This is a great video, camera facing steadily west, apparently taken c. 1946-48 from either a PRR or (pre-GM&O) Alton passenger train about to arrive at Chicago Union Station. The string of FOM-liveried PRR cars is on the south leg of the wye formed by the Burlington main line arriving from the west teeing against the north/south PRR/Alton lines that will entering the station together. This handy-dandy wye (using the Burlington main line) was AFIK used by all railroads at CUS (save the Milwaukee) to turn their trains and still is by Amtrak.

In a relatively recent year, I was on board and actually at the helm of a Lake Michigan-bound yacht, the height of which required the very bridge across the Chicago River depicted in the video to be raised for clearance to pass under. I cringed when I noted that we had stabbed the outbound Amtrak Lake Shore Limited in the process! (the train crew on the ground was on the ground watching us pass by).

The steel open platform Burlington cars (replete with hard turnover rattan seats) were THE standard commute cars on the Aurora commute lines. I spent a childhood lifetime on these cars, freezing in the winter, and roasting in the summer, ashes and the occasional spark from the antique CB&Q 4-6-2s ahead wafting in through the open windows leaving one commonly filthy when stepping off in CUS. The old tea kettles could really get up and move on this superb trackwork when allowed to do so.

These cars were then rebuilt soon after the war by the Burlington with closed vestibules and some sort of crude cooling, as a recall, (to be then be themselves then replaced the beautiful and iconic Budd double deckers about 1952 onwards.

One of the most odd, and most sad memories I have was an eastbound mid-day Chicago-bound commute local (with an RPO and baggage being worked) trailed by several open platform coaches stopping patiently at the Riverside, IL depot c. 1949, the motive power a recently demoted still handsome and shiny shovel-nosed EMD/Budd Zephyr locomotive nosed right up to the Riverside Road village grade crossing. How the mighty had fallen, and how fortuitous it was that the weather required no train heat (these locomotives had NO steam generators for train heat). In the background out of sight somewhere was a recently sadly-retired 4-6-2 itself now indirectly replaced by a brand new E-7.

This has brought up a lot of good memories.

Denny

Denny S. Anspach MD
Okoboji, IA

  Though I DID groan at the mention of Facebook,  however I like Chicago history and so looked at the link to the video which did open.


  Some Googling of the names on the warehouses and buildings gave the following data: 
The train appears to be on the Pennsylvania Railroad 

Opening - Building in background at 00:7 seconds is Cuneo Press, https://www.rpwrhs.org/w/index.php?title=Cuneo_Press   lists this at 22nd and Clinton near the Chicago river, so that is about where the video starts     https://www.flickr.com/photos/86125374@N00/2828020279    read comments on the link. 

At 31 seconds it looks like the photographer is between Cermak Road and the South Branch of the Chicago River. (21st Street?)  Google Maps lists this as PRR Bridge 463. 
Did you see the AT&SF Grand Canyon Line paint on the bridge?  As we cross the river that could be Canal street bridge opened. 

At 1:14 it appears that this is the CB&Q line from the west coming on. Note the two nicely ballasted tracks under the signal bridge.  How different it is today. 

At 1:28 into the video Crooks Warehouse, more here https://www.flickr.com/photos/52209513@N03/33910105995     and here   http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2017/03/bnsfcb-chicago-commuter-train-yard.html    Read the comment on second photo down by Bryan Howell , however the overriding gist is that we are looking at the Zephyr pit area by this time into video. 
Crooks Warehouse Terminal was listed as 14th Place which would put it, just north of the Q & PRR lines merging. 
Wish more of the Q engine facilities were visible at about 1:32 to 1:40, looking above the cars finds some notable markers. 

The presence of Pennsy cars is found by this link when Googling Crooks Warehouse Chicago  https://explore.chicagocollections.org/image/uic/59/0p0ww5w/

Where the video ends?  Not sure if that is the fabled Roosevelt Road overpass at the end. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                             Jim Dick            St Paul, MN 

--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

Friends,

This is obviously shot along the CB&Q, as most of the equipment is theirs (I did note a PRR round-roof boxcar). The buildings seem vaguely familiar from my trips on Amtrak into or out of Union Station--some I think some of the structures still standing, though nearly all are empty.

Yours Aye,


Garth Groff

 

Cool video,  so many neat modeling ideas in there.

Scott McDonald

Forgotten Chicago

    Interesting in the amount of old/older cars one see's in the video.  Too bad it couldn't be slowed down or maybe it's just my old eyes.

-- 
Jon Miller
For me time stopped in 1941
Digitrax  Chief/Zephyr systems, 
SPROG, JMRI User
NMRA Life member #2623
Member SFRH&MS

Forgotten Chicago

For those of you who have Facebook (Yes, I hear your groans of disapproval) here is a short film shot from a train passing through Chicago's rail yards and industrial areas in the 1940s:

https://www.facebook.com/Charingx/videos/10155451305567465/

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA