Fascinating Railroads In Your Own Backyard - Part 2

by Charles A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com

Albuquerque NM | June 22, 2025. When Dad, who everyone but me called Charlie, found out about my interest in trains, he was what today we'd call "cool about it." I was still in the early grades at Komensky School when my father started taking me for walks or bike rides to the wide prairie.

Stepped abutment of IC railroad bridge/viaduct over Ridgeland Avenue in Berwyn. This is the next bridge west of the one that spans the Q tracks. -- Google Maps

At first, these excursions would be for typical father-son things that a father would want to do with his only son. Things like toss a ball, hunt for snakes, pick cattails so that we could light them up and make smoke, fly a kite, or just enjoy being in an undeveloped part of the city. My father had lived in Chicago for most of his life after emigrating (legally) from Czechoslovakia ad age about 6. (I know this has nothing to do with railroads, but keep reading.) Railroads were a big part of Chicago, and he had experienced them close up and dirty during a stint in the Navy during WWII, and as a laborer for a power plant. During his childhood, railroads never failed to let him know they were there. As a child, Dad never had to be curious about trains to be near them. On the other hand, times were different in the early 1950s, and I had a burning curiosity.

I don't blame Dad for focusing on the father-son things, but soon enough he noticed how my focus would shift south to the railroad every time a train went by. All of a sudden, the focus of the trips to the wide prairie shifted as well. We'd stroll closer to the tracks and just wait for a good look. Dad wasn't a train fanatic, so he'd answer my questions as best he could. Boy, I still had a lot of unanswered questions though.

On the most memorable trip to the wide prairie, Dad took me all the way up next to the IC bridge. This was a remarkable vantage point for me, but it wasn't the half of it. Dad went over to the concrete abutment that held up the west end of the bridge, and he started to climb. The abutment rose in steps a good three feet wide and table height. Dad beckoned me to follow, but the only way I was tall enough to climb was to stumble up the embankment immediately next to the bridge. Reaching the level next below the base of the IC bridge, he sat down and had me sit with him, leaning against the next step. I thought I had gone to train heaven!

Although taken years later, this photo shows our approximate POV from the IC abutment.

From this elevated position, I could see a world of trains that I had only imagined from the ground. Of course, the IC embankment was still behind us, so the entire view was to the west and north. Clyde was a big yard, so I could see tracks and tracks full of boxcars, flatcars, gondolas, and just about every kind of mixed freight car waiting to be marshalled into trains. And the trains, themselves, sat on the departure tracks with four- and six-unit diesels idling in that grinding EMD sound I had only heard at a distance. I was afraid that, if I blinked, it would all go away and I'd find myself sitting in my backyard with Dad listening to a ballgame on an old Atwater Kent he had salvaged and made to work.

But no, this was all real. I could see the Chicago skyline if I followed the tracks as far east as I could. Off to the south of the tracks, I could see the roundhouse where there may have been real steam engines. I could see the coal dock, which we called a coaling tower, quite a way east but not quite as far as the gigantic truss bridge that carried Ogden Avenue, old Route 66, over the tracks at the east end of the yard. If I played my cards right, I might even see a steam engine.

At virtually the same instant the grade crossing bells at Ridgeland Avenue started, a sudden blast from a diesel air horn announced the approach from the east of one of the Great Northern streamliners. In a few very short seconds, the quartet of EMD diesels dressed in orange and yellow and chocolate fired under the IC bridge on the track right next to us. Fourteen exceedingly long passenger cars dressed in the same uniform followed and beat a rhythm I could only compare to thrumming one's fingers very loudly on a large iron pot. Then it was gone. The bells at Ridgeland rang four or five cycles and stopped. The birds in the field, as if they had been waiting for the train to pass, started to chirp. My ears tuned back to the grinding of the diesels on the departure tracks. I didn't want to leave.

The Empire Builder streamliner in full livery as I first saw it with Dad. More often than not, Burlington E-units pulled the train through Berwyn. My first time was an exception. -- Gary Dolzall

As I said, Dad was cool about it. He pointed out that there was a much safer place to watch the same trains on the platform of the little Lavergne station just west of the IC bridge. This was true, and my friends and I spent many hours bicycling to the station and waiting for the regular collection of Burlington trains to come through.

I think we saw every kind of train the Q had to offer in the late 1950s. The Q had an heavy schedule of commuter trains on weekdays. They usually consisted of an E9 series diesel in stainless steel livery, a heavyweight coach-baggage combine, and from one to four bi-level gallery cars. The heavyweights had the baggage area converted to house a generator to power the lights in the gallery cars. The railroad had long since abandoned steam power for commuters. In addition to the commuters, the Q ran its flagship California Zephyr and the many "Zephyr" designated passenger trains to every state northwest, west and southwest of Chicago. The Q also ran both the North Coast Limited and the Empire Builder in conjunction with the Northern Pacific and Great Northern respectively. A mixed bag of additional passenger routes ran through from Chicago, though they were not designated as Zephyrs.

Here are Q silver E-units on the otherwise (almost) unsullied North Coast Limited consist -- Mary Bernard railfan44

For all intents and purposes, the Q's Chicago freight operations began and ended at Clyde yard. Westbound, the two main stems of the Q didn't split until beyond Aurora IL, and that was 28 miles west of Lavergne. So we saw just about every freight car that the Q took out of the Chicago area. East of Clyde, the Q had several connections, most notably at about Western Avenue, but the Q did not have a main line except the passenger route to Union Station. In those days, the Q wasn't much of a bridge route, so it's not unreasonable to say that most of the freight east of Clyde either terminated or originated in Chicago. The rest left the Q either just east of Clyde, just west of Western Avenue, or just short of the northerly turn into the Union Station complex. In our pre-teen years, train watching in those areas wasn't considered.

As if that were not enough variety, we could count on the IC to entertain us with at least one freight a week over the bridge. Back then, all of us boys who watched trains around Lavergne thought that the IC didn't run any passenger trains on the line through Berwyn. In fact, it ran three passenger trains each way daily: The Land O Corn, The Hawkeye, and an unnamed numbered train. With few exceptions, they were run through Berwyn at times of night or day when us boys were unlikely to be out on our own watching trains. According to schedules from 1955, there were no scheduled stops at or near Berwyn.

The massive Ogden overpass. The trusses carried Ogden/Route 66 over the Burlington and the intersection of Cicero Avenue and 25th St in Cicero IL. Another massive overpass crossed the Clyde Yard at 54th Avenue/Laramie. -- Industrial History blog - uncredited

Other ways Dad contributed to my interest in trains were regular drives into Chicago to either my Uncle Louie's on Augusta Boulevard or Dad's workplace near the stockyards. Both trips took us under or over the massive through truss bridge that carried U.S. 66, aka Ogden Avenue, over Cicero Avenue at the east throat of Clyde Yard. I preferred over on the westbound trip back home, because that not only afforded a bird's eye view of the entire yard laid out before us but also took us past the roundhouse at 31st Street and Ogden where all those noisy locomotives spent their off hours. Looking into the big windows around the outer wall of the circular building was viewing a museum full of the noses of every imaginable steam or diesel engine still on the Q's roster. As with Lavergne Station, once we learned that we could bicycle far enough, we could get to the roundhouse on our own. But that will be another part of the story.

One more note on the drives into the City. The trips to Dad's workplace always preceded a weekend fishing trip, and there was always a connection with railroads. The industrial areas around the stockyards were laced with railroad sidings and spurs. The four story building where Dad worked was just a warehouse, but the siding behind the building let the railroad--I don't know which one--deliver boxcars full of merchandise and coal to feed the giant steam boiler in the basement. The siding also had a plentiful supply of crickets, which we captured to use as bait on the fishing trips. I bet few of my readers ever thought of railroads as a source of bait!

When we come back for Part 3, of Fascinating Railroads in Your Own Backyard I'll talk about how Dad fed my interest in model railroads, none of which ever ran in my backyard.

And I am Mr. Trains. -- mistertrains@gmail.com

©2025 - Charles A. Turek

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