20150705: Portage Cermak Lumber Scissors

- Portage Park

- Heading West along Cermak Road after getting off I-55, I was stopped at the 5-way of Cermak, Archer, and Princeton. The tank car on the bridge would be NS on Metra tracks.

- Going under tge Orange Line in the foreground and IC (used to be GM&O, ICwest, and Sante Fe) in the background.

- Continuing West along Cermak.

- There is a For Sale sign on the building above the hood of the truck.

- I have now parked and I'm walking back east to the bridge. I'm glad there were a couple of cars already parked along Cermak, otherwise it would not occur to me that you could park in a marked lane. Since the Cermak Bridge is just one lane, having two traffic lanes here would not help a lot.

- Cermak Road Bridge

- Taking pictures of the Canal Street and Canal Street Railroad bridges from the Cermak bridge.

- Walking further east to take shots of the former GM&O+ICwest+Santa Fe overpass. (Now used by CN because they now own both the GM&O and ICwest.)

- Note this overpass allows only one lane, so there is no need to replace the Cermak Bridge with a 2-lane bridge unless they also rebuild this overpass.

- Overhead is the new Orange Line that took advantage of Sante Fe's abandoned passenger route to Dearborn Station. Note the railroad overpass construction looks different. That is probably because this side was originally built by a different railroad.

- I walked back to the west side of the overpass.

- Walking up Canal Street to get pictures of those bridges.

- See Jeff's Marina.

- Canal Street Bridge

- Canal Street Railroad Bridge

- Boats go slowly through this area of the river.

- See discussion of the second picture in posting.

- Amtrak train on RR bridge while I was stuck on the west side of the road bridge. Traffic on Canal, even on a Sunday, was heavy enough that I could not quickly cross it.

2:15:06pm

2:15:42pm

- Lawrence's Fish and Shrimp Note below a picture of their dock so that you can come by boat as well as car.

- Cermak Bridge taken from Canal Bridge

- Walked back to the car using Lumber Street

- U-Haul has bought what Google labels Lumber Street Supply for additional truck storage and repair facilities. They had a picnic area by the river that I took advantage of to get more pictures of both Canal and Cermak Bridges.

- Every big building used to have a water tower on top for fire protection. Most have been removed so I take pictures of any vestiges I find in the 21st Century. This is why most water towers have been removed.

- The industrial buildings in this area have been preserved by converting the upper floors to artist lofts.

- North of Cermak is preserved industrial buildings. South is a concrete plant and not much else. This part of Lumber Street is used for drag racing.

- Walking west along Cermak back to my car.

- I drove further west and turned onto Canalport because I saw some rails in the street. We will see more of these Blackhawk figures later. Note that they had just one a Stanley Cup.

- I was glad to see this because there were no cars on Canalport, but this taught me that it was OK park because I was going to be long gone before 8pm.

- Looking north from Canalport. A July 2015 street view indicates the east branch does still cross Canalport.

Satellite

- Streetview of Cermak crossing. Below is my picture of that street crossing. Note how the black iron fence and AT&T's shrubbery have been replaced by barb-wired topped chain link fencing.

- This is the Cermak crossing that curves to head west along the south side of Cermak.

- Magik St. Tavern has been nicely refurbished. There are tracks curving through Canalport in front of that building.

- A cornerstone on that building.

- Looking south from Canalport towards Cermak. The left branch now terminates at Cermak, but the right branch is the above curved crossing of Cermak.

- When I got back to my car, I realized that they were mounting those Blackhawk figures on their "porch" to celebrate the Stanley Cup.

- Details of the left branch terminating at Cermak but the right branch still going across it.

- The power plant in the background is Fisk and it was closed several years ago. It is one reason I made this trip. It is supposed to be torn down and replaced by a CTA bus service repair facility.

- I followed the curved track across Cermak and now you can see the RoW south of Cermak. Notice that there is a turnout to nowhere.

- Picture from the same location but angled towards the south.

- Took pictures of Fisk as I walked down Cermak.

- Note the helicopter on the right side of the picture. It is headed to the Health Care Service Corporation building whose sign you can see on the left. This is where the company parks their medical helicopters when they are not needed. (Or maybe these helicopters are going to the Chicago Helicopter Experience.)

- The lettering on the "white tank" is "Midwest Generation Fisk Station." They are the company that bought the coal-fired generating plants from ComEd when the industry was deregulated several years ago.

- I wondered how a company can make money if they close their plants. The answer is that you can't. They went bankrupt and were bought by NRG. But the reason I took this picture was to record the switch stand for another...

- ...turnout to nowhere.

- I had to turnaround when I lost my sidewalk because a passing siding still exists. Although BNSF doesn't care about weeds anymore.

- On my way back to the van, I heard another helicopter. It is just to the right of the tower.

- A parting shot of Fisk.

- This must have been some sort of administration building for ComEd.

- A sequence of 3 photos at 00, 06, and 19 seconds showing a helicopter landing.

- They made good progress putting the stuff up while I walked along Cermak.

- The switch yard is still a valuable asset and won't be torn down.

- The tower on top of the tower is interesting. The blue sign reads "Lakefront Roofing & Sheetmetal Supply." I'm glad they have done a nice job of preserving the building. Looking at a Google map, they are just one of several tenants of this building.

- When I saw another track going across Cermak, I parked on a side street and walked back...

- ...to take a picture of an industrial spur that still exists and a building that is curved because of the curved track. It would take a lot of work to dig out the flange ways.

- The main branch south of Cermak has become a joke. This is the crossing of Loomis Street. I don't think they are running a Hi-Rail down that line once a year to keep it legally operational.

- The scaffolding on the church steeples caught my eye.

- I took this picture to record the street sign Loomis.

- Even though the track is a joke, they do still have crossing signals.

- From Loomis Street Bridge.

- Asphalt Contractor

- Picture of Loomis Bridge itself.

- Canal Origins Park at the mouth of Bubbly Creek. I have tried to go to that park, but I could not figure out where to park!

- Because a building has been torn down, a view from across Ashland of GM&O's Page Bridge that is normally obstructed.

- Pictures of the Scissors Bridge from the boat launch park.

- Pictures along California Ave including a sampling of a mixed freight that is going overhead.

- CN/IC's bridge in the background. So the train I was watching was a CN train because part of it is still on the bridge.

- Then I caught at least two UP engines going southbound on the scissors bridge. Unfortunately, I was on the west side of the bridge, so the train is "framed" by the California Bridge. The number on the second engine I could see was 8048: ES44AC, built 3-9/2012.

- It evidently had a DPU in the middle because there is a half-full lumber car in front of it and tank cars behind it.

- And the CN/IC train had a DPU, 2806: ES44AC, 9/12-2/13.

- The Prairie concrete mixing plant gets its aggregates by barge.

- Boats are allowed to go fast under California. They have to slow down before they go under the scissors bridge.

- Tank cars and covered hoppers going by in the UP run-through.

- Even some boxcars.

- Including a Railbox.

- A security guard on a bicycle on a Sunday.

- I removed about a half-dozen pictures of the train. But I kept these because this is the boat that taught me that they have to slow way down when they get to the Scissors Bridge.

- Cars, helicopters, trains, boats, and planes. (The industry is Ameropan Oil.)

- Pictures of the California Bridge itself.

- Another DPU. I think this is a second eastbound CN train that came through while I was watching the UP train and boats. (Two trains in a row strikes me as rather busy considering it is a Sunday.)

- I was trying to overexpose the beams to get a picture of the trunnion bearing down in the dark crack. This was an experiment that failed.

- This plane probably took off towards the northeast and then turned to head to a city out west. Now that it is over an industrial area, it is climbing hard.