Chicago Day 3 - Rondout

Another hotel breakfast this morning before checking out of the Hampton Inn and heading north on a series of tollways to the village of Rondout, a railway junction on the west side of the far north Chicago suburbs of Lake Bluff and Lake Forest (ie practically in Wisconsin). These suburbs were filled with tree lined streets and beautiful old houses which I'm sure cost a fortune. Parked in the business district surronding the Lake Bluff Metra station I discovered a fairly tricked out Electric Blue Mini S reminding me of the vehciel that would be waiting to pick me up at Love Field later in the evening. While naviagting the roads leading into Lake Bluff, I was stopped by a UP train heading north on the old CNW freight district. The train of auto parts boxcars was led by a pair of former Rio Grande tunnel motors, quite far removed from their originally intended duty prowling the tough grades of the mainline through the Rockies of Colorado.

I grabbed lunch at Subway before parking near the interlocking tower at Rondout which guards the crossing of the Canadian Pacific line to Milwaukee (former Milwaukee Road) with the EJ&E belt line. Although not one of the most scenic, accessible or busy spot in Chicago, it is an interesting place to catch some action on the CP, which, thanks to my Winnipeg upbringing, is the railroad I'm most interested in. As I pulled up, a manifest freight headed south on the CP, which meant that a big lull in the action was looming. After eating my lunch and sitting for a while, I was about to leave when the sound of an oncoming horn drifted through the rental car window. A northbound CP train cruised through the interlocking and had no sooner disappeared when the headlight of a southbound CP train popped over the horizon. The southbound train was heading to a perfectly lit and composed shot, with the lead locomotives nicely framed by the overhead pedestrian bridge just north of the diamond. Unortunately, the train was a bare-table intermodal train pulled by a single leased SD70M, not the nice heavy CP freight pulled by some action red units I was hoping for but a nice shot nonetheless.

After watching the train pass, I headed back to Midway, checked in the rental car and boarded my Southwest flight back to Houston. In HOuston I actually managed to make a good connection and caught an earlier flight to Dallas, getting me back in the early evenign instead of at 10 at night.

It was a good weekend filled with lots of passing trains that recharged my railroad batteries. There's nothing like some time at trackside to renew my interest in working on the railroad designs that appear as somewhat abstract lines and 3-d models on my computer screen at work each day.