Milwaukee Road Track Diagram-Deering Line 1955

[TBurke]

The latest scan from original Milwaukee Road track diagrams.  Compare this 1955 version to the 1970 version I uploaded earlier. 

Here's a photo of one of the spurs on the old Deering Line which originally served the FP Smith Wire & Iron Works as shown on the 1955 diagram off Medill.  The 1970 track diagram indicates that the spur was no longer in service.

http://chicagoswitching.com/v6/articles/article.asp?articleid=45

FP Smith was once the largest fire escape manufacturer in the Midwest.  It later relocated to Northlake, IL, and renamed itself the FP Smith Wire Cloth Company.  When researching the Deering Line article in 2005 for The Milwaukee Railroader magazine it the company was still in business and even featured an old drawing of their original Chicago location on their website.  Now it has disappeared and its old URL fpsmith.com leads to the McNichols Company with a Des Plaines location but nothing in Northlake.  Perhaps one of the chicagoswitching.com sleuths can find out what happened to it. 

The Chester Street Yard at one time served the offline customer Atlantic Brewing.  Chester Street was the old name for Medill. 

[JohnI]

Thanks for sharing Tom. I'll do some more digging regarding the plight of FP Smith. McNichols is near where I used to work out in Des Plaines, and I remember going by their facility several times. I am guessing it's been a while since they were in Northlake too...McNichols had a facility in Elk Grove Village that they shuttered to move where they are now.

As for this diagram and the old Deering line, based on this chart, it appears the branch line meanders north past Fullerton. Just curious, but does anyone know if it went over the road at this point, or ducked below it hugging the riverbank?

Thanks for sharing this!

[TBurke]

John-

The Milwaukee Road's Deering Line crossed Fullerton at grade originally.  When the current Fullerton Avenue bridge over the river was built it took the street over both the Deering Line and the river.  So in its later years the Deering Line went under the Fullerton Avenue bridge. 

North of Fullerton Avenue the trackage was joint Milwaukee Road/C&NW into the Cotter & Company (True Value) complex.  The 1970 track diagram labels it as such also at Fullerton.  Maintenance of the tracks rotated between the two railroads.  In the mid-1950s there were a number of other industries in the old IH Deering Harvester buildings, not just Cotter.

At one time tracks actually extended north of Diversey to reach other parts of the IH Deering Harvester plant.  From what I found the IH plant had a lumber storage area at that location between Clybourn and the river on the north side of Diversey.  As steel replaced wood in the construction of farm implements the need for storing large quantities of lumber became moot and the line was cut back.

The McCormick archives at the University of Wisconsin are a treasure trove of information on the former IH Deering Harvester plant with lots of historic photos, some of which are reproduced in my article on the Deering Line for The Milwaukee Railroader.  McCormick + Deering = International Harvester via a merger of the one-time rivals. 

Tom