Well ... I did watch The Blue Brothers a few times. So gather 'round and I'll tell you all about Chicago's economic geography ...
You could spend a lifetime just learning the railroad history of the Chicago area.
Years ago, probably in Trains, I read an old saw ... that hogs could ride from coast to coast in the same car ... but passengers had to change trains in Chicago.
... So I knew that there were a 'few' passenger terminals there and I just started buying Chicago station postcards when I saw them.
This post started off as four postcards and a century-old map. However, I found a nice image (far below) of a station which was not in my postcard collection. I also went to archive.org and, of course, hit the jackpot by entering the search terms Chicago and railroad.
... There were commissions working to develop a more rational system of terminals for Chicago back in 1915. I'd guess that the harbor, the first settlement and regional agriculture developed first ... businesses developed to meet local needs, industries located there, and then railroads came along. Many of the early US railroads were regional and Chicago was where they terminated for economic and geographic reasons. Everyone wanted to be beside the harbor.
In Canada, we had a series of portage railways, then regional railways ... before having a railway from tidewater to tidewater became an act of nation building which was facilitated and guided by government.
Comparable in many ways to Chicago, Montreal was Canada's railway metropolis. In 1929, the federal department of Railways and Canals received a report commissioned by the minister: Report on Railway Terminal Facilities at Montreal.
Everyone was looking for a better way to organize railways in urban settings.
... While many of us like to visit railway tracks, few of us would survive if we tried to get our family members to live by the tracks on a full-time basis. Reducing the noise, coal smoke and risk of being struck by a train ... were some of the things which early urban planning engineers worked on.
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Most of the Chicago stations were in a cluster. If you find the mouth of the Chicago River, you can find your place on any of the maps shown below.
Helpful spotting/orientation features:
Notice the location of the word 'Chicago', and the harbor breakwater on the map below.
This is at the mouth of the the Chicago River.
From its mouth, the Chicago River splits into the North and South Branches.
Most of the passenger stations (terminals) are located between the South Branch and that breakwater.
On some maps, the shore at that location is shown as 'U.S. Grant Park' (named in 1901). Apparently, the Illinois Central got permission to build tracks along the shore at the park.
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| from: Preliminary Report, Chicago Railway Terminal Commission, 1915. at archive.org |
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| from: Preliminary Report, Chicago Railway Terminal Commission, 1915. at archive.org |
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For even more Chicago railroad fun, consider that Standard Time did not always exist.
... In addition to resetting your watch to local solar (determined at noon) time when you left your train ... it was a general practice, and a matter of company pride, that each railroad had its 'own time' based on the solar time at its head office or some other standard it chose. It was at Chicago where all of these 'times' met.
... As a transferring traveller, your Chicago arrival time on Railroad A (eg. perhaps based on Montreal solar time) had a good chance of not being on the same 'time system' published by Railroad B for your departure (eg. perhaps based on Chicago solar time) ... as you raced between terminals to make your connection.
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Here are some postcards of Chicago railroad stations.
The number references apply to the large city map from 1923 which follows the postcards.
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| Number 6 on map. |
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| Number 3 on map. |
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| Number 5 on map. |
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| Number 4 on map. |
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| from: New World Atlas; 1923; PF Collier & Son. |
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| from: Trains; January 1950; Kalmbach. |
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| from: Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad Co. map showing property of railroads in the business center of Chicago at ... archive.org ... https://archive.org/details/x998645678805867 |