Interestingly I never knew there was so much rail freight until we moved into our new offices. Huge P&W freighters carrying lumber, oil, etc. go through several times a day. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: CTA's telephone system used the third rail for the telephone communications on the trains. Between the headquarter's switchboard and the individual stations, they used leased lines from Illinois Bell. A bit of history for you to consider: The _original_ train routes (Jackson Park Elevated Line, Lake Street Elevated Company, Chicago Rapid Transit Company, The Union Loop Elevated Line, Metropolitan Rail and others) and the _original_ bus and street car companies (Boulevard Bus, Chicago Surface Lines and others) were all privately owned companies. In 1932, Chicago Rapid Transit Company went into receivership and bankruptcy when they were unable to pay their _electric_ bill to the Chicago Edison Company, our electric supplier at the time. A man named Samuel Insull was the president of Chicago Rapid Transit and on the board of Edison. On the day Edison was set to cut off the power to the rapid transit line, Insull cut a deal for them. Chicago Edison would loan the money needed to Chicago Rapid Transit, in the form of fifty year bonds. I guess they figured fifty years hence (1982) was a long time away, why worry about it. In 1947, City of Chicago municipalized (a polite term for theft when City of Chicago does it out of politicians' greed) all seven or eight transportation companies and merged them all into Chicago Transit Authority. Did CTA ever operate chartered 'funeral cars'?  Again, true.  About two blocks south of Lill Coal Company is the Graceland Cemetery, a very big place (it occupies four or five square miles in the heart of Chicago's northwest side, and even rates a telephone exchange named after it [GRAceland 312/773-472].)  Many big wigs are buried there with huge monuments, etc. It also rates its own railroad siding, which was used in the 1920-40's to bring recently deceased big wigs for burial. All the bereaved family members and friends would ride along in the Chicago Rapid Transit street car made up like a funeral car to the cemetery. Family and friends came from Milwaukee all the way to south side Chicago for the funerals. Either North Shore or Chicago Rapid Transit would bring them there. This was Charles Insull's idea. And the chartered street cars would pull in almost daily for someone's funeral. When Chicago Rapid Transit went out of business (or actually, merged into CTA), Graceland asked the same sort of questions as Lill Coal would ask several years later when North Shore went poof! *Who is going to haul _our_ 'freight' to the ceremonies, etc. CTA agreed out of customer good will to continue handling the cemetery business for about a year in 1947-48, then stopped doing it. But the tracks are still there, all rusted and full of weeds right behind the cemetery where the one sidetrack slopes down to ground level and runs along for about a block. PAT] The interesting part about our office is that there's a siding that runs right through the parking lot, crosses West River Street then heads off into USPS huge facilities in Providence. Here's what interests me. We could use that rail to supply the nearby supermarket and the USPS but nobody sees the economies in that.

Did CTA ever operate chartered 'funeral cars'?  Again, true. Many interurban lines handled local freight cars. In the early years, many streetcar lines handled freight in special box motors which were trolley cars only without seats or windows. Carrying milk from the country into the city and US Mail were common uses in the early 1900s.  When the motor truck was perfected in the 1920s this business was lost. I understand the New York City MTA still carries freight.  There's a tiny little freight line in Brooklyn the MTA owns that is a common carrier.  Most of its work is hauling deliveries to the MTA itself (e.g new subway cars, rail, etc.)  But if there are any industries left along its tracks, it will deliver freight to them. Philadelphia used to have a funeral streetcar available for charter back in the days when trolley tracks covered the entire city and nearby suburbs.  The trolley would pick up mourners at the church and take them to the ce_meta_ry.  It had a special compartment for the casket. As to light freight service, at one time the mainline railroads carried lots of single car loads for individual customers.  Any factory of reasonable size had a siding, and there were also public sidings.  Handling these cars meant a local freight had to prod along and pick up and deliver cars.  The cars had to be switched into and out of through trains going to different places until the car ended up at its destination.  By government regulation, the service was cheap and mandated, though rather slow.  The railroads wanted out of this business, preferring to concentrate on high volume single customer shipments, like a trainload of coal for a power plant instead of one coal car for one customer.  (Large institutions, like a college, had a RR siding for coal deliveries, they'd get a couple of car loads in the fall for winter heating.)  As Pat noted, even if only one customer was left the RR had to keep the entire line open and working ($$$) to serve that single customer. After deregulation of the railroad industry, the big railroads were relieved of this burden and could charge rates that reflected actual costs.  Little short-line railroads took over in a few places, in others, tiny side lines were abandoned.  It is unfortunate it took so long for deregulation, this should've happened in the 1950s instead of 1980s.  (Yes, there are still industries with limited car deliveries, but they pay for it now.) Today, freight engines and crews have modern railroads.  I don't know if locomotives have fax or computer printers to give out dispatchers' orders or if that is still relayed orally.  The locmotives are far more fuel efficient due to microprocessor controls. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Speaking of freight and coal cars, one of the most unusual operations I ever saw