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Soon after the system shut down, scrappers entered the tunnels. They removed nearly all the copper trolley wire from the ceiling hangers by using bolt cutters. Almost all of the steel freight cars and all but two locomotives were removed and scrapped. The scrappers removed nearly all of the big pumps which were used to discharge seepage into the storm sewers thirty feet above. They even removed elevators from all but one building connection. Surprisingly, they left behind many things including the track, ash cars, lights (in-operative of course), signals, and signs.
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Left: A safty sign typical of those used by the Chicago Tunnel Company. This sign was found in a tunnel not far from Union Station. Right: An ash car, still loaded with ashes and cinders, rests near the Field Museum of Natural History in the late 1980's. These cars were built primarily of wood with a detatchable wooden box and hinged bottom for unloading.
The Chicago Tunnel Company had eleven "drifts" (tunnels) which actually passed just a few feet below the bottom of the Chicago River to allow trains to access customers west and north of the river. At each end of the drift, the company installed water tight doors which could be closed if a leak developed. Incredibly, the scrappers removed the doors from all of the drifts when the system was shut down. This left the city vulnerable if a breach developed in one of the drifts causing river water to pour into the system.
The Chicago Tunnel Company used a wide variety of trucks under their railcars. This picture shows one of the more common types. This type of truck has cast steel side frames, outside journal bearings, and 14" diameter wheels set on a 27" wheelbase. This particular truck is on one of two flat cars recovered from the tunnels by the Illinois Railway Museum in 1984. The side frame has deteriorated somewhat from sitting in water and mud for many years.
The City of Chicago assumed the responsibility of inspecting and maintaining the system, and for years the tunnels sat dark, forgotten, and unused. According to a 1971 Chicago Tribune article, the city hired two former Chicago Tunnel employees in 1959 to walk the tunnels every day to perform inspections. At the date of the article, these two forgotten city employees were still walking all 47 miles of the abandoned tunnels-one section at a time-looking for cracks and seepage. Both started working in the tunnels in the early 1930's. They kept the tunnels relatively dry and in the Loop many former customers with deep basements remained connected to the abandoned system. By the 1980's, a few areas, especially south of the Loop, became flooded to varying degrees probably because the two lonely inspectors retired.
A Chicago Tribune photographer caught these two former Chicago Tunnel Company employees working for the city in the abandoned tunnels in 1971. Both men began their careers in the tunnels in the early 1930's, and were hired to inspect the tunnels when the company went out of business in 1959. If these guys were still on the job in 1992, do you think there would have been a Great Flood?
During the Cold War in the early 1960's, the city installed working lights in some segments of tunnel near City Hall. These were to be used as fall out shelters in the event of a nuclear attack. The entrance to the tunnels from City Hall was marked with a sign saying "To Shelter".
In 1968, the Sheriff of Cook County was considering using the tunnels to detain thousands of demonstrators during the infamous Democratic Convention. At that time, I am sure this was considered cruel and unusual punishment, and the idea was dropped.
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Left: This picture shows one of two locomotives that were left behind by the scrappers. Number 508 sat abandoned near the Field Museum's basement for about forty years. It was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works and was one of the largest to operate in the Chicago Tunnel Company fleet. The picture shows the motorman's gondola with the controller and headlight on the left, the hand brake wheel in the center, and the motorman's seat on the right. The trolley pole is sticking up in the center. None of the cars had brakes, so trains were stopped only with the locomotives hand brakes! I am selling models of this locomotive through this website. For more information about the models, go to the Railroad Freight House. Right: The top of a locomotive's Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company K-11 controller. This locomotive had two 15 horsepower electric traction motors.
In the 1970's the local power company, Commonwealth Edison, negotiated with the city to use some of the abandoned tunnels as conduits for high voltage cables. Several telecommunications companies also began to use the tunnels for their cables. This is quite ironic, considering that the tunnels were originally constructed for this purpose. In addition, some sections of tunnel were used as conduits for steam pipes between certain buildings.
Commonwealth Edison dug several large diameter access shafts to the tunnels from the surface. They then dried up about three or four miles of tunnel, removed the tracks, pulled down the trolley wire hangers, and paved over the floor. Pumps, lights, and large high voltage transmission cables were installed. Concrete bulkheads with locked chain link gates were erected at intersections and sidings to prevent access to the reclaimed tunnels from the rest of the system
The tunnels were largely unknown to the general public until the 1980's when Bruce Moffat wrote his book about the system called Forty Feet Below, The Story of Chicago's Freight Tunnels. By the late 1980's, Geraldo Rivera hosted a television special called Al Capone's Vault. During the show, he took viewers on a brief tour of the tunnels near City Hall, and made it look like the tunnels were used as a warehouse for Al's bootleg liquor. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Early in 1992, a contractor working for the city, near the Kinzie Street bridge, drove a wooden pile next to the wall of a drift under the river. The pressure from the pile began to cause a leak in the wall. The leak was small at first. A cable television employee spotted the leak and even captured it on video tape. The cable televison company then brought the problem to the attention of the city. Unfortunately, the city allowed the leak to continue for several months without repair. Eventually, the drift wall gave way, and the river poured into the tunnels. The water completely flooded the system, including many basements that were still connected to it. The Loop was shut down for days, and the flood caused millions of dollars in damage. The torrent of flood water, silt, and debris probably destroyed most of the remaining Chicago Tunnel Company freight cars and artifacts. If the city acted quickly and if the water tight doors had been left in place and maintained, the flood may have been prevented.
Click on the bar below to explore the abandoned tunnels in the 1980's:
Chicago Tunnel Company Site Map
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This page was built, and is maintained by Phil O'Keefe
Photographs are from the collections of Phil O'Keefe and Bruce Moffat
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You can e-mail Phil at: chicagotunnel@ameritech.net