Industrial History: Aban/CTM/Milwaukee Z-6 Bridge over the North Branch

Thursday, April 26, 2018

Aban/CTM/Milwaukee Z-6 Bridge over the North Branch

(Bridge Hunter, Historic Bridges, HAER, Patrick McBriarty's page in ChicagoArchitecture, 3D Satellite image is below)

Chicago Terminal Railroad (reporting mark CTM) ran the last train across this bridge in February, 2018. There are some photos and a video near the end of this posting about that event.

20151212 7550, cropped+30+30

3D Satellite
[You can tell the satellite image is pretty old because some Finkl Steel buildings are still standing. I saved this image because the next image Google uses probably won't have the bridge.]

In this detail, we see at the end of the girder the four of the weights that provide 56.65 tons [Chicago Architecture] of counterweight. The space between the two steel girders would be full of these weights.

Photo from HAER ILL, 16-CHIG, 120--8 from il0842

Tommy Thompson posted
Here the CT comes across the bridge
after leaving North Avenue yard. April 2012,
taken from the bridge shanty.

J Robert Burfer posted
The Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad’s Z-6 Swing Bridge. This is looking east at the swing portion. Most of the rail lines north of Cortland on Kingsbury are now abandoned. It appears that the south line to Goose Island is also abandoned.

John Foster shared
Yes, this is a swing bridge still in Chicago. It exists over the North Branch roughly one block south of Cortland Street. Built in 1899 also by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, this bobtail swing bridge is still operable due to its very low river clearance. Usually left in the open position, it is still used to move train carloads of recycling from scrap metal dealers on the east side of the river.

Mike Alteria posted ten photos with the comment: "Swing bridge on Chicago river, at Courtland & Elston....now abandoned."

Jacob Diorio posted two photos with the comment:

Thursday, February 15th marked the end of Chicago Terminal's Goose Island Branch. Here they are shown crossing the Chicago River to retrieve 5 stored reefer cars and bring them back to North Avenue Yard. Once they arrived the yard, red boards went up on the leads.
Thanks to Ben Dziechciowski for loaning me a few of his pictures. They were supposed to run Wednesday when I was up there but couldn't due to bridge problems.

Brett Rydzon No more cars on Cherry St.???
Jacob Diorio Nope, these reefers were the last on the entire line

Dennis DeBruler Now I think the scrap yard is the only other thing that Sterling Bay has to kick out of the area to complete their gentrification and make the gridlock even worse. (When I went down there to get pictures of the Z-2 bridge, the traffic lights on North Avenue were green as far as you could see, but no one was moving except for an Uber car illegally using a right turn lane and then jamming back into the through traffic at the intersection.) https://www.google.com/.../@41.9161156,-87.../data=!3m1!1e3
Doug Kaniuk Sipi Metals has been sold to developers and is in the poecess of closing/moving out. The line is dead, CTM and the city are in negotiation for turning the rail into a trail. here is the filing: https://www.stb.gov/.../2b35e86915113ca1852582350063f922...

[On the one year anniversary of this post, more photos and links have been added. Please click the link and scroll through the comments.]

Rod LaFleur posted two photos and a video of the bridge closing for the last time. I assume it closed a lot faster back when it all of its copper wires.

From last week [posted Feb 26. 2018] for the “Train-a-philes.” One of the last swing bridges in the world made what was probably its last movement for a locomotive to come retrieve some box cars and move them over the North Branch of the Chicago River. The locomotive was diesel powered and the bridge was powered by a gas generator, since someone stole all the copper wire that once fed the hydraulic motors. Video of the bridge closing also included.