strictures

There are massive rusted through holes are at the Wrightwood bridge, but it's four tracks wide & I'm not sure if the rusted out part is on one of the two operating tracks, which are north of Clybourn. But from the windows, I can see that the one track no longer used south of Clybourn, the westernmost track, is not in good condition at North Ave. & Division Street. But the Lincoln Yards project, has Metra moving Clybourn south & then the city & Metra can replace the hellishly horrible bridges over Ashland, which are from 1906-08 & make going under then a nightmare for a lot of people & especially large trucks. I assume, some sort of shoofly tracks will be required during their replacement. When I was a kid, I remember it took the C&NW a couple of years to replace the massive bridge & Ridge, Emerson & Green Bay in Evanston, about 1960.

Too many sideways seats at the 'A' end of the car. No reason that the last pair can't be turned to face forward or backwards. Even worse, the CTA will take those pairs out of some cars to allow space for the ice melting equipment, when they could install seats that flip up.

I ride the 4 from 58th to the Loop a few time a year. Every single ride, there is always someone that boards with an expired Ventra card & argues like crazy that it's good. But the 151 between the Sheridan L Station & Foster, is also truly weird. Many of the people that get on, have no idea of how to ride a bus & can't figure out using the card reader & even how to sit down. But the best thing I ever saw was about 25 years ago, on a TMC bus, in that area. The driver stopped for a man, lowered the stairlift & the man pushed a stolen Jewel shopping cart on, the driver raised the lift & he rode about a mile & got off, in the reverse manner. I called up the CTA to complain & the woman who answered was flabbergasted at that happening!

The Tribune has an article on this. Metra says they are losing $1 million a month. UP claims it's unsafe for the conductors. This just another lie from the UP in their dispute over who will actually run the trains, Metra or UP! UP refusing to collect fares for Metra

Metra is terminating or starting many of the UP-N trains that normally start/end in Kenosha, at Waukegan. Obviously this is du to the rioting.

That Faively pantograph is a lot taller than the thin trolley poles the streetcars & trolley buses had.

What I don't understand, is that all the emblems on the conductors uniforms on the UP lines, are for Metra. The only UP items they have are the company schedules & rules, although I occasionally see some employees wearing UP baseball caps & reflective vests.

I did write a week or two ago, the the actual rails on the UP-N are marked "Metra Bethlehem Steelton 115 LB 1995 /////" [I don't know what the ///// means] which can be easily read at Rogers Park in the morning when the sun illuminates just right.

I have ridden the UP-N about 8 times in the last three weeks & not once has a conductor or collector even entered a car to collect fares. Last week when I just made it to the last car, the conductor let me enter it to then pass through to the next car, but never looked at my pass. The UP is refusing to collect fares now!

There's been an operating change on the UP-N & possibly all UP lines. When I got on today, passengers weren't allowed to use the last car outbound or the head end car inbound. The sole conductor rode that car & no one checks for fares. 10 days ago, passengers were allowed on those cars, but again, no fares collected. I don't know if this is permanent & I didn't get a chance to ask the conductor what's going on.

Yeah, I was on Oakton yesterday & I can't see how a semi carrying an L car could make it through that narrowed mess & then turn into the shop.

I don't know, as I've never been on the UP-NW at the correct time when the sun highlights the manufacturer markings. But the ties at Rogers Park are falling apart, one is actually missing on Track 1, another is skewed & not 90 degrees to the rails & the ballast in between the rails has been ground up into what are known as "fines', which are no longer capable of locking the ties & rails solidly together. The ties are older than 1995, maybe mid 1980s. I wonder what happened to that massive ballast undercutter the C&NW imported from Austria in the 1980s. That machine was designed to lift the ties & rails, removed the ground up ballast & replace it with new larger ballast & then put the ties & rails back into place. That's what need there.

Metra actually owns the rails on the UP-N line. The markings on the rails at Rogers Park are: Bethlehem Steelton Metra 115 lbs 1995 Compared to the markings at Geneva, which are: Nippon Steel 136 lbs I don't remember the year for the West line rails. According to an article in Trains Magazine, the UP buys the rails from Japan in 80' lengths

TV news said one of the cars ran the red light caused the entire crash.

The NABIs out of North Shore had the weirdest A/C. Every single one I rode on, also had the hot water circulating along the walls, making it impossible to sit against the windows. But on the L trains, always sit at the B end of the car on hot days. The B end is the one without the motorman's cab & is almost always the coolest area on the train car, except on the South Side red & Green Lines, where guys selling crap are always going from car to car, screwing that up.