strictures

As far as I'm concerned, thankfully it's just a wrap. It looks like it's going to pull a bunch of old IC Highliners.

My guess is that the conductor stood on the anti-climbers during turns, if he wasn't in one of the cars collecting fares.

I think that was me. The entrance was through the fine china department. I was always amazed no one carrying bags of Field's goods never broke anything. I used it a lot & was there when the new station house was opened in 1963.

Up to the end of the North Shore Line in 1963, there was a connection to the Outer Loop platform at Adams/Wabash through a building on the east side of Wabash. But I don't know if it had an elevator.

One reason it's empty is that it no longer has a direct connection to LaSalle St. Station. It was once easy to get there, just go down to the mezzanine & walk right into the headhouse. Now you go all the way downstairs & have to walk a block & then go back upstairs in each direction. Why not build a mezzanine level enclosed connection on one side to the Board of Trade's new building & make it easy for people. My guess is after all that, people just take a bus or walk it now.

My guess is that it will get replaced with a new set of platforms in the near future. It's a really narrow platform & some people are actually afraid to use it. It's also a long climb to the platform without a mezzanine & no elevator, so not handicapped accessible. Probably only one side at a time will get replaced.

1. Evanston was originally catenary from South Blvd. north to Linden. I remember it well. 2. I used to watch from the old Loyola platform, the North Shore conductors lean out the back door & raise the trolley pole on the Electroliners on track 1, on the curve at high speed & never miss. We used to laugh at the CTA trolley bus drivers who couldn't get their trolley poles on the wire while the bus was standing still! I believe the NSL used trolleys there because the gantlet track for the coal cars the CTA delivered to Lill Coal at Berwyn, where the Jewel now is, made the use of the third rail impossible. At one time, I believe the gantlet went past Howard, because the CTA & its predecessor delivered lumber cars to the Hines Lumber Mears Yard, where the west tracks of the Howard Yard are now. The Mears entrance was on Chicago in Evanston, just north of that last remaining building at the NE corner of Howard & Chicago. That's where my dad took me when we needed lumber in the 1950s.

Do you board at the rear door & pay a conductor, or is it just a motorman at the front? Does it still have all three doors, as the Green Hornets were the only PCC cars to have that & they were also offset on their trucks, so they could pass each other on some narrow Chicago streets.

Since Ravenswood went to 8 car trains, there's no more reason for the Evanston Expresses to stop at Wellington, Diversey, Armitage & Sedgwick. That really makes them slow & once Wilson is open, even slower.

The Inner Loop station house was rebuilt, I think in1963 & Marshall Field's paid for a big chunk of that, because at that time, there was a direct entrance to the mezzanine from the second floor of Field's [through the china department].

There's one advantage to the new seats. I'll always be able to see how many people are lining up early to get off at either my stop or downtown, so I'll never have to turn around to guess when I should stand up.

Since Mariano's gave out new loyalty cards a few weeks ago, the Mariano's site now redirects to a Kroger site. The cards will also be good at Kroger owned stores elsewhere, but no one knows if they work at Food 4 Less. The stores now have a lot of Kroger branded goods.

The reason many downtown alleys are streets is a technicality for zoning purposes. By having a "street" on at least two sides of the building, the building could be taller, under the old zoning laws of Chicago.

Since 8 is Halsted, is that what you meant, as 9 is Ashland?

Note that the old Cincinnati car doesn't have those stanchions making it impossible for fat people to adjust to width. That's the worst problem as every 5000 & every 4150 & up artic bus has empty spaces due to that. The second worst problem on the 5000s are the bums who sleep over five seats at a time.