IC's Crawford Yard

Edward Kwiatkowski posted
Paul Webb shared

(Hawthorne Yard is West of this yard.)

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

Ed's comment:

A former Grand Trunk Western locomotive, is viewed switching at the site of the former Illinois Central Railroad's Crawford Yard, at the Chicago city limits, The Canadian National closed Crawford Yard in 2011, and removed the tracks. The large coal burning Commonwealth Edison Company's Crawford Generating Station power plant in the background, was closed in 2012.

I like this picture because it shows the Crawford generating plant while it had both smokestacks intact. Ed has a 2007 view of the yard when it still had all of its tracks and a 2008 view looking east inside the yard.

Satellite

Update: The good news is that in 2014 the yard still had a few tracks, and the ballast was fresh and weed free. The bad news is that I see loose spikes on a mainline track in the foreground, including four in a row. I appear to be close to the track because I was using a telephoto lens. In fact, I was standing at the end of South Kostner Ave.

20140928 0045

Update: Crawford used to be the main yard for the Chicago & Illinois Western. (HotTimes) That would explain why CN/IC now has two yards so close to each other on their western route.

Edward Kwiatkowski indicates "The Canadian National Railroad closed Crawford Yard and removed the yard siding tracks in 2011."

Edward Kwiatkowski has a 2007 Flickr photo of a train in the yard with a couple of IC "death star" locomotives.

Edward Kwiatkowski Flickr 2007 Photo (posted) with white exhaust coming out of both smokestacks.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Ed's posting
 The Flickr site indicates he was at West 33rd Street and South Kostner Avenue. So this would be Crawford. The Hawthorn Yard was further west between Central and Laramie Avenues. By 2014 the southern smokestack had been partially disassembled