strictures

Illinois law prohibits anyone with a CCW permit to carry on the CTA or Metra. Only the cops can be armed on buses & trains.

Metra has just announced new schedules taking effect July 12 or July 19 on the Rock Island New Metra Schedules Especially nice are all the new Pilot Schedules for the following lines that will have non-rush trains every 30 minutes! UP North Pilot Schedule, effective July 12 New BNSF Pilot Schedule effective July 12 New Metra Electric Pilot Schedule effective July 12 New Rock Island Pilot Schedule effective July 19

Some of the villages that have Metra grade crossings have imposed speed limits. Fox River Grove did after the school bus crash, which was 100% the fault of the school bus driver. I believe one or two towns on the UP West also have some speed limits. There is a question as to whether a local government can even legally impose speed limits, but Metra appears to not want to go to court & challenge them.

I actually saw a Metracide 11 years ago at Edgebrook. A few weeks ago, got stopped by a 160 car mixed freight on the Milwaukee North Line at Oakton. I took about 7 minutes to pass by. No big deal.

There are some really weird street naming plans. For example, the E/W streets from Bryn Mawr to Devon are named after train stations on the Philadelphia Main Line.

The Brennan Plan, which renumbered Chicago street addresses, also was to change their suffixes & even many names. Edward Brennan wanted N/S streets to be Avenues & Courts. E/W street were to be Streets & Places. You see the first in Cicero, which never changed the numbered Avenues & Courts to names & the second on the South Side. Brennan is the one who renamed the N/S number streets starting with 40th Ave. & going west. 40th Ave. became Crawford Ave. & then a mile of "K" streets, then a mile of "L" streets, a mile of "M" streets, a mile of "N" streets, a mile o

It was South Park Way, one of three streets with Way as the suffix, if you include Broadway. Broadway has no suffix to it, although a few places, like Gary do add Street to Broadway's name, meaning they don't understand the original name of Broad-Way The other was Silverton Way, a one block street connecting Cermak to 23rd at McCormick Place. But South Park Way's original name was Grand Blvd.

They should make them look like the Pennsy GG1s

I was told by a Metra exec, they are seriously thinking of service every half hour middays on the UPN soon. They are also want to eliminate the 2 hour break in service each morning on the UPN, since that's a vestige of when both Tempel Steel & S&C Electric had freight service from the Northwestern. There's isn't any freight traffic on the UPN south of Lake Bluff anymore, because the service out of the North Ave. Yard is totally on its own track, east of the tracks Metra uses. Those few freight cars that go in & out of North Ave., are brought in overnight & never interfere w

Today I saw a round red sign with the letter "E" in white, on top of the CTA bus stop sign for the 147 & 151 at the SE corner of Sheridan & Bryn Mawr. Anyone know what it means?

Potbelly & Chik-Fil-A are in the Page Bros. Building which is landmarked, as it's one of the few cast iron front buildings left downtown. The cast iron front is on the Lake St. side, as they though Lake was going to be the main shopping street downtown in the 19th Century.

The reason for the long underground walkway is due to the fact there used to be a tunnel between the Chicago Theater & the State/Lake Theater. That tunnel was eliminated by the building of the State St. subway, but there was an indent in the wall showing where it was before they redid the tile walls of the mezzanine.

While it was nice to see a video from the air of the flyover, it was way too long & full of unnecessary filler. Skip to the 2:00 minute mark & ignore the beginning. As for completion, it's obvious the rails aren't even connected & in most places spiked down or clipped down. I never understood why the CTA when the rebuilt the Belmont Station, didn't include a stub at the north end of track 4 for the future connection.

I also didn't realize Hoyne was replaced by Damen, which is the logical place, as there's a bus on Damen. But then Lake St. never had a stop at Western, it was at Oakley, again a weird choice.

Shows you how long it's been since I went past 18th St. When was Kildare replaced by Kostner as a stop?