Daily Life along the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad

And some more goodies:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Regards,

GNNPNUT

GOOD STUFF!!!

 

Rusty

The book is available on ABEBOOKS.

 

Granger Country, by Lewis, Lloyd and Pergolis

 

ChipR

Wow! The quality of those photos is stunning, like someone went back in time with a digital camera!

 

 

The photos are indeed very high quality. That Euclid hauler is way cool. A Bantam crane similar the one shown in the "unloading limestone" shot is available, incidentally.

         

     Bantam Crane on a White WC22 Truck

1:50 scale           $99.95
Features include: • Made of die-cast metal • Accurate 1:50 scale • Crane pivots 360 degrees • Truck has half cab and tandem rear wheels • Truck has opening door and chrome accents • Operating boom • Functioning clamshell • Produced by SpecCast.  
Approx. dimensions are as follows: Height: 8"; Boom: 8 1/2" long;  Cab height: 2 1/2"; Cab width: 5".

Excellent photos!  Thanks for the info.

 

Chris

A McCormick Farmall (IH International Harvester) flat.





We had done this on the farm, Sunday milk.  I had not seen a picture of this, I believe the equipment is still on the farm, stored somewhere.  A centrifugal separator. The smaller stream is cream and the larger stream is skim milk.  Great pictures.

Thank you,

Mike CT

Is this to be a book?..or just a photo collection? I live about a mile from the Aurora roundhouse where my grandfather worked{he started at Eolas}. 

 

Nice pics of when the Aurora train station was still up...went down a few months ago and is leveled due to the roof collapsing before they could get historical approval{funds}...I saved a few souvenirs though{2}...

This is a  wondeful collection, essential for steam-era/diesel transition modellers. Here's an interesting CB&Q tidbit: guess where the most easterly live stock pen was located on the CB&Q? The "Q" had 1000's of pens, located all over the system, in virtually every farm town across 14 states. Most easterly pen?  Lisle, IL, right in the more or less middle of the Chicago-Aurora commuter mainline, a product of the days when Lisle was still a farm town. Today it is another bedroom suburb of Chicago.

Dang!  And I have a short in my time machine; it keeps pushing me forward!  May have to get that book!  Grain elevators galore, sugar silos, railroad stations....You can

still approximate that shot of Angora, Neb., (which I can't find on my road atlas) at

another little town that I stopped at (when I saw elevator sticking up along I-80).  Not this town, but it has a row of similar stores, a railroad station across from them, and a similar elevator. (another photo of the same elevator in the group is misidentified)

Just spectacular!!!

 

Thanks for bringing those to our attention.

And it seems odd that MARX used CB&Q loaded 8 wheel deluxe flats.  One had tractors on it! 

Yes, some of those cars and buildings are begging to be modeled.  The travctor switcher looks like a scene John Aleen would have created!

Hi Mark:

 

Not sure about the stock pen.  I remember one at Clyde yard when I was growing up, around 1962.  I remember the Baldwin blackbirds switching the west end, and the stock pen on the south west side of the yard.  If you go to Historic Aerials at:

 

http://www.historicaerials.com/aerials.php?op=home

 

and type in Cicero, IL, and position the screen so that you have Lombard Ave. and 31st street, the pens were between 60th and 61st street.  I can see them on the 1962 map, which is about the time I remember, I don't know if they are there in the 1951 view. 

 

I definitely remember the stench, and that wasn't a wafting smell from the Union stockyards, they were a fair bit away, and southeast of this location.  I think they occasionally had to water the cattle there before they moved them over to Union to bonk them on the head, and turn them into steak.

 

BTW, while I'm reminiscing about cattle, does anybody remember when the IHB bridge collapsed over the Desplaines river around this time?  There were stock cars on the head end, and they went into the drink.  I seem to remember the motive power just cleared the bridge (the usual IHB SWs or NWs), and the cattle cars were right behind the motive power.  IIRC, some of the cattle got out of the cars, and went for a swim to the banks, where they were rounded up.

 

Regards,

Jerry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Replace the tractor with a dinosaur. 

Some other favs from this collection:

 

 

 

 

 

Mark, these are the Baldwins I remember working Clyde.  I can't tell if this photo is at Clyde, it may be at Western Ave. 

 

 

A nice view of a coal tipple in southern Illinois.  A string of these cars, with a 3rd Rail texas on the front end would look mighty fine.   Hey Hot, you need some Q coal cars.   

 

 

According to the caption on this photo, this photo is shot at Clyde yard in Cicero.  If so, this would have been on the west end if that is the Chicago skyline in the background.  About 13 years later, the west end of Clyde was my favorite place to visit with my parents for a few minutes of watching trains. 

 

Regards,
Jerry

D'ya think OSHA would go tilt nowadays with that guy walking along the cable between

the railcars and the tractor?  If that cable went sproing!, I'd want to be out of range,

to include the guy on the tractor, who I'd want shielded. 

Jerry/gnnpnut - Took the info about the stock pen in Lisle, IL from the Burlington Route Historical Society publication No. 25, "Stock cars and livestock traffic", p. 34, a reprint from the 1937 "Burlington Official Shippers Guide and Directory". The facility had 2 pens and a 2 car capacity. Rather suspect it was gone by the early '50's. No pens were listed for Cicero/Clyde. Maybe they were constructed during WW II? Of course there was a pretty good sized stock facility in Montgomery, IL (just outside Aurora) in which I believe the railroad assisted stock shippers in fattening up their cattle prior to sale at the Chicago Stock Yards.

       

..and if you are looking for a few first person accounts of the daily life on the CB&Q you might find these interesting:

 

Burlington Route Depot Life by Carryl E. Hadcock

 

Prairie stationmaster : the story of one man's railroading career in Nebraska 1917-1963 by Barbara B. Clayburn

love these historical images as they tell a great story of previous years and assist us in modeling scenes.

 

 

Wow! The quality of those photos is stunning, like someone went back in time with a digital camera!

 

 

Rick

 

"Back in time" 4x5 sheet film negatives were used by the standard press camera of the day, the Speed Graphic.  In the 1950s and 60's photographers moved to medium format (2 1/4" roll film) and miniature format (35 mm) cameras.

 

In the future I think we will look at the era between the Speed Graphic and digital cameras as the dark age of photography.

 

GNNPnut

 

Thanks for posting these fantastic photos!

 

 

 

Another superb CB&Q reminiscence is Joseph C. Hardy's "Burlington Route West - A Personal Journey". Joe was a dispatcher in Alliance, NE and started with the Q in the mid '40's, bouncing all around the real "Everywhere West" part of the Burlington, as a Brakeman and fill-in Depot Agent. He worked all across WY, CO, NE, SD, including the Black Hills, where he worked on Mallet-powered freights. Great photos, wonderful reminiscences. Published by South Platte Press; alas, currently out of print.

Another good book, just slightly off subject, is Living in the Depot: The Two-Story Railroad Station by H. Roger Grant.

 

ChipR