Chicago - October 8-10, 2007

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I had some personal business to take care of in Chicago and expected to be there a couple of days. I ended up having to spend two more days, with one day of downtime in the middle - not a bad thing in Chicago, even when the weather takes a sudden turn toward late fall.

Jarvis Beach, Rogers Park

Dogs know all about unbridled enthusiasm!

Following Jarvis from the beach to the Red Line station

"This is a Red Line train to Howard. Transfer to Purple Line and Yellow Line trains at Howard."

"This is Howard. Transfer to Purple Line and Yellow Line trains at Howard."
The train in the center distance is a Yellow Line train returning from Dempster

Howard Street is the transfer point between Red Line Trains to/from downtown Chicago, Purple Line trains to/from Linden (Evanston), Yellow Line (Skokie Swift) trains to/from Dempster and several CTA and PACE bus lines. Howard is undergoing long-needed major reconstruction.

Looking out the back window of a train departing Howard southbound for the Loop. The color bands on the right side of the images are the result of interaction between a tempered glass window and the polarizing filter on my camera lens.

There's a stretch of Devon that's interestingly multi-ethnic. Here, groups that are at each other's throats halfway around the world are coexisting, working and shopping side-by-side. Quite a few of the shops have multi-lingual signage, and some grocers sell items favored by multiple ethnic groups.
To get there, transfer to the 155 Devon bus at Morse or Loyola (Red Line). You'll know when you've reached the right area by the colorful signs and spicy, savory food aromas. I think things start to get interesting around the 2000 block.

I suppose Ramadan is why things were pretty quiet on Devon and a lot of shops weren't open during the afternoon. Regardless, it's still a colorful place despite the chilly, windy weather that overnight replaced sunny skies and warm weather.

"ATTERNEY AT LAW"

No matter what ethnicity or religion, we all need and share infrastructure. Some updating going on here.

If I recall correctly, the Russian businesses are sort of clustered around the intersection of Devon with California.

Widely-acclaimed Georgian bakery

Time for a bus back to Loyola and a transfer to a northbound Red Line train for some more rail touring. I prefer Loyola over Morse for the transfer, because Loyola is a nicer station with shops and restaurants around it. Morse is less pleasant.

Time out for a rant.

I'm accustomed to rail illiteracy in news and entertainment media, where writers with no understanding of or interest in railroad history or technology write senseless stuff and refer to anything on rails, even a rotting wood-decked flatcar at the end of a weed-choked, long-abandoned siding, as a "train" or describe commuter electrics as "chugging," but I'd expect a museum or historical organization to have at least one person on board who knows and loves trains, or at least a friend who could edit stuff for them.
It completely baffles me how this transit card/poster could get past anyone with even a superficial knowledge of trains. It's not an obscure or insignificant mistake. While it's true that the Golden State Limited first ran in 1902 - pulled by a steam locomotive and running with heavyweight coaches - it didn't get diesel locomotives and lightweight streamlined cars until 1947 or 1948. The first streamlined EMD diesel-electric locomotives rolled out in the late 1930s, but because of World War II, they didn't become commonplace on most railroads until the Post-WWII era.

OK. I'm calm now.

I didn't add any photos from my change of trains at Howard, because I already covered Howard Street. I'm on a Purple Line train headed for to Linden Avenue and back. Some of these have some blur, because the train was moving fairly fast and swaying some, and the light was poor.

On the return trip to Howard, I think this is Davis. It looks like one of the more impressive CTA station structures.

Back at Howard I transferred to a Yellow Line train shown here at Dempster. The Yellow Line runs express (no intermediate stops) to Dempster following the former route of the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad, an electric interurban line that operated until the early 1960s with some trains capable of 80 - 90mph speeds. I don't know what the running speed is for the Yellow Line trains, but they move along pretty briskly. On the previous generation of cars, the wind used to whistle around the windows.

Indoor bike parking! What will they come up with next? I've been delighted to see transit systems make the transition over the past several years from being outright bike-hostile to bike-embracing.

A train lays over behind the fence near the bus transfer area at Dempster.

A Venti Caramel Macchiato at Starbucks in the beautiful 1925 North Shore interurban station provided a welcome respite from the cold wind.

The North Shore right-of-way is still very visible north of the station.

Until the 1990s, I think, the CTA trains still operated under catenary north of Prairie Avenue. They left Howard running on third rail, and made the switch to pantograph at speed. Some years ago CTA fenced the right-of-way and converted the whole line to third rail, but the catenary bridges still stand.

Transit ridership is growing on most sytems and people are asking for more and better service, and the elected officials still haven't gotten the message. They hold to their conviction that public transit should make a profit while competing with the streets, roads and expressways that government agencies continue to pour tax dollars into. It's crazy that while gas prices rise dramatically, some big systems are being forced to cut service and some smaller ones are shutting down altogether. I'll stop now, before this turns into another rant.

Last day - done with all my stuff, I was waiting for my South Shore train to Indiana at the 57th Street Metra Electric station when a northbound freight rumbled past. One time I saw an outbound Amtrak train pass here, but it all happened too fast for me to get my camera out of my backpack.

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