Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Unknown Junction in Little Village Chicago: IC vs. IN vs. C&IW

Satellite
1916
I had to find an old railroad map with enough detail to show the crossing of all three railroads --- ICwest, BNSF/Santa Fe/Illinois Northern, and CN/IC/Chicago & Illinois Western (CIW).

1938 Aerial Photo from ILHAP
A 1938 photo shows that the CIW crossed the IN south of the the IC/IN crossing and then crossed the IC. The junction tower was in the northwest quadrant of the IC/IN crossing.

I made a copy of the satellite image because you can see a little bit of the IN track still left south of the IC tracks. Since the IN was allowed to be abandoned just a few years ago (when it still had two customers and two others who wanted the option of going back to rail service), it occurred to me that the "Bird's Eye View time machine" might still show the IN tracks. It does, but you can see by the access road built over the tracks that it was not used very often.

Bird's Eye View

1 comment:

  1. Here is a shot by Chris Lastovich of the Central Illinois Railway going through this junction in 2007. I believe the last time BNSF would have gone up here would have been in 2012 or 2013 at the latest.

    https://flic.kr/p/6SPAvE

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