Final days to see old trains
If you ever wanted to ride in a locomotive, or in the cupola atop a caboose, you have one more chance this season, and it's close to home - at South Elgin's Fox River Trolley Museum.
Freight has a history going back more than a century at the museum. The coal-laden freight trains of the Aurora, Elgin & Fox River Electric Co. snaked along Route 31 as late as 1972 and made it possible for the museum's 112-year-old rail line to survive into the 21st century. While the coal trains are long gone, Sundays, Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 mark the final chance this season for you to ride the museum's electric locomotive or a caboose.
The extent of Mother Nature's show is dependent on the weather, but Illinois Central Railroad caboose 9648 and Chicago Surface Lines (later CTA) locomotive L-202, are expected to operate. Both are always popular with riders young and old. It's inexpensive, it's close to home - and it's fun.
Caboose 9648 was built in 1957 at the IC's Centralia, Ill., shops. The 28-foot caboose was one of hundreds built by the IC from the 1930s through the late 1950s. It retains its bunks, stove and the seats the IC built into it in Centralia, and has additional benches to accommodate railroad enthusiasts young and old.
Locomotive L-202 was built in 1908, and spent the first 50 years of its life transporting freight cars, work equipment and disabled streetcars of the Chicago Surface Lines, and later CTA, over the streets of Chicago and around the Surface Lines' carbarns. It was rebuilt by CTA in 1958, and spent 20 more years switching freight cars and work equipment in CTA's Lower 63rd Street yard before joining the museum collection in 1979.
Freight traffic allowed three miles of the Fox River Line to survive when the rest of the 40-mile railroad was abandoned. The line can trace its history to 1896, when the Carpentersville, Elgin and Aurora Railway laid tracks from Elgin to Geneva. By 1901, the line extended from Carpentersville to Yorkville, but the rest was abandoned in pieces between 1924 and 1935.
Over the years, the railroad served several freight customers, most notably the Elgin State Hospital. Throughout World War II, electric locomotives provided the motive power, and trains loaded with coal for the hospital would rumble down the middle of, or alongside, Illinois 31, returning with the empties and loads of meat from the old Kerber Packing plant and an adjacent tannery. In 1947, the line was dieselized. Freight service continued even after the museum re-electrified much of the remaining trackage in 1966. The museum bought the railroad when regular freight service ended, in 1972.
Blackhawk station, adjacent to the picnic grove of the Jon Duerr Forest Preserve, on Route 31 in St. Charles Township, allows riders a chance to board at either end of the line and handicapped accessibility. Plan a final picnic of the season around a trolley ride and view the colors along the scenic Fox River as the leaves begin to change.
Rides will be offered between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. Fares are $3.50 for adults, and $2 for senior citizens and children, age 3 to 11. Children under 3 ride free. The Fox River Trolley Museum is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the often colorful history of Chicago's 'L,' the area's streetcar lines and the electric railways that once linked Chicago and its suburbs with cities as far away as South Bend, Ind.; Milwaukee, Wis.; Rockford, DeKalb, Sycamore, Kankakee, Morris, Princeton, Ill., and beyond.
The museum is open Sundays through Nov. 2, and the last three Saturdays of October. For information, or to rent a train, call (847) 697-4676.