What is now the Cottage Grove station of the Chicago Transit Authority. It may have had a different name during CRT "L" days. It is the terminal of the eastern branch of the Southside Elevated. The yard there gave storage mid-day between rush hours for North Shore equipment. This practice continued even after passenger service was cut back to Roosevelt Rd., sometime during the 1930s.
Question as requested: What was the southernmost point served by the Chicago North Shore &Milwaukee?
Absolutely correct. Also, the joinht AT&SF - D&RGW trains, AT&SF only Raton - Pueblo, then joint Pueblo - Colorasdo Springs - Denver, occasionally handled RI cars between Colorado Springs and Denver, when passenger counts to-and-from Denver and to-and-from the Springs required shifting a coaches and/or sleepers, with the D&RGW doing the job for less than what the cost to RI would have been (or possibly much less time) to shift via Limon.
My riding all these services in the 60s was do to work on a Denver church, the Air Force Academy Chapel, and the Broadmore Hotel's Activities Center. And my sister Lillian lived in Aroura, my niece Carol in Denver
CSS's questions are invariacly interesting, and I look forward to his next,
Making things more interesting for travelers, the Rocket used the D&RGW station in both directions, the Zephyr cars (riding the Royal Gorge) arrived at the D&RGW station southbound, departed from the AT&SF station about 7/8 of a mile away northbound.
The answer is the "Denver Zephyr". Through cars to Colorado Springs were forwarded by D&RGW from Denver.
Not leaving the general area, The Rock Island's Rocky Mountain Rocket served both Denver and Colorado Springs directly from Chicago, both sleepers and coaches. What was the competition?
The Burlington's Fast Mail carried RPO and storage mail to the Union Pacific connection at Council Bluffs. In later years it was combined with the Nebraska Zephyr, the long, heavy train trailed by the NZ's articulated train sets, with the mail cars backed into Union Station aas passengers boarded. The NZ ran as a separate train eastbound. Because the mail traffic was much heavier westbound, most of the eastbound cars were carried in freight trains.
As on other railroads, the Fast Mail was about the hottest thing out there.
Nebraska Zephyr?
Aksarben Zephyr?
One of which was combined with "California Service" three times a week in late 1969 or in1970, which did contine to Denver and the Rio Grande Zephyr initiallly to Ogden but then only Salt Lakr City and Van or taxi connection bto Ogden --- up to Amtrak in 1971.
The train only ran to Omaha...
Then the railroad is either the CB&Q or the RI, but the RI did not really compete with the UP and even relied on trackage riughts on the UP to reach Denver, with its own main terminating at Colorado Springs.
The CZ was not the CB&Q's signature train, as was the DZ, so the DZ must be it.
I do know that the Q did handle a lot of mail west from Chicago.
The railroad I'm looking for competed directly with UP to points further west than Omaha.
The train #15 was later combined with ran as train #11 until the mail contract was lost.
Illinois Central
Land-o-Corn
I wasn't a railroad normally associated with the Overland route.
Overland Limited?
This railroad's train 15 carried much of the mail to Union Pacific at Council Bluffs. The train was later combined with one of the railroad's signature trains.
Good. O&CB used the same system. Next question.
The brake on the TARS/O&CB cars is pedal-operated. When the pedal is up the brakes are fully applied. Brakes are released when the pedal is fully depressed. Since the brakes are self-lapping the pedal position controls the amount of braking in effect. Doors are push-button operated, and won't open unless the car is stopped. The reverser position controls which doors open. The controller is an otherwise-standard K-35 with an LB-2A line switch for start-stop control without pulling an arc on the K controller fingers. When the brakes are applied, the line switch cuts out regardless of the controller position.
TARS 631 has no control for a reed-type switch contactor. I suspect TARS used isolated sections of the conduit rail as contactor segments. It's also possible the controls were removed during the car's time in Vienna.
631 us third asvenue tranait, and Rc ia correct that O&CB copued TATS-TARS control system exactly. Would he like to give the detailed explanation?
Got to be the brake stand and controller interlocks. I haven't run Seashore's 631 in quite a long time (it's been out of service with motor bearing issues). It was set up to be run while seated. The door controls were tied into the the key position.
Give-away hint: O&CB followed the practice of only one other system, and exanmples from the other system do survive in trolley museums, incliding Seashore.
You jumped the track; that was not the issue.
Study the car's equipment, Not the trolley poles.
And, yes there were Ohio Brass contactors that worked with both trolley-wheels and streetcar carbon-insert shoes.
The shoes the North Shore used were different and may have provided a probklem even then.
If you had ridden the carsm you would know the answer. Ditto inside any preserved in operating condition.
But many people that did not know the system are surprised by the facts.
And there were second-hand work cars that would not have had the problem.
Most of the O&CB's cars were single-ended. Like many companies, they equipped single-ended cars with trolley wheels instead of shoes (O&CB's double-ended Birneys had shoes). Wheels don't consistently trip trolley contactors.
You are on the right track. Study the Omaha & Council Bluffs rolling stock, and complete the answer and ask the next question.
I guess it depends on which type of switch actuators they used. Magnetic read actuators were often pedal-actuated. O & CB cars, at least later ones, used foot actuated brakes where the brake was released by full depression of the pedal (New York's TARS used the same system on many cars. Actuating the pedal would have left the operator in a dangerous position (TARS cars had hand-actuated gongs for the same reason).
Trolley contact actuators would require passing the actuator with power on or off, depending on which way the switch was to be set. Use of contact actuators may have been rejected, considering that the grades in Omaha, at least, were steep enough that cable traction was used at one point.
Hint:
If they had employed normal streetcar electric switches, they would have worked, but safety would have been compromised.
The Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway could not employ electrictrack swithces. Why?
KCPS did a fairly profitable freight business until the late 1950s. Among other notable things about their operations was one of the last "interurban-style" steeple cab freight motors built by GE.
Kansas City Public Service.
I did mean passenger service. The 9th Avenue El didn't handle much freight.
Some transit systems did handle freight. Chicago Rapid Transit/CTA's service (for the Milwaukee Road) was well known. In one case an interstate transit sytem had about 10 miles of freight trackage, that was all in one of its states, with direct interchange to four class one railroads and an interurban (that did run to the other state).
Big hint - it was west of the Mississippi, and some of the freight operations were near a country club.
I'll assume you mean passenger service and state that you are the winner. Freight service did survive well past the end of the Polo Grounds Shuttle. Look forward to your question.
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