Found on the pages of The Chicago Tribune
on June 12 of 1962. . .
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| (Google image) |
This is kind of a sad, nostalgic piece of news
for me because back in the early 1960’s, when my father was stationed at Fort
Sheridan on Chicago’s North Shore, I could, at the age of ten or eleven, see and
hear the trains of the Chicago, Milwaukee and North Shore Line scurrying up and
down the tracks just to the west of the Army base. I never rode one.
I’ve often wished that I had.
Anyway, on this date in 1962 The Tribune reported
that the Illinois Commerce Commission and the North Shore Commuters Association
had joined together in a suit in Federal District Court to stop abandonment of
the North Shore line, scheduled for June 22.
As the line rapidly approached the end of its
days, it still carried 12,000 riders each week between Chicago and
Milwaukee. But it was losing a thousand
dollars a day, and the Interstate Commerce Commission had authorized the
discontinuation of service unless a buyer with $6,235,000, the cost of the property and salvageable material on the line, could be found.
The Attorney General of Illinois, William G.
Clark, filed the suit contesting the abandonment of the line, arguing that the
North Shore Line was an interurban railway that did not come under the
abandonment powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
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| North Shore Line's Roosevelt Road Shops, 1930's (Google image) |
The railway’s history is one that is intimately
entwined with Chicago. It began as
the Bluff City Electric Street Railway Company when its charter was approved by
the Waukegan City Council. In the
charter it was made clear, as the name of the line clearly states, that the
line was to be propelled by electricity.
The language of the agreement with Waukegan was quite specific, even
specifying that the poles carrying the electric wires “shall not in any way
interfere with any shade tree upon any street, or lot, in said city, and no
shade tree shall be cut or injured in the erection of said poles or wires . .
.”
By 1897 trackage ran between Waukegan and Lake
Bluff and on May 12, 1898 the line was renamed The Chiago and Milwaukee
Electric Line. In that same year
the line was extended another 13 miles and reached Highland Park. Although the railway only had four
cars, there was good money behind its operation . . . one of the owners was
George Ball, the guy who lent 200 bucks to his nephews, Frank C. and Edmund B.,
who used the dough to start the Ball Glass Works, producer of the Ball Jar.
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| North Shore Line Station at Adams & Wabash (Heindlen) |
By 1899 ten the line ran all the way to Evanston,
and as the new century began the line had 43 miles of track, 54 cars and
carried two million passenger a year.
Five years later a branch of the line was extended all the way to what
is the town of Mundelein today.
That same year the railway crossed the Wisconsin state line with service
to Kenosha. Travel between
Evanston and Kenosha took about five hours and cost the rider $1.25.
Finally, on October 31, 1908 service all the way
to Milwaukee was instituted. The
73-mile route handled hourly trains, travelling one way between Evanston and
Milwaukee in two hours and 45 minutes.
Inevitably, when you’re thinking about
electricity in the early days, Samuel Insull comes aboard. In a complicated business transaction
Mr. Insull combined a Milwaukee interurban with the North Shore line and
created the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad. The deal wa completed in May of 1916 at a cost to Mr. Insull of
$4,550,000.
In the next year Mr. Insull spent over a million
dollars on improvements to the road.
All of the road crossings from Evanston to Waukegan were equipped with
some type of protection. The money
was well spent . . . within a year business doubled with 1.7 million riders
using the line in 1917 with a gross revenue of 2.9 million dollars in 1918.
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| North Shore Line Electroliner at the Illinois Railroad Museum (Google image) |
In 1919 the North Shore Line entered into an
agreement with the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway as well as the
Northwestern elevated line to run trains over the Milwaukee line from Wilmette
to Irving Park Boulevard in Chicago.
On August 6, 1919 the North Shore became a true interurban, running
trains as far south in Chicago as Roosevelt Road.
By the mid-1920’s the line was operating 160
daily trains, including 44 daily limited trains between Chicago and Milwaukee. By 1923 ridership had reached almost
seven million passengers per year, and the line generated 16 million
dollars per year. In 1925 dining
cars on the line served 79,000 meals.
That same year the new Skokie Valley cut-off was
begun. Fifteen hundred workers
labored on the new right of way, which ran 23 miles from Dempster Street to
Libertyville. Although it was over
two miles longer than the eastern main line, faster speeds made it the quicker
route. In a year’s time 18 miles
of double-tracked railway were built at a cost of $6,400,000. As a result, the line carried 19.5
million passengers.
With the 1930’s the troubles began. In 1931 the line lost $750,000 despite
the fact that the American Electric Railway Association named in the fastest
electric interurban in the country.
In September of 1931 8020 trains on the line arrived on schedule, a 99.26%
on-time average.
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| North Shore Line on Loop trackage, 1958 (Google image) |
In 1932 losses approached $1.7 million for the
year and Samuel Insull, himself under tremendous financial strain, resigned his
board membership. The line went
into receivership as things went from bad to worse. A strike idled the line for 51 days in 1938. As a direct result of the work stoppage
many workers transferred their membership from the Amalgamated Association of
Street, Electric Railway, and Motor Coach Employees’ Union to other railroad unions
with dire consequences.
On the first of February of 1942, because of the different union affiliations of employees on the North Shore, members of the Amalgamated
announced that they would no longer permit North Shore Line trains to run over
Chicago’s elevated tracks. Trains
headed south on the eastern route were stopped at Lincoln Avenue in Wilmette,
and Skokie Valley route trains were stopped at Howard Street in Evanston. It wasn’t until 1953 that trains on the
line were allowed to enter Chicago, but, of course, the damage had been done.
Also in 1953 the North Shore Line was acquired by
the Susquehanna Corporation, a holding company incorporated in Delaware. Almost immediately a petition to
abandon the line was filed with the Illinois Commerce Commission. In June of
1958, February of 1961 and January of 1962 the North Shore asked the Interstate
Commerce Commission, the Illinois Commerce Commission and local Wisconsin
authorities for total abandonment, citing the fact that the line had lost over
four million dollars during the previous decade.
On May 18, 1962 the Interstate Commerce
Commission granted the request.
The Chicago Transit Authority purchased five miles of track, from
Dempster to Howard. And that was
it. At 2:50 a.m. on January 21,
1963 the last southbound train pulled into Chicago’s Roosevelt Road
station. Five minutes later the
last North Shore train pulled into the Milwaukee terminal.
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| North Shore Line Highwood Administration Offices (J. J. Sendlemaier) |
Sometime in 1967 as a high school sophomore I
watched from my bedroom window in my family’s home on the far north end of
Highland Park as the night sky was lit up with the flames of part of the
Highwood property of the old North Shore burning to the ground. Five years later my new bride and I had
our wedding reception in the brand new hotel that was built on part of that property. And time moved on.
The history of the North Shore Line used herein
is taken from the beautifully researched history of the interurban railroad in Laura
Hedien’s comprehensive website, http://www.northshoreline.com.
Posts
2 comments:
Jim, I have very distant memories of riding on the line. But my time exploring the rail yard with abandoned cars and engines on the corner of Sheridan and Washington in Highwood is much clearer. Thank you for the scholarship and memories.
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