Red Line - North from Wilson 6:53am Harris bank time. Board northbound Red Line at Wilson stop. Aha! found a seat as a camo-clad rider exits. Berwyn - the Jewel we visited last night. Granville - the high rises come closer to the tracks, by Loyola we are among them. Beyond Morse there are a few streets of 1950s apartments but again the same brick apartments and mixed-in frame houses. Howard - much destruction here, we board the Yellow Line
Yellow Line - Skokie Swift Wow, this is quick! Passing through a cut. Lots of ranch homes. Passing a huge sewer plant "campus." Lots of neat industrial buildings, pipes, etc. Lone city-style flats scattered among the ranch homes. One overlooks a wild overgrown forest preserve or park. Industrial frontage road follows the line. Yellow Line - Back Again Halfway along, a train yard. There are regular trains in there (3rd rail cars) - aha, the track to the north of us is a 3rd rail line.
Purple Line to Linden 7:40am. Up over the bridge at the yard. Reminds me of the Disneyworld webway ride. Main - beyond here there alre lots of Victorian frame houses. Dempster - remains of an old blocked-off stairway to non-existent station on the Metra line. Davis - there goes the Metra. This is a fancy station. Downtown Evanston. Noyes - lots of bad paintings in these stations. Central - more parks, more suburban, but a nicer suburban than Skokie. Almost to Linden the tracks are down at street level.
End of the line.
Purple Line to Loop Looking out east side now. I can see the Bahai Temple, hazy in morning light. The Linden trainyard is pretty straightforward, not too interesting like the Howard Yard The train really starts to rumble when it gets back onto elevated track. A few rehabbed warehouses along the way - chopped off smokestacks. Purple Line all the way to the Loop - speeding along! Coffe making me too nervous, missed some great views of N. approach to downtown, wanted to photograph the twisty tracks between Sedgwick & Chicago but someone was standing in back window & I got up & lost my window seat.
Red Line to 95th/Dan Ryan Free transfer at State/Lake to S.bound Red Line Chinatown - we are above ground, now in the middle of freeway. Past Comiskey Park signs advertising the official White Sox kosher hot dog. Guy comes through car with a huge case of CDs like a peanut vendor. "CDs" he says in a vendor sort of voice. A radio in his kit playing R&B. A guy is preaching, testifying to get money for his ministry. A railroad skyway crosses over the freeway and another railroad. Is that the Orange Line crossing over us? Blue Line branch? We'll find out yet today. The preacher and a boy selling M&Ms have left. Only a stop or two left and we're back in one-story brick bungalows. Hard to tell w/ the freeway what its like along here.
-End of the line-
Red Line - 95th/Dan Ryan back to State/Lake Riding the same train back. Another guy raising money for his ministry. A guy selling perfume. The same guy selling CDs. A blind guy holding his cane upright, jabbing it on the ground hard, his hand has only 3 fingers. "Help the blind, spare any change? Please help the blind." This experience is starting to drag on - or is it just the boring stretch on the freeway - or coffee wearing off? "We do have construction on the tracks in this area." We have to wait. I can see another tunnel & track joining us from the E. just S. of Roosevelt thats where the construction is. A few guys in reflective vests standing around waiting for the train to pass.
Orange Line to Midway Bathroom stop, transfer to Orange Line to Midway Too bad my camera stopped working & no more film- stupid. This Orange Line is great. First there were some huge warehouses & storage places right up next to the tracks, then levelled factories & brownfields. Beyond Halsted the tracks lifted higher and looked down on little houes & blue-collar neighborhoods, some houses built before the ground was raised. For a while the tracks were up really high & you could see all over. Now near Kedzie to Pulaski its all abandoned factories & extensive graffiti (best was a huge smurf on the roof of a factory). Beyond Pulaski lots of bungalows. So many disused rail lines around here - neat to see the factory buildings conforming to spur lines that no longer exist leaving curving walls & gaps between buildings.
-End of the line-
Orange Line back to the Loop Graffiti tags seen along the Orange Line: LEVEL, MASER, BLASE, SMURF, UBC, 12-ICK, BABY!, HERM, C, DC-5, JOT, AIR, ALUSE, PEAS. Although I can't really read the "cursive" form, only the "block" form common on RR viaducts, one letter to each panel of the bridge. Archer & Halsted, the "Good Noodle Cafe" & just north of that a spaghetti junction of freeway. Now we'll try to transfer to the Green Line. Back in the Loop, this time riding around the west side.
Green Line West to Harlem I like how straight this line is - straight out from the loop growing hazier with the distance. Saw some brick stackers taking apart a building to the south of the tracks near California. The California station & a defunct station at Garfield Park are really neat steep pitched roofs, towers & gables. Victorian gothic. Strange how sharp the line between Chicago & Oak Park is at Austin Avenue.
[Notebook entries jump to ]Green Line at Cottage Grove/East 63rd Sitting waiting at the Cottage Grove/East 63rd end of the Green Line. Wow. The rough areas to the west on the Green Line prepared us for our trip south. Wow. I've never seen so many blocks of trash & junked cars & derelict buildings, boarded up buildings, empty lots. There are so few busy streets with no stores or businesses, only occasional sub shops, dollar stores, liquor stores. So many MB churches! Near the end of the line looking N. now it doesn't look so rough or destroyed. More like some areas of the N. side like Albany Park. But along the N/S leg between Garfield & 43rd or so its terrible. Now we're going to get off at Garfield to transfer to the Ashland/63rd Green Line.
Green Line to Ashland/63rd Finally caught an Ashland/63rd S.bound from Garfield but its sitting waiting for some train ahead to move. Watching a man digging under a building fire escape. He was talking to a woman but she walked away touching her ear and swinging her arm like some tic. He's got supplies or buckets. What is he doing? Cleaning a cement block? Fixing the support for the fire escape? He'd be the only one around here fixing a building. Lots of activity around Prairie Ave & 57th at the Pride Wash Laundry. Its strange, there are pockets of activity. A mini downtown at Halsted & 63rd. Six-story buildings & density. Its run-down, too, but at least its got density & most buildings are still there, as compared to the moonscape E. of the freeway. Still there are a lot of trashed houses (a mountain of clothes behind one flat 6-8 feet high) and burned out, fire escapes hanging in the breeze, places before we pass a defunct station and get to Ashland
-End of the line-
Green Line back to Loop Waiting to get back to the Loop. One more, no two more - the Blue, then the Brown Lines. Yikes, there goes that scary guy driving the weird train with the yellow cars in the middle carrying plastic tanks. All the elevated platforms are painted an ugly mustard yellow around here. "Revelation United Prayer Power." "The New Boulevard Lounge." Young guy with a bad leg runs awkwardly across 55th while we wait at Garfield station. This Green Line does a lot of waiting. That and the lack of riders and the lack of buildings or activity along here make it seem dreamy & peaceful on this leg of the Green Line. It doesn't bother me that its going so slow or that we've been riding the Green Line nearly 3 hours. Its 2:20 at the Indiana stop. Now we slow to a little zigzag parallel with a relict raised railroad bed along 40th. The rails are gone as well as most of the bridges between the raised platforms. Some kind of grotto at a youth center at 40th & Wabash. At IIT suddenly new construction, dorms, well-kept grounds, DeLaSalle schoolboys in uniform. Catholic Community of St. James - a nice playground, people restoring slate on a church rooftop. The train is faster! More activity! Bigger buildings cross SS onward to the Loop!
Blue Line to O'Hare Crossed through tunnel to Blue Line. Above ground suddenly & light! Lots of advertising & bookstores & art galleries, art projects spotted on rooftops until Damen. After here the tracks rise high to get over railroad. A few junkyards before Western. The non-grid angle of this line makes for some neat angled buildings. Suddenly it seems very ethnically mixed here, a lot of Hispanic kids around California, playing soccer on a back fire escape. Now we're going underground. I think we'll come up in the freeway. Freeway riding - its boring. Can't see anything because we're down in this trench. This line really cruises, though a long way between stops & going fast. Passing those scary "home office" towers, down in a tunnel again, over the river, freeways all around. Near the airport I can see another electric train crossing on a track above us. Where does it go? Almost to O'Hare
