Anyone located in the Chicago, IL area?

M

mabspc

New member
I would love to find someone who is located in the Chicago area (especially on the north/northwest side near Niles, Park Ridge, or Skokie area) who would be willing to work with me on creating a gigantic layout (in TS2009 Surveyor).

I could use help in many areas on this project if anyone would be interested in helping me out. I am willing to give full credit to anyone who is willing to help me out on this project.
 
i know up4021 lives in illnois
but he lives near irm
you should pm him though
i am of no assist
i am from california:cool:
 
If you live in that area, I can always use some pictures of the CTA. I'm about 60% done laying track for the entire chicago L, but there are a few things that I can't get off Google Maps, like exactly where the Overhead wire used to start on the Skokie Branch before it was repalced
 
Go from Howard to Dempster and you should be close enough for freeware. That's a tough question because the Skokie Swift was created using a portion of the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee interurban line. The North Shore started somewhere around Waukegan and expanded in both directions, before it closed down in the early '60s it ran on 3rd rail power on the L from downtown to the end of the CTA line, then continued on its own overhead wire line to Milwaukee, circled around on the Milwaukee streetcar tracks. Since the cars were all dual powered 3rd rail/overhead wire, exactly when and where the overhead wire existed changed several times during the history of the interurbans.
 
I could give you much advice on creating a true to prototype route ... Do Not use a DEM. Why ? Because you could be finished your route on flat baseboards ... long before the DEM Gradients are leveled out.

If not for the super contoured mountains and valleys on my Horseshoe route ... I would not have used a DEM, as it controls you, instead of vice versa (or versa visa):hehe:
 
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I'm originally from Chicago, lived on the west side for 52 years (still got PTSD :hehe: ), and doing DEM for a Chicago route would be a pointless exercise anyway. Downtown is about 600 feet above sea level, O'Hare (5 miles north and 10 miles west) is 670, Midway (6 miles west and 6 miles south) is 620. In other words Chicago is pretty much flat even on windy days, so why bother with DEM at all? :wave:

I grew up near 40th Street yard on the C&NW Galena line (now UP/Metra west line) so that's the area I'm playing with, altho I'm doing a fictional route trying to capture the "flavor" of Chicago railroading rather than be true to any prototype. Here's a vid of my version of the L;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW6LjNpB51E

(ignore the last five minutes, for some reason the music repeated and got an extra 5 minutes of black screen)
Which will be different from present day, since before the Lake/Dan Ryan ("Green Line, or is it Pink Line now?) the Lake Street L used to turn right at Tower 18 and go counterclockwise around the Outer Loop, first stop Randolph & Wells, last stop in the Loop Clark & Lake. Also includes some stations that are gone today - Clinton, Halsted, Ashland, California, Kedzie, Homan, Pulaski, Cicero, Laramie, Central, etc. and don't include the new ones like the Garfield Park Conservatory stop.

Trying to do even a small part of Chicago is a huge project (after all, Chicago IS the railroad hub of the universe) so I'll be finishing all the detail on parts of it and uploading, then uploading newer versions as I expand. That's the best way to deal with it, otherwise you could work on it for 20 years and nobody would ever be able to play on it. :cool:
 
bluestrainzbros.jpg
 
Chicago Area Maps

sniper297 said:
I'm originally from Chicago, lived on the west side for 52 years (still got PTSD :hehe: ), and doing DEM for a Chicago route would be a pointless exercise anyway. Downtown is about 600 feet above sea level, O'Hare (5 miles north and 10 miles west) is 670, Midway (6 miles west and 6 miles south) is 620. In other words Chicago is pretty much flat even on windy days, so why bother with DEM at all? :wave:

I grew up near 40th Street yard on the C&NW Galena line (now UP/Metra west line) so that's the area I'm playing with, altho I'm doing a fictional route trying to capture the "flavor" of Chicago railroading rather than be true to any prototype. Here's a vid of my version of the L;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW6LjNpB51E

(ignore the last five minutes, for some reason the music repeated and got an extra 5 minutes of black screen)
Which will be different from present day, since before the Lake/Dan Ryan ("Green Line, or is it Pink Line now?) the Lake Street L used to turn right at Tower 18 and go counterclockwise around the Outer Loop, first stop Randolph & Wells, last stop in the Loop Clark & Lake. Also includes some stations that are gone today - Clinton, Halsted, Ashland, California, Kedzie, Homan, Pulaski, Cicero, Laramie, Central, etc. and don't include the new ones like the Garfield Park Conservatory stop.

Trying to do even a small part of Chicago is a huge project (after all, Chicago IS the railroad hub of the universe) so I'll be finishing all the detail on parts of it and uploading, then uploading newer versions as I expand. That's the best way to deal with it, otherwise you could work on it for 20 years and nobody would ever be able to play on it. :cool:
Click to expand...

I lived in Chicago until I went off and joined the service at 17. We never had a car and always relied on CTA, N&W, and the other trains which went from downtown to the western suburbs. I would be very interested in getting anything that duplicates these routes I lived near Howard Street, but loved to ride the north-south train all the way south and back home again. I loved the weekends when I visited relatives in Green Bay. There sure are a lot of childhood memories.
So if anyone knows where any of these kinds of layouts can be found, it would be wonderful.
 
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