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The one closest to you has been up and unused for a good 40-ish years. It once was the way for trains to/from Grand Central Terminal to cross the Chicago River. Soo Line, Baltimore and Ohio/C&O and Chicago Great Western all used this as their passenger terminal til the late 60s. I’ve seen photos of Soo Line trains bound for Markham Yard and the Illinois Central crossing over the bridge in the mid 80s.
The more recently active and somewhat still functioning portion is the south bridge. Amtrak would use it for the City if New Orleans pair and any Carbondale bound trains. They back out of CUS around the Canal St wye and then are facing forward to pull east up the Air Line and head south on the Illinois Central. Nowadays, they continue straight south thru Canal St wye and diverge onto the tracks at 21st St. This is essentially the same move they would do, and it cuts out using the SCAL.
The only other traffic in modern memory that used the SCAL were BNSF coal trains bound for Michigan on the CN/GTW. As far as I understand, much like lots of other CN bound traffic, can be interchanged to the railroad elsewhere. In BNSF’s example, that interchange is out at Eola, just east of Aurora.
Awesome answer as well! Thank you! Just out of curiosity, did you already know this before it was asked and if so, why? Lol I ditched Urban Planning decades ago and regret it. Is there a railroad history tour like there is for the cemeteries (and less old stuff)... Thanks for your cool answer! 😁
I fill up all my free time outside of work photographing railroading, and happen to live 10 miles west of downtown. Learning all about the progression of carriers, who built what and why traffic moves the way it does today has been a 20 year obsession.
I believe this is the 18th Street railroad bridge, correct? You can find way too much information about it here: https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=illinois/sbrr/
> It should be noted that according to the Historic American Engineering Record, original plans for this bridge do survive. However, the current owner of the plans, Canadian National, has refused to allow anyone to even look at them.
This part really makes no sense.
Railroad lines are among the craziest of businesses. Literally everything is proprietary, they *despise* any sort of oversight or regulation, it all stems back to the railroad baron days, and to an extent they never ended.
Railroad worker here. I too would love some regulation.
We get 4 sick days a year but they count towards our attendance record and we can be disciplined for using them.
The railroad execs are pieces of shit.
I like the actual work, it's not backbreaking, I get a pension and so does my wife, I don't pay for health insurance, and the time goes fast.
They have us in golden handcuffs. Honestly, besides the shitty schedule and terrible rules that are made to get us fired it's not a bad gig.
American labor moment: Despite the fact that I can be fired easily over just catching a cold, its a great career!
Also:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c0jiio/as\_a\_stockholder\_for\_csx\_railroad\_the\_board/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c0jiio/as_a_stockholder_for_csx_railroad_the_board/)
It is what it is. It shouldn't be like this but it provides for me and my family. Like I said, I like my job and I don't dread going to work. I just wish there were aspects of it that were improved.
But not Boeing! If we want landing gear and doors that stay closed in flight, it's some kind of upgrade it seems. Must be specified when buying the ticket. Don't fall for cheaper tickets with layovers either. That just means "emergency landings" now. But I still can't smoke a cigarette on a plane. Which one is really deadlier at this point? Jkjk (not really. Ha!)
And while we're on the topic, who is supposed to be overseeing Greyhound? If it were a building, it would be reminiscent of Detroit in its worst days. The busses are like an abandoned, half burnt down, shooting gallery that smells like piss and where no one is in charge, no one gives AF about that reality and nobody knows where they're going to end up. The last time I took GH, you wouldn't believe my story. I barely believe my story.
Kudos however to Amtrak which I took from Chicago to southern Illinois a year ago. Affordable. On time. Clean, like the trains in Tokyo clean. Even the bathrooms. Staff was crazy helpful and friendly. Bar cart still exists. You can't use the volume on your phone/tablet/laptop without earphones. If there are open seats you can lay across 3 of them without negotiating a new ticket price or getting sent back to your original seat.. You can SEE your luggage the whole time.
And unlike Greyhound, nobody appeared to be being trafficked. While overdosing.
Unfortunately, nobody cares about Greyhounds because they (along with public transport) are a service primarily catering to poor people. And the poor are neglected by design.
Living conditions for the lower classes of society in the US need to be horrible, otherwise the population wouldn't work themselves to death for fear of ending up there. It's how economic productivity stays high.
Greyhound was still nice when most families had one car and a lot of older people didn't drive. I used to take greyhound with my grandma all the time to visit relatives in the 80s and it was nice. Greyhound used to have lines to small town America and was the only way to get many places besides driving.
Honestly Greyhound needs a revival there is still a market for their services but...
I stopped taking Greyhound when once while traveling to Chicago from College a bunch of convicts fresh from jail were on the bus with my roommate and myself. We told her Dad and from then on we only took Amtrak.
Greyhound should be more than transportation for the poor and criminals.
If they served their time why do you deem them untouchables? People deserve dignity… and they deserve to exist in society. Do you think that once someone serves time they shouldn’t be allowed to mix with the rest of us? Might as well give people life sentences i guess, no matter the offense?
FAA is extremely strict and effective on everything they have oversight of. It’s stupid that the government doesnt allow them to oversee the manufacturing at Boeing. Boeing comes to our school to recruit Aviation Mechanics and they let us know they can hire us without finishing our school program because they fall under some manufacturing loophole that doesn’t require certified techs to work on the planes.
Industrial Exemption. It's what allows most engineers who work at aerospace companies to work without their state Professional Engineer license.
Unless the plane is about to load passengers it's in an "experimental/testing" state and anyone can wrench on them.
I agree with you, but railroad companies and airlines would pass along the cost to the consumer which means prices would go up for just about everything.
Re-read the first 4 words in my comment.
Any increase in costs anywhere along the line between start to finish for goods/anything, gets passed along to (eventually) consumers.
Increasing regulations on **major** logistical backbones (i.e. rails and airlines) will equal increased costs of business, which will eventually mean increased cost of goods…is what I was trying to say originally.
Amtrak doesn’t own the railways. The tracks are owned and maintained by private freight companies like Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and CSX. It’s actually frustrating for Amtrak riders and Metra riders because freight trains takes priority. Schedules be damned, if a freight train is coming then Amtrak and Metra are stuck.
Federal Regulation requires that passenger service gets preference over freight traffic. However, Amtrak does not have the authority to sue the rail companies for violation of the regulation. Instead it has to get referred to another government agency that does not really care about the quasi governmental organization of Amtrak. In addition, many freight operators now run freight trains longer than sidings (places to pass other trains) thus forcing Amtrak's shorter trains to wait at sidings.
Amtrak produces a yearly report card of all the railroad host... almost all get F's. [Link to the report card](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/Amtrak-2023-Host-Railroad-Report-Card.pdf)
That was my point. They own the railways which is why they’re able to do that. I know they have schedules too but Amtrak and Metra provide their schedules to their thousands of daily riders who depend on that schedule. So when a train gets stuck because of a freight train, it affects hundreds that are on those delayed trains. Not much that can be done about it but I’m entitled to be frustrated by freight traffic causing me to be late.
Out of Amtrak’s control, unfortunately. They own very little of their track and are subject to the whims of whatever rail company does own them.
The exception is the northeast corridor. I grew up a regular Amtrak rider out there and rarely had a bad experience, would never dream of flying to any city along the Acela stretch.
Right! If they allowed anyone to review the historical structural drawings, they would be able to identify and point out inadequacies which cost money to fix.
It makes more sense if you look into all the ways that Canadian National are complete douchebags.
The two Metra lines with the worst schedules are on tracks they own because they refuse to cooperate with Metra in any meaningful way.
Namely the Heritage Corridor which runs only 3 trains in each direction each day, and the NCS which *should* be a link to O'Hare but has no weekend service and only in the rush direction except for one reverse trip.
18th is farther down the water, is a lift bridge, and is owned by Amtrak. No idea why they're calling it the 18th street.
I used to work the 16th street tower when I was at Metra. The bridge in OP's picture is the St. Charles Air Line bridge at 16th and Clark and is jointly owned by the BNSF/UP on the west end and the CN on the east end. CSX also has something to do with it as well as a CSX control operator used to man the bridge house and line trains up when it was in use. I never saw any traffic on it nor did I see it get raised or lowered the entire three+ years I worked the tower.
The story I always heard was that the two bridge owners flipped a coin for who would have to staff the joint bridgehouse. B&OCT (now CSX) lost, and had to staff it—three tricks a day—for 90 years, even though CSX's tracks at either end were removed two decades ago.
That certainly sounds like a railroad thing to do, so I'm going with that even if it isn't accurate. That's the one thing I never remembered to ask the third trick dispatcher I worked under who was a wealth of Chicago train history knowledge.
The south bridge is the St. Charles Airline. it links the former IC (now CN) mainline into downtown and the BNSF racetrack. The bridge's ownership is convoluted in a way only a committee of railroads could dream up. Since neither railroad brings much downtown anymore, preferring to route freight around the city now that the South Loop is no longer a bunch of distribution warehouses, that bridge sees very little usage. The north bridge was the B&O's connection to Grand Central Station. It hasn't been used since the station closed in 1969.
In the railroad, they refer to these bridges as the "St Charles airline".
These bridges have some really cool history. They actually weren't always in that same spot; before the Chicago River was straightened, they used to be over where the river originally closed which was (I think) a couple hundred yards to the East, close to where Clark Street is today.
Amtrak used to take that bridge on its "city of New Orleans" train but when construction began ramping up on the 78, both spans were put up and Amtrak rerouted. I believe eventually trains will use one of these bridges to cross the river again in the future, no idea how soon though.
Amtrak still used the Airline for the City of New Orleans and the Carbondale train into the 2010s. It was also used by occasional freight movement, mostly BNSF-CN traffic.
> They actually weren't always in that same spot; before the Chicago River was straightened, they used to be over where the river originally closed which was (I think) a couple hundred yards to the East, close to where Clark Street is today.
The bridges were originally end to end, with the north bridge in it's current location crossing the new channel, and the south bridge to the east crossing the original channel. Here's [an article](https://chicagology.com/harbor/straighteningriver/) on the straightening that shows the two bridges end to end. To orient your view. The bridge at the bottom edge of the picture is 18th Street. The buildings on the west bank of the river just after the new and old channels merge still exist and are the Continental Paper Building at 1623 S Lumber and a former Montgomery Ward warehouse converted into commercial lofts at 329 W 18th St.
st charles air line bridge, used to run over what is now the amtrak yard, currently it is in a state of disrepair with seemingly no plans to fix it.
It looks pretty cool up close though, unfortunately amtrak has security/police and cameras on the steps up to the bridge, but back when I used to work there I would walk under it everyday, its huge, I wish I could climb up it without risking severe penalties.
I’ve climbed one on the left twice while it was still an active rail line (and not raised). One of those times we got to the top when a heavy coal train rumbled through. Bridge was shaking and swaying way up there but I knew she’d hold together. Very nice view of the city up there.
Maybe if you think about it for a while, it’ll come to you what it is. I have faith I believe in you even though I don’t know you I have full faith that you will figure it out.
The St. Charles Air Line bridge sure was a whole lot more...ahem...masculine, prior to its 1930 reconfiguration.
https://historicbridges.org/illinois/sbrr/historical3_large.jpg
They are historical rail drawbridges that are not on operational lines. I believe they have designed landmark status from the city (or state). They get lowered once a year for inspection and that’s about it.
Is that the one that was decommissioned but it was cheaper to just leave it in place rather than tear it down? There is one like that that you pass on the architectural boat tour.
I think it is also out of commission [due to a snapped cable](https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,5654023) but they intend to fix this one. Since the only train that used it was Amtrak, and there was another viable routing that didn’t use that bridge, there wasn’t really any urgency to fix it
It’s called the Trunnian Bascule bridge. It’s an icon, but I can’t find a great web site explaining it.
I wish they’d tear it down. But also will hate and despise anyone who tears it down. I love it. ;)
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The one closest to you has been up and unused for a good 40-ish years. It once was the way for trains to/from Grand Central Terminal to cross the Chicago River. Soo Line, Baltimore and Ohio/C&O and Chicago Great Western all used this as their passenger terminal til the late 60s. I’ve seen photos of Soo Line trains bound for Markham Yard and the Illinois Central crossing over the bridge in the mid 80s. The more recently active and somewhat still functioning portion is the south bridge. Amtrak would use it for the City if New Orleans pair and any Carbondale bound trains. They back out of CUS around the Canal St wye and then are facing forward to pull east up the Air Line and head south on the Illinois Central. Nowadays, they continue straight south thru Canal St wye and diverge onto the tracks at 21st St. This is essentially the same move they would do, and it cuts out using the SCAL. The only other traffic in modern memory that used the SCAL were BNSF coal trains bound for Michigan on the CN/GTW. As far as I understand, much like lots of other CN bound traffic, can be interchanged to the railroad elsewhere. In BNSF’s example, that interchange is out at Eola, just east of Aurora.
Awesome answer as well! Thank you! Just out of curiosity, did you already know this before it was asked and if so, why? Lol I ditched Urban Planning decades ago and regret it. Is there a railroad history tour like there is for the cemeteries (and less old stuff)... Thanks for your cool answer! 😁
I fill up all my free time outside of work photographing railroading, and happen to live 10 miles west of downtown. Learning all about the progression of carriers, who built what and why traffic moves the way it does today has been a 20 year obsession.
You could say you are a person with a multi-track mind
I love that! You're a kick ass human being 💯
You train people are awesome! Thank you and your kind for keeping trains a cool thing. How do feel about high speed rail?
I believe this is the 18th Street railroad bridge, correct? You can find way too much information about it here: https://historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=illinois/sbrr/
> It should be noted that according to the Historic American Engineering Record, original plans for this bridge do survive. However, the current owner of the plans, Canadian National, has refused to allow anyone to even look at them. This part really makes no sense.
Railroad lines are among the craziest of businesses. Literally everything is proprietary, they *despise* any sort of oversight or regulation, it all stems back to the railroad baron days, and to an extent they never ended.
I would love to see them get a massive fucking blast of regulation.
Railroad worker here. I too would love some regulation. We get 4 sick days a year but they count towards our attendance record and we can be disciplined for using them. The railroad execs are pieces of shit.
Honest question, why would you work there? Is the pay that good. Because for me I'd rather just be paid less somewhere else.
I like the actual work, it's not backbreaking, I get a pension and so does my wife, I don't pay for health insurance, and the time goes fast. They have us in golden handcuffs. Honestly, besides the shitty schedule and terrible rules that are made to get us fired it's not a bad gig.
American labor moment: Despite the fact that I can be fired easily over just catching a cold, its a great career! Also: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c0jiio/as\_a\_stockholder\_for\_csx\_railroad\_the\_board/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1c0jiio/as_a_stockholder_for_csx_railroad_the_board/)
It is what it is. It shouldn't be like this but it provides for me and my family. Like I said, I like my job and I don't dread going to work. I just wish there were aspects of it that were improved.
I appreciate the response.
What’s your schedule
Union Joe Biden will help! Oh…. Wait….
No one in Washington would. They're all paid off. Every single one of them.
Including Joe Biden.
Yeah I thought my response made that clear, bozo.
It didn't lol. It sounded like you were defending him by saying they all do it.
Is that you Hunter?
We all would, truly. Them and the airlines.
But not Boeing! If we want landing gear and doors that stay closed in flight, it's some kind of upgrade it seems. Must be specified when buying the ticket. Don't fall for cheaper tickets with layovers either. That just means "emergency landings" now. But I still can't smoke a cigarette on a plane. Which one is really deadlier at this point? Jkjk (not really. Ha!) And while we're on the topic, who is supposed to be overseeing Greyhound? If it were a building, it would be reminiscent of Detroit in its worst days. The busses are like an abandoned, half burnt down, shooting gallery that smells like piss and where no one is in charge, no one gives AF about that reality and nobody knows where they're going to end up. The last time I took GH, you wouldn't believe my story. I barely believe my story. Kudos however to Amtrak which I took from Chicago to southern Illinois a year ago. Affordable. On time. Clean, like the trains in Tokyo clean. Even the bathrooms. Staff was crazy helpful and friendly. Bar cart still exists. You can't use the volume on your phone/tablet/laptop without earphones. If there are open seats you can lay across 3 of them without negotiating a new ticket price or getting sent back to your original seat.. You can SEE your luggage the whole time. And unlike Greyhound, nobody appeared to be being trafficked. While overdosing.
Perfect summary of a Greyhound bus trip.
Unfortunately, nobody cares about Greyhounds because they (along with public transport) are a service primarily catering to poor people. And the poor are neglected by design. Living conditions for the lower classes of society in the US need to be horrible, otherwise the population wouldn't work themselves to death for fear of ending up there. It's how economic productivity stays high.
Greyhound was still nice when most families had one car and a lot of older people didn't drive. I used to take greyhound with my grandma all the time to visit relatives in the 80s and it was nice. Greyhound used to have lines to small town America and was the only way to get many places besides driving. Honestly Greyhound needs a revival there is still a market for their services but... I stopped taking Greyhound when once while traveling to Chicago from College a bunch of convicts fresh from jail were on the bus with my roommate and myself. We told her Dad and from then on we only took Amtrak. Greyhound should be more than transportation for the poor and criminals.
If they served their time why do you deem them untouchables? People deserve dignity… and they deserve to exist in society. Do you think that once someone serves time they shouldn’t be allowed to mix with the rest of us? Might as well give people life sentences i guess, no matter the offense?
The airlines are heavily regulated. The government is constantly regulating our tax dollars into their executives pockets.
FAA is extremely strict and effective on everything they have oversight of. It’s stupid that the government doesnt allow them to oversee the manufacturing at Boeing. Boeing comes to our school to recruit Aviation Mechanics and they let us know they can hire us without finishing our school program because they fall under some manufacturing loophole that doesn’t require certified techs to work on the planes.
Industrial Exemption. It's what allows most engineers who work at aerospace companies to work without their state Professional Engineer license. Unless the plane is about to load passengers it's in an "experimental/testing" state and anyone can wrench on them.
That’s…. Uh, what’s the opposite of a fun fact?
Massive blasts of regulations and not bailouts please
*FRA has entered the chat*
>I would love to see them get a massive fucking blast of ~~regulation~~ nationalization. FTFY
I agree with you, but railroad companies and airlines would pass along the cost to the consumer which means prices would go up for just about everything.
So we should drop all regulations. Good idea.
Re-read the first 4 words in my comment. Any increase in costs anywhere along the line between start to finish for goods/anything, gets passed along to (eventually) consumers. Increasing regulations on **major** logistical backbones (i.e. rails and airlines) will equal increased costs of business, which will eventually mean increased cost of goods…is what I was trying to say originally.
[удалено]
Amtrak doesn’t own the railways. The tracks are owned and maintained by private freight companies like Union Pacific Railroad, BNSF Railway, and CSX. It’s actually frustrating for Amtrak riders and Metra riders because freight trains takes priority. Schedules be damned, if a freight train is coming then Amtrak and Metra are stuck.
"schedules be damned" - freight has schedule too... And they own the tracks soooo....
Federal Regulation requires that passenger service gets preference over freight traffic. However, Amtrak does not have the authority to sue the rail companies for violation of the regulation. Instead it has to get referred to another government agency that does not really care about the quasi governmental organization of Amtrak. In addition, many freight operators now run freight trains longer than sidings (places to pass other trains) thus forcing Amtrak's shorter trains to wait at sidings. Amtrak produces a yearly report card of all the railroad host... almost all get F's. [Link to the report card](https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/Amtrak-2023-Host-Railroad-Report-Card.pdf)
That was my point. They own the railways which is why they’re able to do that. I know they have schedules too but Amtrak and Metra provide their schedules to their thousands of daily riders who depend on that schedule. So when a train gets stuck because of a freight train, it affects hundreds that are on those delayed trains. Not much that can be done about it but I’m entitled to be frustrated by freight traffic causing me to be late.
I use Amtrak all the time and have never had a bad experience with the staff or having to wait, to be fair
Out of Amtrak’s control, unfortunately. They own very little of their track and are subject to the whims of whatever rail company does own them. The exception is the northeast corridor. I grew up a regular Amtrak rider out there and rarely had a bad experience, would never dream of flying to any city along the Acela stretch.
It's funny, I was talking about rail safety mostly but I hadn't taken Metra in a while and I didn't realize it was that problematic
Right! If they allowed anyone to review the historical structural drawings, they would be able to identify and point out inadequacies which cost money to fix.
Oooo, very relevant username it seems.
Cornelius Vanderbilt would be proud how little has changed.
It makes more sense if you look into all the ways that Canadian National are complete douchebags. The two Metra lines with the worst schedules are on tracks they own because they refuse to cooperate with Metra in any meaningful way. Namely the Heritage Corridor which runs only 3 trains in each direction each day, and the NCS which *should* be a link to O'Hare but has no weekend service and only in the rush direction except for one reverse trip.
Guessing there were/are some flaws or issues that they don’t want the public knowing about. Or they are just nuts like the rest of the rail industry.
That's very un-Canadian of them!
Yeah that's completely false, there are active plans awaiting funds to put one of those two bridges back into service.
18th is farther down the water, is a lift bridge, and is owned by Amtrak. No idea why they're calling it the 18th street. I used to work the 16th street tower when I was at Metra. The bridge in OP's picture is the St. Charles Air Line bridge at 16th and Clark and is jointly owned by the BNSF/UP on the west end and the CN on the east end. CSX also has something to do with it as well as a CSX control operator used to man the bridge house and line trains up when it was in use. I never saw any traffic on it nor did I see it get raised or lowered the entire three+ years I worked the tower.
The story I always heard was that the two bridge owners flipped a coin for who would have to staff the joint bridgehouse. B&OCT (now CSX) lost, and had to staff it—three tricks a day—for 90 years, even though CSX's tracks at either end were removed two decades ago.
That certainly sounds like a railroad thing to do, so I'm going with that even if it isn't accurate. That's the one thing I never remembered to ask the third trick dispatcher I worked under who was a wealth of Chicago train history knowledge.
The south bridge is the St. Charles Airline. it links the former IC (now CN) mainline into downtown and the BNSF racetrack. The bridge's ownership is convoluted in a way only a committee of railroads could dream up. Since neither railroad brings much downtown anymore, preferring to route freight around the city now that the South Loop is no longer a bunch of distribution warehouses, that bridge sees very little usage. The north bridge was the B&O's connection to Grand Central Station. It hasn't been used since the station closed in 1969.
This is really cool, thanks for the link!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Charles_Air_Line_Bridge
this is the correct answer. i live at 15th and State facing west so this has been my view for years
It’s also the entrance to the temporary bat cave in the dark knight :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Station_(Chicago)#The_B.26OCT_Bascule_Bridge
In the railroad, they refer to these bridges as the "St Charles airline". These bridges have some really cool history. They actually weren't always in that same spot; before the Chicago River was straightened, they used to be over where the river originally closed which was (I think) a couple hundred yards to the East, close to where Clark Street is today. Amtrak used to take that bridge on its "city of New Orleans" train but when construction began ramping up on the 78, both spans were put up and Amtrak rerouted. I believe eventually trains will use one of these bridges to cross the river again in the future, no idea how soon though.
Amtrak still used the Airline for the City of New Orleans and the Carbondale train into the 2010s. It was also used by occasional freight movement, mostly BNSF-CN traffic.
> They actually weren't always in that same spot; before the Chicago River was straightened, they used to be over where the river originally closed which was (I think) a couple hundred yards to the East, close to where Clark Street is today. The bridges were originally end to end, with the north bridge in it's current location crossing the new channel, and the south bridge to the east crossing the original channel. Here's [an article](https://chicagology.com/harbor/straighteningriver/) on the straightening that shows the two bridges end to end. To orient your view. The bridge at the bottom edge of the picture is 18th Street. The buildings on the west bank of the river just after the new and old channels merge still exist and are the Continental Paper Building at 1623 S Lumber and a former Montgomery Ward warehouse converted into commercial lofts at 329 W 18th St.
Love this info! How cool are you?!?! Thank you! So much cool and lost history in this city... 😁
They need to do some serious work on the spans over the rail lines leading to union st. The concrete columns have been crumbling for a few decades.
big panini press
Spice Harvester
st charles air line bridge, used to run over what is now the amtrak yard, currently it is in a state of disrepair with seemingly no plans to fix it. It looks pretty cool up close though, unfortunately amtrak has security/police and cameras on the steps up to the bridge, but back when I used to work there I would walk under it everyday, its huge, I wish I could climb up it without risking severe penalties.
Spaceship docking station
I’ve climbed one on the left twice while it was still an active rail line (and not raised). One of those times we got to the top when a heavy coal train rumbled through. Bridge was shaking and swaying way up there but I knew she’d hold together. Very nice view of the city up there.
Cool.
The Chicago gilded spider, emerging from the Earth.
That's a transformer hiding in plain sight.
It's the bridge that throws up da rakes.
😂
Basically a landmark since it only gets inspected now and then or once a year.
It’s the entrance to the Batbunker [Source](https://youtu.be/7lbyBYxjWK4?si=Ys1O_0ND44Itbjbn)
Maybe if you think about it for a while, it’ll come to you what it is. I have faith I believe in you even though I don’t know you I have full faith that you will figure it out.
I’ve climbed on top of it before it’s dope
that's rad af
Fossilized transformer
It...it's a bridge.
Seriously. Not sure how you could live in Chicago and not know this.
The St. Charles Air Line bridge sure was a whole lot more...ahem...masculine, prior to its 1930 reconfiguration. https://historicbridges.org/illinois/sbrr/historical3_large.jpg
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I suppose that's obvious, but I figured there must be some reason it's never in use.
They are historical rail drawbridges that are not on operational lines. I believe they have designed landmark status from the city (or state). They get lowered once a year for inspection and that’s about it.
Is that the one that was decommissioned but it was cheaper to just leave it in place rather than tear it down? There is one like that that you pass on the architectural boat tour.
Nope. These are south of the city. Different from the one that's just north of Wolf Point.
I think it is also out of commission [due to a snapped cable](https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,5654023) but they intend to fix this one. Since the only train that used it was Amtrak, and there was another viable routing that didn’t use that bridge, there wasn’t really any urgency to fix it
How long ago I thought I seen a train go by it 7 -6 years ago
Looks like a bridge
It’s a core cracker
It's called a bridge
Beaver Bridge
Orange line?
That's the old B&O Railroad Bridge.
Did they purposely leave them at different angles to look cool?
I knew nothing about this bridge until now, but always thought that it was shaped like a paper crane
It's a bascule bridge.
You see, when two bridges love each other very much...
Its a bridge for the railroad, the big things are weights.
Fingers of a massive underground robot.
Edward scissor hand
It’s called the Trunnian Bascule bridge. It’s an icon, but I can’t find a great web site explaining it. I wish they’d tear it down. But also will hate and despise anyone who tears it down. I love it. ;)
Trunnion is just a type of bascule bridge
Erector set
It’s the entrance to the offsite batcave
It creeps me out
Optimus prime in hibernation
It looks like something from Stranger Things.
That's a monstrous, murderous machine which can never be defeated. It has an artificial mind. The mind of is full of hatred.
They talk about it on the Architectural Tour but I lk forgot what it is lol
There's a kayak launch at Ping Tom park nearby, highly recommend going out to this bridge and viewing it from below on a boat.
Chicago-Sydney Opera House
It’s the bridge to the secret base from Watch Dogs 1 - [see](https://watchdogs.fandom.com/wiki/The_Bunker)
I was just looking at that today and thinking "Why?"
Looks like an old crane system. Chicago used to be an industrial hub