This was posted to the Illinois railroad yahoo group:
There are three jobs at the Chicago Terminal RR:
5AM- Clean up crew, anything extra that needs done, switch North Avenue downtown if need be
9AM- Regular Elk Grove Industry work
5PM- Regular Bensenville Industry work
All of the jobs work off of channel 97-97 when on CTM trackage. There are 9 customers on the East side of the park, there are 5 customers on the North (west) side of the park, and there are 5 customers on the southwest side of the park.
The East side (701 Lead/LOEB) requires a shoving movement to all of the industries to service, the North side (711 Lead), the engine leads (depending on amount of industries needing to be served) up to Richelieu Foods, where a gravity drop is performed, and the engine pulls the train back down towards the yard, spotting and pulling cars wherever needed. The west side (709 Lead), the engine leads, pulls/spots where needed on the trip west, and once on the bottom lead (706 Lead) a gravity drop is performed, and the engine pulls back east serving customers along the way.
A typical day for the day job (9AM) is usually about 5-7 hours, so if you are looking to shoot the job, it's a somewhat narrow window as far as railroading goes.
The yard is private property all around, the only way to view it, is from a business parking lot to the south side, even though you'd be trespassing on their property now. The Bi-levels are still on property, they have just been moved out of the yard. The open hoppers that you saw along Lively, are storage cars. There are a lot of those, and various other types of freight cars in storage on the various leads that have no online customers.
Photography wise, the parks have some nice open spots for photos, as well as their confined spaces if you like that for industrial railroading. The EGV park is fairly easy to get around, you have Nicholas Boulevard that splits the North side in half, with streets running E/W between all of the leads. Lively Boulevard cuts the North and West sides in half, with streets running E/W throughout both sides as well.
I hope this helps,
Mike Polk
Conductor
Chicago Terminal Railroad
