Drab Evening at Forest Hill
Another one from the archives, reupload this time. On a chilly, grey evening, SD70 2572 is second out in the consist of an intermodal heading into Norfolk Southern's Landers Yard on the far-ish south side of Chicago under the most blah skies imaginable. This is Forest Hill Crossing, (aka 75th Street) home to a manually-controlled tower complete with semaphores, until the early 90s. Both running east-west, the Belt Railway of Chicago main and NS's former Wabash 6th District cross CSX's Barr Sub (the B&OCT main) here. At one time, Pennsy's Panhandle line paralleled the B&O here, and since all lines involved were double-track, this resulted in a total of 16 diamonds at the crossing- today there are "only" 8. In the near-ish future though, this situation will be completely different, as the crossing (plus nearby Belt Junction and the grade crossing with Columbus Avenue) are to be completely grade-separated via a flyover on CSX, with new connection tracks being installed in the northeast quadrant, as part of the CREATE infrastructure program.
Drab Evening at Forest Hill
Another one from the archives, reupload this time. On a chilly, grey evening, SD70 2572 is second out in the consist of an intermodal heading into Norfolk Southern's Landers Yard on the far-ish south side of Chicago under the most blah skies imaginable. This is Forest Hill Crossing, (aka 75th Street) home to a manually-controlled tower complete with semaphores, until the early 90s. Both running east-west, the Belt Railway of Chicago main and NS's former Wabash 6th District cross CSX's Barr Sub (the B&OCT main) here. At one time, Pennsy's Panhandle line paralleled the B&O here, and since all lines involved were double-track, this resulted in a total of 16 diamonds at the crossing- today there are "only" 8. In the near-ish future though, this situation will be completely different, as the crossing (plus nearby Belt Junction and the grade crossing with Columbus Avenue) are to be completely grade-separated via a flyover on CSX, with new connection tracks being installed in the northeast quadrant, as part of the CREATE infrastructure program.