I posted a link to the B&O story on this site to message boards for the old North Shore Line and Chicago Aurora & Elgin lines. Here are some of the reponses:



Sorry, that wasn't a "spur." That was the original B&O main line into Chicago, tying into the IC at Rockdale (72nd Street.) The line on IC's South Chicago Branch from 83rd Street south was part B&O. One can still see how the row goes south beyond the electrified territory and connects with the B&O main.

Before the turn of the 20th century the B&O got into a dispute with the IC and routed their trains over the Rock Island through South Chicago, onto the Rock's suburban line to west of Brainard and then onto the B&O CT.

The line in question, running in a diagonal NW/SE route through South Shore served industries in the area with a local freight running in the evenings. The line was abandoned in the '70s.

Mitch

AND

I believe that Mitch means Brookdale (which also had been the name of the Illinois Central suburban station at 70th Street before it was consolidated with 72nd St., Essex station). I agree with him that the B&O Brookdale Branch was abandoned considerably later than the 1950s era claimed on the web site listed at the end of the original message.

In the 1940s the line was still double track (!) from the east to as far as just east of Jeffery Av., and later to about Yates Av.

A remnant of its days of passenger service was a frame station in the triangle between the track, 76th St., and Euclid Av., later used as a residence. The late Robert E. Johnson remembered a daily passenger train in the 1920s.

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