Thanks Zit and everyone for the great info and memories. Zit - you are a plethora of historical information. Good stuff... I'm going to have a more accurate model railroad as a result.
Many thanks...
Green Bay Paddlers wrote: Thanks Zit and everyone for the great info and memories. Zit - you are a plethora of historical information. Good stuff... I'm going to have a more accurate model railroad as a result. Many thanks...
Well, we tries to do our homework.
I've lived within whistle range of the Q for most of my life. Its history continues to fascinate me.
A couple of extra notes...
The Chicago & Galena Union originally wanted to lay tracks through Naperville, which was the county seat of Dupage at the time. Naperville said no to the railroad. The C&GU laid tracks from River Forest west through Wheaton, which later became the county seat of Dupage County, to Turner Junction (W. Chicago). Naperville didn't say no to the next railroad that wanted to build through the town.
Just a guess on this one... If Aurora still had a run-thru passenger station Amtrak still would have moved to the Naperville station by the mid 90's anyway because of the population boom in the Fox Valley area.
Sorry about the weird formatting... I just updated something on my computer and now my formatting is shot... Everything just runs together in one big paragraph and I'm not sure why yet. Also, I don't have options when replying such as smiley faces, text size, etc. The only way that I could format was to put each paragraph into a seperate quote box.
Chris30 wrote:Sorry about the weird formatting... I just updated something on my computer and now my formatting is shot... Everything just runs together in one big paragraph and I'm not sure why yet. Also, I don't have options when replying such as smiley faces, text size, etc. The only way that I could format was to put each paragraph into a seperate quote box.
I think that you should be able to use 'shift-enter' instead of just 'enter' to create line breaks and therefore paragraph formatting.
Chris30 wrote:The Chicago & Galena Union originally wanted to lay tracks through Naperville, which was the county seat of Dupage at the time. Naperville said no to the railroad. The C&GU laid tracks from River Forest west through Wheaton, which later became the county seat of Dupage County, to Turner Junction (W. Chicago). Naperville didn't say no to the next railroad that wanted to build through the town.
The Naperville business community turned down the RR because it had just invested heavily in a plank road that ran from Chicago through Naperville to Oswego [along the current route of Ogden Avenue (Route 34)]. The stagecoaches traveling between Galena and its lead mines and Chicago all stopped at Naperville. But after only a few years, the plank stagecoach and wagon road was in poor condition due to lack of maintenance thanks to low traffic -- and few tolls to support upkeep. Plus, the 2-inch thick oak planks that weren't rotting kept disappearing at night and often magically reappeared as part of new home construction in the suddenly-booming area.
The C&GURR asked to buy a strip of land from a few farmers in the Wheaton. They were so thrilled the RR was to run through their area and would take their farm and dairy products to market in Chicago, they provided the ROW for free.
At that time, Naperville was the DuPage County seat and after the G&CU RR caused Wheaton to explode as a town, there was a lot of pressure to move the county government to Wheaton. One night, a group from Wheaton made a clandestine midnight soiree to raid the county building in Naperville and steal the records. When many of Naperville's male population became enraged at this heinous act, they gathered en masse a day later at the Pre-Emption House [tavern] in downtown Naperville to make plans for a midnight raid on Wheaton to recapture the records.
Hoping to prevent a war, a couple of peaceful Naperville town leaders brought into the meeting casks of whiskey and rum from the local distillery and the free likker began flowing. Within a few hours, the uprising was defused when the raiding party got too drunk to make the trip.
Of course, when the CB&Q asked to run its railroad through Naperville from Aurora about ten years later, Naperville jumped at the chance and the rest, as they say, is history.
On April 26, 1946, Naperville was the site of one of the worst train accidents in history. Two CB&Q passenger trains collided in the downtown area.
Naperville train crash remembered: 47 killed, over 100 injured
By Britt Carson, Chicago Sun-Times
Calista Wehrli remembers the tragic day vividly.
On April 25, 1946, she was at her sister's house on Center Street. Her sister was getting her wedding dress hemmed, when they heard a thud. Wehrli was 20 and on leave from the Marine Corps Women's Reserve at Parris Island, S.C.
"I ran out of the house and from the porch I said, `Oh my God, there is a train sticking up in the air!' "
1946 COLLISION
It was Naperville's worst train crash. Forty-seven people died and about 125 were injured in the disaster, which made headlines across the country.
The Advanced Flyer and the Exposition Flyer had left Chicago's Union Station on different tracks at 12:35 p.m. that day.
The Advanced Flyer was en route to Nebraska and the Exposition Flyer [forerunner to the California Zephyr] was bound for San Francisco. The Burlington trains were traveling three minutes apart when they merged onto the same track a few miles outside Chicago.
Crew members of the lead train, the Advanced Flyer, reported seeing a large object shoot out from underneath one of the coaches. At 1 p.m., it made an unscheduled stop in Naperville for an inspection of the undercarriage.
Meanwhile, the Exposition Flyer was speeding along the track at an estimated 85 mph. The engineer, 68-year-old William Blaine of Galesburg, did not see the red signal lights or the red warning flag being waved frantically by the Advanced Flyer's rear brakeman.
The Exposition's fireman saw the impending disaster. He jumped from the speeding locomotive and was killed when he hit the ground.
'TAKING OUT DEAD PEOPLE'
The Exposition slammed into the Advanced Flyer.
"That last train car was peeled like a banana," Wehrli said.
Wearing part of her Marine Corps uniform, she ran toward the wreck and started helping people.
"I worked for eight hours," she said. "I was taking people out of the cars alive, taking people out injured, taking out dead people. I stopped when they handed me parts of people, then I quit. They handed me two men's legs, and I handed them back and walked out."
The train was loaded with servicemen returning home from World War II. Moments before the trains collided, a decorated Marine sergeant, whose leg had been broken in three places in the South Pacific, had gotten up from his seat to get a drink of water while the Flyer was stopped. That drink likely saved his life.
Wehrli remembers tying his cast back together and talking to him. He remembered playing with a baby in a nearby seat and asked Wehrli what happened to the baby and his mother.
"The mother was decapitated," she said. "The baby was crushed. He started to cry. It was awful."
The injured were taken to hospitals in Aurora as ambulances from neighboring towns arrived.
Wehrli returned to St. Charles Hospital in Aurora later that night to check on the Marine. He begged her to contact his parents, who were waiting to pick him up in Nebraska. Wehrli found the Naperville police chief, who phoned police in the Marine's hometown and notified his parents. "After surviving the South Pacific, his leg broken in three places, and to think he survived that and almost died in a train crash on his way home," Wehrli said.
Photos: Charles W. Cushman Collection, c/o Indiana University
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
This thread is one of the most interesting and educational railroad items I have read in a long time.
Thanks.
joe8617 wrote: This thread is one of the most interesting and educational railroad items I have read in a long time. Thanks.
Welcome to the forum Joe. Got any good pics?
Just west of Aurora, a Rock Island passenger train, maybe the Golden State, was detouring over the Q. A Zephyr came out of the night and hit head on. I remember the RI train was stopped, but the Zephyr was at track speed.
I recall that crewmen died, but that no passengers did. That doesn't make it any less of a tragedy.
Thanks. No, no good pictures yet. Hopefully soon though.
PZ, I think we both saw the same TV show...
In regards to the wreck in 1946 at Naperville, it has been posted on this site before and there was a very good link to a very detailed account of the incident. If anybody is interested, I would suggest to do a search, or maybe somebody knows the link. With a minimum head-way of only three minutes, the engineer on the Exposistion Flyer was riding the yellows (basically, staying at track speed & expecting the signal to go from yellow to green just before the Flyer passed the signal). The cause of the crash was to determined to be the fault of the engineer on the Flyer when he rode the yellow (never went green) at track speed at the signal previous to Naperville where the train ahead had stopped in emergency. There's a big "S" curve between Lisle and Naperville and the engineer on the Flyer didn't realize the train ahead was stopped until it was too late. Also, because there was only three minutes between the trains, the crew of the train stopped in emergecy didn't have enough time to get to a distance far enough back to warn the Flyer. I believe that the Flyer had heavyweight cars and the train stopped in emergency had light weight cars which made the damage worse.
CC
PS -- The data formatting issue fixed itself today... I like those fixes. Maybe it wasn't my computer. I don't know what happened & I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.
Chris, I don't know the TV show to which you refer.
There is a plaque in Naperville memorializing the accident and fatalities. I have an old Naperville history book with the story and photos from the Naperville Sun, culled from the days when it was still run like a real newspaper.
Plus, it's not difficult to go downtown for coffee and bump into a few locals who still have vivid recalls of the wreck. I think of it every time I pass the old Kroehler Furniture Factory, where the wreck took place.
Eolafan -
LOL - I was on McClure Road at the west end of Eola when 1313 came through. I was railfanning with my dad in Aurora and on my way to my sister's house in Naperville.
I can't believe that the old Aurora station hasn't been replaced by something by now. Unreal...
If METRA were to run to start running to stations west of Aurora (not spreading rumors, just assuming that will eventually happen due to growth in the area), how will METRA alter its current station in Aurora to accommodate running westward? They just finished a second renovation of the Aurora station. Any thoughts?
Thanks for keeping a GREAT thread alive guys...
eolafan wrote:Chris, yes, Naperville was booming in the 1980's but now Aurora is again outpacing Naperville and Aurora has had the most new home construction for the past four or five years, and so it is here in Aurora, and eventually beyond here out west...that the new commuters will come from. Naperville is pretty much built out and so the old saying "Go West young man, go west" really applies hereabouts.
On the new WTTW Fox River Valley documentary, I believe it was said that Aurora has surpassed Rockford as Illinois' 2nd largest city. Naperville isn't really in the Fox River Valley but has annexed it's way pretty far west. Those developments are new subdivisions and largely responsible for the new Metra station at Rt 59.
The old plank road was a toll road, hence the reluctance towards a railroad. An actual section of it can be found at Lisle Station Park. The source for much of the material in the WTTW documentaries is a book by Ann Keating titled "Chicagoland - City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age". Keating is a history professor at North Central College in Naperville. IMO, well worth reading for Chicago area railfans.
Green Bay Paddlers wrote: Eolafan - LOL - I was on McClure Road at the west end of Eola when 1313 came through. I was railfanning with my dad in Aurora and on my way to my sister's house in Naperville. I can't believe that the old Aurora station hasn't been replaced by something by now. Unreal... If METRA were to run to start running to stations west of Aurora (not spreading rumors, just assuming that will eventually happen due to growth in the area), how will METRA alter its current station in Aurora to accommodate running westward? They just finished a second renovation of the Aurora station. Any thoughts? Thanks for keeping a GREAT thread alive guys...
Hi GBP, I only saw two other vehicles while I was there, one was the older friend of mine from Germany in the gold colored Dodge Intrepid I was speaking with and the other (a red colored Dodge Minivan) must have been you. Did you hear the radio exchange between Amtrak 3 and both the dispatcher and 1313?
Yes, I have recently heard that the old Aurora station is slated for re-development into condominiums, glad to hear that.
UP 829 wrote: The source for much of the material in the WTTW documentaries is a book by Ann Keating titled "Chicagoland - City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age". Keating is a history professor at North Central College in Naperville. IMO, well worth reading for Chicago area railfans.
The source for much of the material in the WTTW documentaries is a book by Ann Keating titled "Chicagoland - City and Suburbs in the Railroad Age". Keating is a history professor at North Central College in Naperville. IMO, well worth reading for Chicago area railfans.
OK, here's another opinion.
My wife gave me this book last winter. I found it to be a boring, laborious read that included very, very little if anything about the railroads themselves -- the title is grossly misleading to the casual observer as the use of the words "Railroad Age" describe only the time period of sprawl highlighted by the book. And yet they have a photo of a train on the cover. That's what fooled my honey into buying it.
The book is hardly entertaining -- it is a dry and cumbersome social study and written in a tough-to-decipher journalese that reads like a thesis or term paper and Viola! even contains text that is littered with superscript numerals tagged to annoying footnotes. For a railfan it is a complete waste of money. I was very mad that during its too-frequent begging sessions WTTW's spokespeople were billing it as "the perfect gift for a railfan." Hardly. Maybe the author, a college history professor, intended this as a textbook for a college-level class studying urban history, and somehow it went on to be widely distributed. However, it does come in handy. I keep it on the nightstand and opening it works better than Ambien.
On the other hand, my wife also gave me "The Iron Horse And The Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago" by David Young. This book is much-more railroad-oriented and a better read -- although not great hunk of entertaining writing. It, too, unfortunately reads too much like a research paper or dissertation -- filled with quasi-useless statistics to the point of being slightly stat-heavy, in an effort to impress someone.
But there are some great nuggets if you don't mind doing some digging. The book, while well-organized into salient chapters, needed a professional editor to guide the author and also polish up the text. The author frequently repeats thoughts and passages on nearby pages, leading me to believe it was read by some college prof for a grade before it was sent to a publisher, without being proofread.
PZ
Thanks, Carl. I'll look forward to a meet.
Happy New Year.
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