Author Topic: Goose Island Qs  (Read 4094 times)

mark_k

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Goose Island Qs
« on: December 29, 2006, 09:07:42 PM »
When did service cease on the spurs which ran down Hickory and Hooker Streets?

Was it the Hooker Street spur which served the engine house at the southern tip of Goose Island?

Any guesses as to the last time the RR drawbridge on Goose Island was last raised?

When did Waste Management / WMX end its rail service?



 

TBurke

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« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2007, 04:19:37 PM »
Mark:

Here are some approximate answers.  

The line (really a running track and not a spur)  that went down Hickory St. was in place and in use through at least 1997 NORTH of Division Street where it terminated at the team track and ramp.  The rail lines on Hickory/Hooker SOUTH of Division Street were in place and in use as recently as 1980 but paved over though in place at Division Street by 1985.  Almost all evidence of these lines were removed when the City of Chicago rebuilt the streets south of Division Street in 1991.  

See the photos of a Soo Line crew working the team track at Division Street on this website-you can see traces of the rails pushing up through the pavement on Division St.

The line on North Branch St. actually connected back to the Hooker/Hickory track just southeast of the current Pickens-Kane building where they terminated at a scrapyard, forming a loop basically around Goose Island.  The spur to International Salt was on the other side of the street.  The southern tip of Goose Island, east of Halsted St., was reached via a track that crossed Halsted just north of where North Branch St. ends at Halsted though that track was gone by the 1980s.  

I have no idea when the drawbridge to Goose Island was last raised but I would guess it was decades ago.  The \"Movable Railroad Bridges of Chicago, Pt. I\" article in the March, 2003, issue of Model Railroader magazine goes into detail on the three movable bridges which served these Milwaukee Road lines, including the one leading to Goose Island.  There is no mention however of the last date it was actually raised in this article though.

Waste Management for whatever reason discontinued rail service sometime prior to when the City of Chicago rebuilt the streets NORTH of Division Street in 2001.  A new street grid was essentially put in place, and only the track down N. Cherry Street was rebuilt and saved along with a new run-around track.  If you look carefully you can still see evidence of the former line to Waste Management at the northern tip of Goose Island where a long section of disconnected track pokes up from the mud.

Hopefully the Chicago Terminal Railroad will revive rail service to Waste Management among other customers.  There is room on the north end of the island for a transload facility though it is unclear who owns this land.

Tom
 

tom mann

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« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2007, 07:30:38 PM »
The Movable Railroad Bridges of Chicago series was actually in Railroad Model Craftsman.  I thought it was a swingbridge??

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Thomas Mann
http://www.chicagoswitching.com

mark_k

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« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2007, 04:53:11 AM »
Tom,

Are you saying that at one time a running track existed on North Branch from W. Blackhawk all the way down to and across Halsted? This served the enginehouse facility east of Halsted and adjacent industries?

When approximately did active service _east_ of Halsted on Goose Island end? I take it that the tracks or remnants thereof were in place for a good while afterward.

Thanks

 

TBurke

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« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2007, 10:15:55 PM »
Mark (and others):

All trackage EAST of Halsted Street on Goose Island was gone by the time I started poking around in the early 1980s.  According to a Milwaukee Road engineering diagram from the early 1970s a rail-served company called Peanut Specialties was located east of Halsted.  This doesn\'t necessarily mean that it still received rail service by this late date.

A large photo from Classic Trains a few years ago showed trains on the C&NW North Line in the area of Halsted Street and Chicago Avenue looking north by northeast and across the Chicago River behind the C&NW tracks.  If you look carefully you can also see the Milwaukee Road track on Goose Island crossing Halsted St in the background.  The photo was from the late 1940s I believe.  I do not recall the issue of Classic Trains off the top of my head.  The long-gone Ogden Avenue overpass was also in the background

By the early Trailways bus terminal occupied most of the area where the tracks would have crossed Halsted.

Tom
 

mark_k

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« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2007, 04:49:12 PM »
Do you have an approximate year or decade for that Trailways terminal Tom? I\'m guessing 1960s...