Living Memories of the CA&E

Chuck Owen posted these recollections on the Chicago Aurora & Elgin yahoo group. My memories from a decade later growing up in the same neigborhood are similar. I just had to look down into the ditch created by the Congress Expressway to see the trains.

My youthful years in the early fifties in south Oak Park along the
CA&E provide many wonderful memories of the "Roaring Elgin." From our home near Cuyler and Jackson, it was a short walk or bike ride to the wonderful transportation corridor that later became the Congress Expressway. There was a constant parade of trains ofChicago Rapid Transit, CA&E, Soo Line, Chicago Great Western, and B&OCT. Those tracks produced many colorful attraction - the multi- unit lashups of the CGW; the Soo's FA's on freights and F units on their passenger trains and even steam on infrequent occasions; the diminutive SW-1s and even a rare 0-6-0 of the B&OCT; the ancient wooden cars of the CRT, and most important, the magnificent cars of the CA&E.

And the trains of the CA&E - it would be difficult to forget many special memories of those happy and carefree years:

- the lightning-like arcs of the CA&E's as they moved along the third rail in the darkness on a snowy night.

- the mysterious third track with its interlocking at the Gunderson station that was never seen in operation. That mystery was later explained by the CERA's Bulletin on the CA&E.

- the station stop by CA&E westbound trains on the west side of Oak Park Avenue as they did not use the CRT platform on the east side.

- the slow passage of the CA&E mu'ed juice jacks as they headed east on their way to the Central Avenue interchange with a few cars and a caboose. The head brakeman on the lead unit would lift the hinged "L" platform edges to allow the wide freight cars to pass and the conductor on the caboose would drop them back into place for the next "L" train.

- the deep rumbling sound that marked the passage of each CA&E train as it swiftly passed through Oak Park. The proximity of CA&E trains to the "L" trains as the CA&E trains waited for the slower CRT trains to make station stops.

- the occasional trips in later years to Forest Park to watch the CA&E trains as they prepared to head west from their "temporary" station. The huge piles of Herald American newspapers on the front platform of the lead car with the motorman who would drop them at the station in the western suburbs.

- the sad failure to realize that the CA&E was surviving on borrowed time and would never return to downtown and instead, would quietly pass after many promised the revivial of the line after the completion of the Congress Expressway.

As a result, my only "near" CA&E ride has been on the #431 at Union, Illinois - a sad commentary for one who witnessed this mighty carrier in its final years.

Chuck Owen
Bogota, Colombia