I lived on Elm Avenue in Unincorporated Hinsdale, IL and there were tracks at the end of that street alongside where Santa Fe Speedway used to be where did these train travelled to? I also saw an old passenger train similar to the one one that carried President's Lincoln to Springfield back in 2006 as I was going to work, where was that train going? it had passengers dressed in period clothing
The short answer might be the Chicago & Illinois Western Railroad tracks and they went to nowhere.
First of all, finding were Elm Street was that far south was a challenge. The red line extrapolates Elm Street from where it exists in Hinsdale and along side Oak Grove County Forest Preserve down to what is now a power corridor north of the BNSF/Santa Fe tracks. I also added a yellow "dot" where the racetrack was. I assume the tracks of interest were on the north side of the racetrack because those on the south side are the BNSF/Santa Fe and they still exist and go to California via Joliet.
This map shows that the C&IW planned to build to at least Lockport, IL. All of the maps I have seen show they offered service only as far as Hodgkins. I'm sure that ComEd bought the C&IW right-of-way for their corridor for transmission lines. Note that on the satellite image the big green line of the corridor not only parallels the river, it goes between the USPS and railroad facilities in Willow Springs.
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| DeBruler |
So is this where you used to see tracks? It is possible that they laid tracks according to their plan but that they never used them except maybe for storage.
Note the black line on this map. It agrees that today's power corridor used to be a railroad right-of-way.
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| Aban RR Map |
You must be talking about a different location for 2006 because I used Global Earth to confirm there were no tracks here in 2006. I also used Google Earth to confirm the location of the speedway. If you mean the tracks that still exist, they are the BNSF/Santa Fe tracks and I don't know what type of special passenger train they were running. Sometimes railroad historical societies organize special exhibition trains. But I don't follow that aspect of railroad history.
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| Google Earth, Apr 1998 |
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| Google Earth, Mar 2002 |
