Jon Roma Yes – see as follows: https://play.google.com/store/books/details....
David Church In 1918, the city mandated that the Illinois Central electrify its operations by 1927. City focused on IC because it ran along the lake front. That’s as close to a steam locomotive ban the city came. Eventually, the diesel was acceptable to the city, so only the commuter lines were completely electrified. That also permitted South Shore Lind direct access to downtown Chicago.
Jon Roma To add to my comment and that of David Church, the city fathers once had a vision of banning steam power within the entire city limits, similar to the earlier New York City ordinance banning steam power within Manhattan.
An extensive study, cited above, provided details about the projected electrification, which would have involved engine change points at places like Morton Grove and near Park Ridge.
The volume produced from the study is not only interesting glimpse into "what might have been", but the text and extensive maps in the volume are a wonderful insight into operations at the time the study was produced.
Ultimately, as we know, this never got beyond the IC's electrification. Complete electrification (including ALL industrial trackage in Chicago) would likely have bankrupted the railroads. The Great Depression came, and then followed the diesel, and that was the end of that.
Daniel Herkes The elective switch to diesel was also electrification. The locomotives are small power stations providing traction and HVAC for the customer.
David H. Nelson Interesting.OK, I'll get to specifics: when did the C&NW end steam operations downtown?
David Church David H. Nelson 1956
Dennis DeBruler
I compared the resolution of Jon's copy to the one I've been using. I think the .pdf, https://ia802703.us.archive.org/.../smokeabatementel00chi..., found at https://archive.org/.../smokeabatementel00chicuoft/page/n6 is better. (I'm using the web page rather than an Android or iOS App.) But the .pdf file is 83 megabytes. I include the map index page. If you add 297 to the index number, you can get the page number in Jon's copy.
Dennis DeBruler
The conversion of home and business heating from coal to natural gas may have had more to do with cleaning up the air than converting from steam to diesel locomotives. Both conversions happened in the middle of the 20th Century. When studying old railroad photos, you get a feel for how many retail coal and/or coke dealers used to be the in the city. Did you know there was big coal and coke silos just west of Wrigley Field? Milwaukee's Chicago & Evanston branch ran between those silos and the ball park.Jon Roma I do believe I remember the silos right next to Wrigley Field.
And yes, there are multiple versions of the smoke abatement book available online. I just picked up the first link that Google returned. I'm fortunate enough to have a copy of this book. It is rather addictive!
The city had home and business use of coal heat in its sights too. The railroads were the first target because they [in the eyes of city hall] had plenty of wealth to allow them to convert, because they affected even residential neighborhoods without factories, and because the railroads were small in number compared to the other consumers of coal scattered around the city, most of whom were city residents and business owners who likely had more political support for being left alone than the railroads.
Among the largest offenders certainly had to be Commonwealth Edison, but who wanted to give up electricity even in 1915? The other big offenders would have been the steel mills and similar heavy industry, but they may also have been considered "hands off" because of the jobs they were produced. I guess the railroads' steam locomotives were considered the "low-hanging fruit" because [rightly or wrongly] they were felt to be in the best position to eliminate steam without eliminating jobs. The diesel later proved this wrong, but that's not part of this particular story.
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