Why Chicago's Trains Run Backwards)

Did you know that Chicago's Metro operates nearly 500 route miles and uses a fleet of over 1,000 passenger cars, many embracing a design dating all the way back to the 1950s? Nowhere is this intensity more visible than at the A2 interlocking junction where some estimates suggest that a train passes by every 90 seconds during peak hours. That's all to say that Chicago's network is massive, aging, but incredibly precise. And it's fair to say that this scale goes all the way back to the early days of its existence when Chicago became known as the railroad capital of North America. And the title fits, as when you combine the city's freight, commuter, and rapid transit line, the numbers are simply staggering. To offer a little perspective here, the region logs hundreds of millions of passenger trips every year. Putting that aside for a moment, even if we boil it down to just the regional commuter arteries operated by Metro, we discover something pretty strange. As it turns out, this entire system is really a patchwork of scraps left behind from older, failed carriers. And although that transition resulted in Chicago losing some of its more prized European-style architecture, it also forced some very unusual solutions. Innovations that every Chicagoan has wondered about at one point or another. Like, why in some places do the trains run on the wrong side of the tracks like they're in England? Why do those double-decker carriages have that weird open gallery in the middle? Where did those ugly green tinted windows come from? And why exactly do the trains run backwards half of the time? Stay tuned to find out as we explore the history of Chicago's commuter rail. I'm your host Ryan Socash, and you're watching Race History. Let's start back in 1852, when Chicago was a marshy outpost of about 35,000 people. Just eight decades later, it had exploded into a metropolis of millions, making it one of the fastest growing cities in human history. And although the inter-American waterway systems, like the Erie Canal, primed the land for the situation, the true growth explosion was deeply connected to the city's emergence as a railroad hub, where tracks eventually radiated in more directions than almost any other city in North America. And it's crucial to mention that this radiation, or the spread of independently owned rail lines, defined the nearby regions from the urban centers to the earliest suburbs, and of course the rural industries, farming and mining. And this was Chicago's major advantage. While most east coast cities, like New York or Baltimore, had tracks running mostly west, Chicago effectively had a very competitive 360 degree setup. Thus, the authorities in Chicago began the aggressive evolution of hub-and-spoke growth. The proof of concept was the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, incorporated in 1836. This line was originally built to link Chicago to the lead mines of northwestern Illinois, though it didn't fulfill its original vision, at first only going as far as Oak Ridge, or modern-day Oak Park. The reason for this anomaly is interesting. Company never reached the mines because it was totally sidetracked by how much money it was making in Chicago and the surrounding farmlands. So by the time other lines reached the Mississippi, at Bolton, Illinois, they realized that Chicago itself was more of a destination than a starting point. What's more, these installations massively strengthened Chicago's economic position by creating an entire western arm of what urban planners refer to as weeds on a string pattern. In this setup, major towns are spaced between three and five miles apart, allowing rural industries access to the rest of the economy and the city, and vice versa. Hence, Oak Park became a refuge for the wealthy, who could now just go into the city with a 30-minute commute. Whereas River Forest, formerly Thatcher, was the region's center of lumber and ice, Maywood became a residential area for middle-class workers of the 1860s, and Wheaton became the hub of agricultural goods. Whereas the city of West Chicago, formerly Junction, was put on the map as a major switching point for engines and freight cars. Not far from there, Elgin emerged as a center for dairy shipments and watchmaking, believe it or not. So as you can see, in the 19th century, a rail line meant everything to the future of an urban center, as well as the farm fields beyond it. For planners, they knew that. With that in mind, by February of 1852, the Michigan Southern became the first railroad to enter Chicago from the east, providing a critical link to one of America's most important cities. At that same time, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad further accelerated this momentum, becoming the first line to reach and then cross the Mississippi River in 1856. About a decade later, in 1865, development took another major step forward when an association of nine railroads established the Union Stockyards, acquiring 320 acres of marshland to centralize the industry of meatpacking. By 1890, those yards processed 9 million animals annually, solidifying Chicago's role as the hog butcher of the world. Simultaneously, the city also became a global manufacturing center, hosting the Pullman Company for passenger car production, and later, the Electro Division of Diesel Locomotives. The resulting population surge in the area was staggering. Chicago's population doubled to 1.1 million between 1880 and 1890, and there's no other way to really put it. This was the golden age of rail. By 1925, Chicago was the undisputed railroad center of the nation, and had also pioneered the Belt Railway, a ring of tracks circling the city that allowed freight trains to bypass the crowded downtown loop. Furthermore, within the Belt Railway, they could switch between competing lines. At times, this Belt Railway handled between 20 and 25 of the nation's tonnage, meaning if a product was grown in the west or manufactured in the east, it likely sat in the Chicago yard for at least a few hours. Massive yards like Proviso, then the largest on earth, sorted goods destined for every corner of the map back then. As for the movement of people, well, passengers enjoyed six grand terminals that served as gateways to the continent. There was Union Station, an ornate faux arts masterpiece completed in May of 1925 for $75 million. It featured a great hall, a soaring 115-foot barrel-vaulted skylight. Then there was Grand Central Station, which was often cited as the city's most elegant. With its 247-foot clock tower, 11,000-pound bell, and stunning interiors featuring marble floors and gold-leaf Corinthian columns, it was a sight to behold. The Dearborn Station was considered the most soulful, for this was the city's oldest terminal, its Flemish-influenced clock tower overlooking the arrivals of legendary services such as the Super Chief, connecting the grid of Chicago to the bright lights of Hollywood. LaSalle Street Station was the ultimate executive terminal, situated at the edge of Chicago's financial district. The station was tucked beneath a 12-story office tower, serving as a seamless transition for the titans of industry, moving between the Board of Trade and the tracks. But its true claim to fame wasn't the architecture. It was the 20th Century Limited. Every afternoon at 3.30 p.m., 30 minutes before the train's departure to New York, a special red crimson carpet was rolled out across the platform. Funny enough, it turns out that the red carpet wasn't just for show. Rather, it was a six-foot-wide designed to ensure that the wealthy and famous never had to step foot on a dirty train platform. Anyhow, most accounts suggest that it was here that the phrase, red carpet treatment, was born. To walk that carpet was to enter a world of art deco splendor, five-star dining, and that 20-hour dash to Manhattan, a journey that became the golden standard for travel. So that's all to say that if Union Station was the city's front door, LaSalle Street was the private VIP entrance. Anyhow, there was also the Illinois Central Station. Originally built during the World's Columbian Exposition, it featured a 13-story clock tower and a massive 600-foot train shed overlooking the lake. Finally, there was the Chicago and Northwestern Terminal, a renaissance revival structure that required a monumental engineering effort to elevate 16 tracks above street level. And this terminal is arguably the weirdest of them all, since in modern day, the trains here run on the wrong side of the tracks. The origins for this go back to the 19th century, when most of the original stations were built on the north side of a single track line to accommodate passengers heading inbound towards the city. And this was fine until a population boom forced the railroad to add a second track, and it's here that it faced a dilemma. If they switched to right-hand running, thousands of commuters would have to cross the active tracks every morning to reach the station house, which was a recipe for disaster financially. So to save money on building new stations and to keep their passengers safe, they just kept the inbound flow on the existing and now left track. That solution became permanent. And it's for that reason that the signaling switches and suburban stations were locked into what we could describe as an English-style orientation. And it's one of the very few places in North America to do so. The point is really that from the complex sorting yards to the awe-inspiring passenger terminals, Chicagoans in the early 20th century enjoyed the most deluxe rail infrastructure known to man. However, by the time the 1940s arrived, Chicago and its rails were going to change forever. The decline of the individual networks began in the years following World War II. Recognizing the writing on the wall, company executives from several Chicago operators decided that it was time to innovate in ways that would come to define Chicago rails in our modern era. Leading the charge was the Chicago Northwestern, which in 1959 brought about a radical concept to save time and money. Push-pull operations. You see, before this, the locomotive had to decouple and run around its coaches at every terminal to lead the return trip from the front. A process that wasted at minimum 20 minutes on clogged platforms. So their solution was to install a small control cab in the last passenger car. From there, an engineer could remotely control the engine from what appears to us to be the wrong end of the train. And this is why Chicago trains run backwards half the time. And it makes sense. To really appreciate the scale of these savings, we have to examine the idea of what's called dwell time, or the minutes that a train sits idle at a terminal. In the era before push-pull, a standard locomotive was a prisoner of its own design. Once it pulled into a suburban station like Union Station or Northwestern, it was trapped against the bumper post by the cars behind it. So to send the train back out, its engine had to be uncoupled, wait for a clear path, move to a parallel or bypass track, and then drive past the entire length of the train where it would again recouple the other end. And not only did it take that 20 to 30 minutes, but it involved extra active labor. Complications were not unusual. In contrast, with that little control cab at the back, the engineer could just now walk down to the other end of the train, dropping the turnaround time to under five minutes. Imagine what that means at scale in a huge city like Chicago. When you apply that 25 minute savings across the entire fleet, the numbers become staggering. Companies saved millions, and this improvement got the executives thinking about other ways that they could improve the economics. From there, they also considered ways to economize the ratio between the train's capacity and the number of crew members needed to service a given run. The obvious solution to everyone was to go double-decker, a concept that had been around since the 1840s in places like France with their imperial carriages, as well as faraway places like Bombay, India. But in Chicago, it never fully caught on because it always came with a catch. Doubling the floor space also meant doubling the number of conductors, which in times of struggle is too expensive a proposition. Enter the Budd Company, based out of Philadelphia, which offered a very pragmatic solution. Just keep the seating upstairs, cut away the center flooring, creating a rolling auditorium of sorts, or gallery. This way, one conductor could easily pass through and punch everyone's ticket in one efficient pass. With that, the first 30 gallery cars were delivered to the Burlington route, and the program expanded from there. These cars were revolutionary. They could hold up to 150 passengers each, almost doubling the capacity of those older heavyweight coaches. And the public also thought they looked great, cast in that futuristic-looking silver skin. It's also fair to mention that the Pullman Standard built its own competing version of these gallery cars in 1955 for the Chicago and Northwestern. Though these carriages looked different, as they were made of smooth painted steel rather than that corrugated stainless steel used by Budd. Anyhow, the design out of Philadelphia won out by a long shot, but they too came with a catch. They created reflective glare from the sunlight, and they could basically bake passengers in a summer commute. Which is why by the 1960s, nearly all the trains were fitted with those green-tinted windows. And it's here that we come to a crossroads in the history of Chicago rails. And as if that wasn't bad enough, new stifling federal regulations made it difficult for the remaining companies to adjust their rates to reflect the reality's inflation. This state of affairs also affected urban culture, as the grand architecture owned by the railways, some of the most beautiful buildings in Chicago, were at best destined for decay, and at worst, demolition. And you need to understand here that those railroad palaces became economic burdens, so there was really no other possible outcome. Places like Union Station Concourse were demolished in 1968 to sell the air rights for office buildings above. For commuters, this meant that instead of entering the train terminal through an almost regal gateway, passengers were expected to commute through a subterranean maze. Which some sources have pointed out is the way that rats navigate the city. So by contrast, the automobile really started to seem like a better option. Grand Central Station was next, demolished in 1971, only to remain vacant for decades afterward. Illinois Central Station followed in 74, and the LaSalle Street Station was raised and then rebuilt in 1981, and is now topped by a modern skyscraper. With what little remained of the independent railroads just limping along, it became clear that consolidation was needed. Thus, the Illinois General Assembly created the Regional Transportation Authority, or RTA, to funnel tax revenues into the failing mass transit system. This provided some stability, however, even the RTA was unable to control the escalating cost, driving several more railroads into liquidation. And from those scraps, a dedicated commuter rail division was finally established in 1983. By 1985, it was formally branded as Metro. The new brand assumed control of the bankrupt lines and established contracts with the remaining freight companies to maintain that Chicago-spoken hub network. And from that point on, they began unifying the fragmented, crumbling empire, focusing mostly on three areas. First, they standardized the fleet. Metro made that stainless steel gallery car the regional icon, ensuring that whether you were from Joliet or Elgin, you were riding in a reliable, high-capacity vehicle. Second, they modernized the infrastructure. They poured billions into repair, replacing rotting wooden ties with concrete, and upgrading the out-of-date signaling system. And finally, they preserved the original hub-and-spoke concept, which, in my opinion, is far more unusual than the trains running backwards. And I have to make a confession here, I grew up in Chicago, and even as a little kid, I remember thinking how weird it was that my great-grandmother would have to take a train all the way into the city, and then another one all the way out to where I lived to pick me up in what would have otherwise been a 10-minute car ride had she just let my parents drop me off. So why is this? Well, a lot of those lines run quite close to each other from a north-south perspective, and so I always thought it was weird that there was no way to really transfer between without going into the city. Anyhow, that's the story of Chicago's trains. I really hope you liked the episode, and will consider supporting the channel by subscribing. Otherwise, until next time, I'm Ryan Socash, signing off.