C&NW North Line Remnants

[themats]

I was riding around yesterday and decided to take a look at the C&NW North Line spurs at Chicago Transparent Products and north of there.

As reported on the pages of this site, condos are springing up all over the place back there.  Big $$$ too.  The tracks shown on the site here:

http://www.chicagoswitching.com/v5/articles/article.asp?articleid=48

are all gone.  The horseshoe-shaped roadbed still remains.  All of the land south of the horseshoe is being developed.  The eastern side of the horseshoe is now the edge of a park.  Google maps shows the land north of Shubert and on both sides of Hartland Ct. as being vacant.  It is vacant no longer.  It is completely filled with condos and townhomes from the C&NW North Mainline tracks all the way east to Paulina.

A little bit north of Diversey there were spurs coming east off of the North Mainline as well.  The large vacant area shown on Google maps that is east of the main and bisected by W. Wolfram St. is now a very nice park.  According to the map on page 7 of Tom Burke\'s article in TMR from 1st quarter of 2006, the empty lot contained (if I\'m reading the print correctly) the Illinois Malleable Iron Co.  The map shows two roughly circular shapes west of Paulina and on either side of the spur.  Does anyone know what these would have been?  Pits of some kind?

The map on page 7 also shows a spur continuing east across Paulina then turning north to another location of Illinois Malleable Iron Co. in what is now the big Jewel/strip mall on the west side of Ashland.  I managed to find track still the ground where it crossed Paulina and a little bit of it east of Paulina.  There is a big new house just to the north of the ROW on the east side of Paulina, but the ROW is dirt and you can see the tracks still poking up.  I tried to follow it to the east and then north, but it ended at a fence about where the ROW starts to turn north.  Google maps clearly shows the ROW.  The eastern spur to Hemler Lumber Co. which would have been about a block north is obliterated by a large development just south of Wellington.

I\'m guessing not, but I\'ll ask: Does anyone have or know about any photos existing of these spurs?

[Jeff Wingstrom]

check out historicaerials.com.  While navigation can be a little frustrating after being spoiled by Google Maps, and the photo quality varies wildly, this particular patch looks great in all the year views:

http://www.historicaerials.com/Default.aspx?poi=511

Quite a bit of activity around there in the past.

[TBurke]

Unfortunately I do not have any photos that show intact spurs or industries from that area north of Diversey, west of Ashland, and east of the C&NW North Line.  They are from a few years ago when things were starting to get ripped out and torn down.