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Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company
in Illinois
Minneapolis, St. Paul and Pacific (The Milwaukee Road)
The Soo Line / Wisconsin Central
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I grew up during the 50's and 60's in Des Plaines, Illinois, a
city criss-crossed by railroads. The Chicago & Northwestern Railway
Company ran trains on its 3-track northwest line, chiefly commuter
trains (or "scoots" as railfans call them), the Soo Line had a
single track which bisected the city, and both the C&NW and
Milwaukee Road (The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Pacific, to be precise)
rolled freight on the "new line" which skirted the western edge of
O'Hare Field. All three of these railroads intersected at Deval
Crossing, about 1 mile west of the city center. Deval today is still
one of the best places in Illinois to watch trains.
I lived near the Norma Junction where the new line crossed
Thacker Street, and a single track split from the 2-track main line
and ran straight north to Seeger Junction where it met up with the
(mostly scoot) northwest line. When we first moved to Des Plaines in
1954, there was a water tower and some related structures at Norma,
just south of Thacker and east of the tracks. I have not been able
to find any pictures of these structures, which were torn down in
1956 perhaps. I have no recall of seeing steam power on the new
line, but do distinctly recall steam locomotives pulling commuter
coaches at the station in Des Plaines. Anyway, I became enamored of
these railroads when I was a child, and when I was 13, I took to
hanging out near the tracks, dogging the men who ran a switch engine
around Bryn Mawr and the Norma Yard. I had my trusty Kodak Brownie
camera at times, and many of the photos here were taken with that
humble machine, back in 1966.
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July 1966 -C&NW #1758 EMD
GP9
northbound siding at Norma |
Milwaukee Road GP40 #2038
southbound near Deval, 1979 |
Soo Line F7 northbound
crossing C&NW at Deval, 1978 |
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Brownie Hawkeye Camera



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Soo Line F7 northbound at Deval, 1978 |

Wisconsin Central #7515 at Deval, 2002 |
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I've tried to include as much information as I
can, not only on the trains, but the locations as well. I love finding old
pictures online, but I wish the photographers would have included more of the
surrounding scenery. The trains are the subject, of course, but I just know
there are pictures somewhere with a 13-year-old me in them, gawking at a freight
somewhere! The pictures on this page are all thumbnails, and lead to pages with
larger photos and more data. I've identified the power when possible; if you see
a mistake or recognize something I missed, please email me.
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Train wreck at Deval Crossing, August 1966 |
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I was awakened one early summer morning in 1966
by one of my friends banging on our screen door and yelling for me to get my
camera, there was a wreck on the Soo Line. Too Cool. As you can probably tell by
the photos I took, it was a different world in those days. I was fairly crawling
through the wreckage, me, a 13-year-old boy, and nobody said boo.
I never did get a proper explanation of what happened, but from what I remember
it looked like about 7 or 8 cars of a southbound Soo Line frieght derailed at
exactly the crossing of the Chicago & Northwestern northwest commuter line. The
Soo Line F7 in the large picture above is traveling on the exact spot of this
derailment. I know the location well, and the slant imparted to the trackside
equipment by the derailed rolling stock tells me the train was southbound. There
was a shattered wooden refrigerated boxcar with cases of Land O' Lakes butter
scattered all over the place; I saw police officers looting and placing case
after case of butter into the trunks of their squad cars. Like I said, it was a
different world back then. If you look closely underneath the Norfolk and
Western boxcar, you can see police officers and squad cars in the parking lot in
front of the businesses at the corner of First and North Avenues. I hung around
for most of the morning, but I must have gotten bored or maybe finally chased
away by the cops. I'm hoping someone has more pictures or perhaps a news story
about this wreck. I have found other pictures of the same black Bucyrus Erie
#6359 crane at a wreck in Palatine, IL in 1949.
On my way home, I took this final picture of a C&NW lash-up. The conductor is
out on the catwalk looking at the wreckage.
Here You can read an official NTSB accident report of a different accident (train collision) at Norma interlocking in 2002. |
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Looking northwestward along C&NW
Northwest Line commuter tracks toward New line crossing
Pictures taken at Norma Yard 1966. We kids used this place as a
playground; that could not happen today, eh? |
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