What Pennsy called 12th Street was really B&OCT Rockwell Street where the B&OCT crossed both C&NW and Pennsy/Panhandle/Chicago & Great Eastern (C&GE) and C&NW Taylor Street where the C&NW and C&GE crossed each other to switch sides in the corridor.
The B&OCT Rockwell Street junction was important when passenger trains were still running because both the Wisconsin Central and the Chicago Great Western used this B&OCT route to access Grand Central Station. WC built the route with Northern Pacific's funding because NP wanted to use the WC to access the Chicago market. (By the time this route was built, Chicago was forcing new railroads to share a route into the city to reduce the city being cut up by railroads. NP had to buy and tear down a lot of buildings to build this route.) But the NP went bankrupt in the panic of 1893, and B&O bought a lot of NP's Chicago assets and created the B&OCT to own those assets. This route is now abandoned because 1) CGW no longer exists, 2) no passenger trains are running and Grand Central Station was quickly torn down to be a vacant lot to this day, 3) the city condemned some of the bridges between BRC and downtown, and 4) CN bought EJ&E as well as SOO/WC and uses the EJ&E rather than run trains past people's homes in Forest Park. (But the Forest Park people might be in for a surprise because CREATE B1 includes a crossover between IHB and CN tracks that would again allow CN to run trains through Forest Park to the BRC connection. I see that CREATE has given up trying to maintain a project status map. So I don't know if B1 is done yet.)
There were a lot fewer tracks in Bob Lalich Flickr 1987 Photo of a C&NW train, but still a lot more tracks than there are today.
The B&OCT Rockwell Street junction was important when passenger trains were still running because both the Wisconsin Central and the Chicago Great Western used this B&OCT route to access Grand Central Station. WC built the route with Northern Pacific's funding because NP wanted to use the WC to access the Chicago market. (By the time this route was built, Chicago was forcing new railroads to share a route into the city to reduce the city being cut up by railroads. NP had to buy and tear down a lot of buildings to build this route.) But the NP went bankrupt in the panic of 1893, and B&O bought a lot of NP's Chicago assets and created the B&OCT to own those assets. This route is now abandoned because 1) CGW no longer exists, 2) no passenger trains are running and Grand Central Station was quickly torn down to be a vacant lot to this day, 3) the city condemned some of the bridges between BRC and downtown, and 4) CN bought EJ&E as well as SOO/WC and uses the EJ&E rather than run trains past people's homes in Forest Park. (But the Forest Park people might be in for a surprise because CREATE B1 includes a crossover between IHB and CN tracks that would again allow CN to run trains through Forest Park to the BRC connection. I see that CREATE has given up trying to maintain a project status map. So I don't know if B1 is done yet.)
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| Image from RailFanGuides |
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| 1938 Aerial Photo form ILHAP |
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| Satellite |
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| Bob Lalich Flickr This photo shows the multiple crossings of the CTT/B&OCT, CNW and PRR Panhandle near 14th and Rockwell shortly after the railroads were elevated. Note what appears to be an interlocking tower on the left and a signal bridge in the distance. I thought these crossings had always been non-interlocked and the connections were manned by switchtenders on the CNW and B&OCT but this photo may indicate otherwise. At the time of the photo, passenger trains were running on this part of the Panhandle using the north end of the old Union Station. |
There were a lot fewer tracks in Bob Lalich Flickr 1987 Photo of a C&NW train, but still a lot more tracks than there are today.
Pennsy's 12th Street Junction = C&NW Taylor Street plus B&OCT Rockwell Street
Reviewed by Unknown
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July 26, 2018
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Reviewed by Unknown
on
July 26, 2018
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