belonging to players that were parked on the track by going down this side track in error.

There used to be a Milwaukee Road passenger station on the south side of Addison prior to 1917.  It is long gone now.  

In addition there were several rail-served customers to the south of Addison off the Milwaukee Road.