MikeF wrote:Thanks for the information! I don't suppose you'd be able to share any of your uncle's pictures?
Where was the lumber yard/parking lot in relation to the old Wood Dale station? It's hard to picture it anywhere in that area today, except perhaps just north of the station on Wood Dale Road, where the (recently closed) 7-Eleven store now stands.
I've seen a few pictures with the Hiawatha coaches at the front end of the bilevel trains. Was this just to provide extra seating before more bilevel coaches arrived in the '70s?
There's still plenty of action to be seen in Wood Dale today. In addition to a full Metra schedule, Canadian Pacific runs a daily way freight between Bensenville and Elgin, and Iowa Chicago & Eastern runs one or two daily through freight trains each way between Chicago, Bensenville and points west. Bensenville Yard was drastically downsized in the 1990s but is still a huge facility with lots of equipment to see. Unfortunately the old engine house is gone, as is the parade of power from faraway railroads that used to appear alongside Green Street. I was just old enough (i'm 21 now) to see and remember the Bensenville engine house in its last years.
Hi, sorry the pics are all slides, stored away....it would be a major pain in the ass to coordinate such an endeavour.
The lumber yard was basically the entire commuter lot south of the station(not the new part, that was all forest. All forest behind the RR tracks too, now it's ugly houses). It extended all the way to where that strip mall is now, by Irving Park. After it burned down in the 60s (I THINK), it was basically a big dirt patch, until they built the commuter station in the early 70s and parking lot. Man, I've spent a lot of time at that parking lot, we used to play baseball down there at night, watch trains during the day.
The hiawatha coaches were just used until they got more bilevels, then they were scrapped. I was told that the airconditioning in those things was freezing.
Too bad they tore down the diesel house, that was a really cool place to go. In the early 80s, Milwaukee stored hundreds of dead power there, FP7s, GP9s, FP45s, SD9s. And strings of old cabooses, and a few old passenger cars. We used to sneak in, spend the day exploring. Those Fs were BEAT.
What's the Iowa Chicago & Eastern like? One or 2 trains, wow that's not many. Have you been west of Elgin? Wonder what the track is like.
I'll see if I can find any pics for ya, not sure what I have. Do you have an email address?