4/19/07 The \"Kingsbury Switcher\" is back!

[Ian]

I had the day off today from good ol\' High School.....so I decided to follow the good guys around.....

i recently saw a shot on railpictures.net of the crew cleaning out a switch that hadn\'t seen service in a while down on the Kingsbury Line.....the picture was form last tuesday.....and when I rode by on my bike...the boxcar was still sitting on the spur down on the Kingsbury line.....

Anyway....I biked downtown to pick up a couple of developed rolls of slide film from Helix Camera and Video.....went over to the 18th/21st street area.....caught a couple of freights comming through the interlockers.....and then headed back up north...

The guys were just backing their stuff into Finkl.....they pulled forward with just their car for Big Bay......headed over the bridge by north avenue....and dropped off the loaded lumber....

The pulled north light engine....cleaned out the switch at the connection to the Kingsbury Line....and proceeded south......a car was too close to the spur that the boxcar was on....so the crew had to go find the poor sap.....he moved his car.....the engine hooked up to the boxcar....shoved back down the \"main\"......went back onto goose island...ran around their car....and proceeded engine facing north back to the yard I assume.......

This was very exciting since....in only the past month or so have I heard of the Kingsbury line being used.....

On another funny note.....apparently some of Chicago\'s finest are railfans.....a cop pulled over and parked to take a shot of the engine as the crew was cleaning out one of the switches!

-Ian

[cnwnorthline]

Yeah, when I was getting those night pictures some cop was coming down from having his picture taken in the cab.  The action on Kingsbury usually seems to generate some interest from those in the area.  Last time a door in the backside of a building about and about 10 girls in dance uniforms pilled out to see what the commotion was about.  Another local resident pulled out a camera.  Usually people are asking us what this is all about since they haven\'t seen a train there in years.

-Matt

[haggar]

Apparently they had to run all the way back to Goose just for a runaround so they could shove that TBOX boxcar to the south end of Kingsbury. Today I saw that car there and it looked like they were unloading firewood onto a dump truck.  I only saw this from afar (the roof of the Storage Mart at 1015 N. Halsted) so I\'m assuming thats what the shipment was.  Hope to see more new customers on this line.

Joe

[SlowFreight]

Did you get a chance to get any photos around Big Bay?  Always lookin\' fer more...

[Ian]

Yeah...I biked downtown to have some fun around the Canal St. Wye area on sunday.....and I biked down division st.....and sure enough...there was the TBOX......such a nutty operation....

And if you were asking me.....yes I did shoot the train dropping off the loaded bulkhead in the middle of Cherry St....right by Big Bay....

-Ian