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I know the grade starts a few feet east of Calumet Avenue and rises to the highway height at Columbia Avenue, 3 blocks east. <br />The 700s could handle it with ease with long trains, and the coal trains in the electric years would have an 800 on either end of the train. Old timers used to tell me that the power drawn by the big engines would make the catenary glow at night. <br />It's done today with a 3 or 4 geeps, but it's a trick as there's the 20mph curve at State Line, a little over a mile to the west. <br />The right of way along the Indiana Toll Road was purchased in the late 1920s when Insull first wanted an East Chicago bypass. It was to be built at ground level an the politics of East Chicago at the time, demanded a fortune to permit grade crossings with streets. When that was finally worked out the railroad didn't have the money to build the bypass. In the early '50s the Toll Road commission was looking for a right of way through the area and made a deal with the South Shore. They offered some cash and the complete construction of the bypass for the railroad for the right of way easement. The railroad agreed and when all was built including the highway half the passenger traffic disappeared. <br />If you look to your right while driving west on the toll road, just about where the railroad leaves the side of the road, you'll notice, down in the swamp, the never used trestle abutments for the original re-alignment. <br /> <br />Mitch
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