This is the anniversary of the sudden abandonment of CA&E passenger service in 1957. When service was cancelled at 12:17PM, thousands of passengers were stranded, mostly in downtown Chicago, and had to find other ways to get home. We've been re-enacting this event for a long time.
I believe the first time was in 1987, for the 30th anniversary. At that time, the main line had just reached Seeman Road, giving us a place to "strand" the passengers. And we had only two operating CA&E cars: the 431, and the partly-restored 309. I took a couple of slides of the occasion. In the first picture, the arrow points to Frank, who was five years old.
And since the passing siding wasn't finished yet, as I recall we just had the passengers reboard the cars for the trip back.
Since that time, we've added a passing siding, so the stranded passengers can ride railroad equipment to get home, and there's a platform, of course. Here's a picture from 2007 for the 50th anniversary:
And since then, we've been documenting the process here.
Of course, nothing is happening today, but just wait till next year!
No comments:
Post a Comment