IC's Fordham Yard

(Satellite, This yard was successfully repurposed as an industrial park.)

(Update: an index of IC's Chicagoland yards and roundhouses)

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

The problem with searching for "Fordham Yard" is that you get a lot of football articles about Fordham University :-).

While I was searching for IC roundhouses in the Chicago area, I came across a big blob of tracks between 83^rd and 90^th Streets. This surprised me for two reasons. One is that I never knew IC had a yard in this vicinity. The one I knew about was the one crossed by I-80. Second is that it looks like a big yard but it doesn't have a roundhouse. The reason there is no roundhouse here is because there are two big ones south of 95^th Street in the Burnside Shops. I never heard of this yard before because it was abandoned as a yard in 1936 when IC moved its operations to Markham Yard, which is the one crossed by I-80. (Thus it doesn't appear on any contemporary maps of Chicago railroad yards. After WWII, it was redeveloped as an industrial park (ChicagoTribune)

Below are the north and south ends of the yard in 1915.

pdf copy from 1915 Smoke Abatement Report, p. 323

pdf copy from 1915 Smoke Abatement Report, p. 330

Update: Bob Lalich Flickr 1989 Photo, C&NW -> IC transfer train YPR79 at 31st Street. A comment indicates that IC received C&NW transfers at Fordham and C&NW picked up a return cut of cars from IC's 23rd Street Yard.

Bob Lalich commented on a posting

Zaky Joseph posted
Before BNSF train M-GAL CNI (Manifest Galesberg to Canadian National Interchange) used to go to Eola, with that traffic forewarded to the J , it used to run through Chicago. Here it is, coming off the St Charles Air Line at 16th st. tower. Then the train would run to 91st st and Drexel Ave. on the former IC , where yours truly would pick up the crew and transport them to the hotel. Santa Fe gp60M and sd40-2 for power on this one.
Dennis DeBruler So Santa Fe liveries still exist 10 years after the BNSF merger (1992). I assume the train took the CB&Q route from Galesberg. It appears that 91st and Drexel is a remnant of the Fordham Yard. Where does the J take them now? All the way to Kirk Yard? Thanks for the insight as to how trains traversed the spaghetti bowl of track in the Chocagoland area.

130.  Fordham yard (now abandoned). 82nd St. end.