Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

At the corner of Hobson and Greene Rd in unincorporated Woodridge, IL is the preserved Greene Farm Barn , namesake of the adjacent road. In addition to the barn, an unoccupied house is preserved on the site as well, all part of the Greene Valley Forest Preserve. Forgotten Lands Places & Transit photo, 2019. The land the barn sits on was purchased by the Greene Family in the 1830’s, and was in the family until the 1970’s, when it was donated to the Aurora Foundation, who transferred it to the DuPage County Forest Preserve in 1998, with the intent of preserving the barn.  According to the forest preserve, "In 1835, William Briggs Greene acquired 200 acres of present-day Greene Valley Forest Preserve from Daniel Greene, his uncle. When surveyors mapped the land in 1840, they reported how they "left Brill's wheat field and entered hazel and red oak brush and scattering timber." This and other descriptions of stunted oak trees mixed with thorn thickets and wooded rav...

I'm a fan of the open road, and as such, I once found myself out for a drive in the middle of nowhere, crossing the Kankakee River , when I noticed a few bridge piers jettisoning out of the water about 1000 feet west of the bridge I was crossing. They looked like railroad bridge piers. A shot of one of the piers taken from a nearby boat launch. Warner Bridge Rd is in the background, where I originally saw these. This was early in my search for abandoned railroad corridors, and I thought I had discovered a new right of way, this time in the field as opposed to on the computer, looking at Google Maps!  Three Happy Little Mysteries ( Google Maps ) After coming home, I found the bridge piers, but could not find where they went, either north or south of the Kankakee River beyond a few hundred feet. Topo maps had no information either. The Wikipedia Page for Kankakee River State Park had but one cryptic clue, "At the Chippewa Campground, hand-cut limestone pillars ...

Utah Transit Authority , or UTA's, S Line, otherwise known as the Sugar House Streetcar , is an example of a railroad line reactivated post abandonment.  The streetcar runs a 2 mile back and forth route in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake City along a once abandoned Denver & Rio Grande Western/Union Pacific right of way known simply as the Sugarhouse Branch . It connects to Central Pointe Station , where riders can connect to the rest of Salt Lake City's light rail system. Image: Robert Holman, 2014 The line was passed down to Union Pacific, who abandoned the line in 2005. Much earlier, the line actually connected Salt Lake City with Park City along a similar path that I-80 follows in the Parley's Canyon. ( Right of way  - make sure the reactivations layer is checked to view this line, it is turned off by default) The project of converting the line into a streetcar began construction in 2009, and opened in 2013. Some of the former rails are still located adjac...

It's the Holiday Season once again, and as a result, I figured I'd mix things up a bit and discuss a Christmas Movie, The Polar Express , and it's significance to the railroad industry as a whole. The movie is based off of a 1985 book  of the same name, which itself is based off of a locomotive, specifically Pere Marquette 1225. The author, Chris Van Allsburg, grew up in Grand Rapids, MI, and visited the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, MI, where the locomotive was in service and on display, which it remains to this day. Image: locomotive.wikia.com According to it's fan-page, Pere Marquette 1225 is "is a class N-1 2-8-4 Berkshire-type steam locomotive". As someone who's interests in railroading are more in the routes themselves and not so much the engines, I really don't know what that means. That said, the locomotive really is gorgeous, and it doesn't take much imagination to see how glorious it would be as a Christmas steam engine...

As with any building, its time and purpose comes and goes. The railroad industry is no exception. Such was the case for the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Roundhouse and Locomotive Shop in Aurora, IL. The Aurora Roundhouse in the 1930's .  The Roundhouse and its subsequent buildings were first opened in 1857 for servicing locomotives on the Chicago & Aurora Railroad, not to be confused with the later interurban railway the Chicago Aurora & Elgin. The C&A was the first predecessor railroad which would develop into the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and its Chicago to Aurora route is to this day one of the busiest in the United States, both for freight and passenger traffic. Locomotives using the roundhouse. Image: Matthew Powers There were actually two roundhouses in the complex by the 1870's. But an 1880 fire would destroy many of the original structures. The 2nd roundhouse was replaced with a newer one in 1925. ( Link ). As diesel engines...

While this blog is about New York City, I preface it with how I came to have an interest in the Interstate Highway System. As a child growing up outside of Chicago, I lived by two interstates, I-55 and I-355. I knew they had to be related somehow; what are the odds that roads with such similar numbers intersected by accident? I thankfully found out all one would need to know about the Interstate Highway System and US Routes in general from late-90's and early 00's websites like AARoads.com , Kurumi's 3-digit interstates page , and the International House of ZZYZX . Each had some very highly detailed information on what I was looking for, and would be the catalyst into the beginnings of my roadgeekery. Indeed, I-355 was a child interstate of I-55, in that it spurred off from 55 in a much shorter route than its parent. I was further interested in roads that were proposed, but never built, such as Chicago's Crosstown Expy , as well as completely decommissioned routes. ...

Sims, ND was a stop on the original mainline of the Northern Pacific Railway . It was founded in 1883, with the largest gathering spot in the town, the Sims Scandinavian Lutheran Church , being constructed the following year. It was named after George Sims, a Northern Pacific Executive. "Small towns like Sims grew up around the railroad, and served the railroad’s needs. Sims offered water and coal to fuel the steam engines on the Northern Pacific Railroad. Sims prospered from its association with the NPRR. The largest building in the photo is the hotel." ( SHSND ) "The Northern Pacific cut a line across North Dakota that was nearly straight. The line diverted south to Sims in order to get water and coal. With a railroad stop, Sims became an important shipping point for cattle west of Bismarck." ( ND Studies ) When it was no longer necessary for trains to gather water and coal for their journeys, a much straighter mainline was put in place between New Salem and Glen ...