A car knocker checks a couple of flat cars in a tunnel near the Tribune Tower sometime in the late 1930's. Flats like these carried everything from barrels to packages to mail sacks.
In 1928 the Chicago Tunnel Company produced a booklet entitled What The Freight Tunnels Mean To Chicago. The following description of the tunnel operations was given in the booklet:
"The noise made by moving trains is all that breaks the silence in the tunnels. They are a railroad in their organization and everything in their operations suggests order and system. The designation of lines as "one way streets" gives some liberty in the operating of trains, but the motorman of one train will probably tell you what another train, passing an intersection, is loaded with, where it is from and where it is going. The loading of coal and refuse material is mechanical and one man can load a train. Of the source of the material nothing is observable except the end of the chute. Cars delivered to their destinations pass on to higher levels and trains are made up of cars that descend on elevators from shipping rooms above. There are no interferences, no crossing gates, no other kind of traffic, no congestion, no delays.
The tunnels are lighted at all connections and elsewhere when other than the train lights are needed. Signal lights protect the trainmen when delivering or switching cars. Glass reflectors at all intersections give warning of an approaching train from lateral lines. Electric lighted signs announce "curve ahead," and warn to "go slow" or "come to full stop." Each "river drift" is protected by an automatic block signal. The motormen are thoroughly familiar with right-of-way rules and the tunnels are all "one way streets". Signs at the corners show what streets one is under but it is of little consequence. The trainmen know the corners and it doesn't seem to matter that each one is exactly like all the others.
It appears that a tunnel car carries about as much of a load as a motor truck. In the tunnels, there is an average of about 300 train movements a day and a train is from ten to fifteen cars. The movement of freight in the tunnel is about equal to 5,000 motor truck movements on the streets. If the tunnel freight were carried on the surface these 5,000 truck movements would occur in the streets of the loop and the district immediately adjacent every day.
Coupled together, the trains that pass through the tunnels daily would extend over ten miles. Motor trucks, carrying the same amount of freight, if allowance is made for spacing between them, would stretch along highways in a continuous line for something more than three times that distance".
This 1:24 Scale Chicago Tunnel Company locomotive was built by Phil O'Keefe out of white metal parts made from patterns constructed in his model shop. Baldwin Locomotive Works built locomotives like these for the Illinois Tunnel Company in 1907. They were numbered in the 500-524 series, and they were equipped with two 15 horsepower motors that drew power from the 250 Volt DC trolley wire. Number 508 still survives and it is preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum.
Unfortunately, the company's financial condition kept declining through the years. Miles of tunnels were dug, equipped with rails and trolley wire, but customer connections failed to develop. Here is another quote from the beginning of the 1928 Chicago Tunnel Company booklet:
"The tunnels are forty feet under the surface. They are below the sewers, below the mazes of pipes, wires, cables and conduits, below the level of any subway that may be built. They are unheard as well as unseen. Unlike a tunnel through a hill or under a stream, they emerge nowhere. They are reached only by elevators and they end against blank walls of concrete. They are apparently known to few beyond the ranks of those whom they serve. Some of their most pronounced virtues -the relief of traffic congestion, for instance-are negative. They would have to vanish or cease operating to be missed but, alive and present, they are commonplace and conventional drudge, an accepted public servant which does its work so well that it causes no trouble. Other franchised corporations call attention to themselves in many ways and often enough. Their services reach into homes. They are in sight on the streets. Their equipment includes such things as poles, wires, cars and elevated structures. The tunnel company, however, never digs through pavements. It never interferes with street traffic. It never litters the streets with repair gangs and equipment. It is underground, silent and, unfortunately, little known".
The last sentence summed it all up. The tunnels were out of sight and out of mind, and therefore, it was very difficult to drum up new business. Few people knew they even existed. Unfortunately, the booklet did little to sell the virtues of the system and it continued to have financial difficulties and declining business.
This photo appeared in the 1928 Chicago Tunnel Company booklet What The Freight Tunnels Mean To Chicago. The caption under the photo reads "Safety and More Safety - Nothing in the way of Safety Appliances is wanting, and, as a final protection, the Employes have been carefully trained. There has never been a major accident in the tunnels". The triangular internally lit safety sign in the photo reads "The Safety Committee May Overlook Something. See For Yourself That All Is Safe." The sullen looking motorman posed his locomotive next to flat car 5162. Notice how the company didn't clean the equipment up for the photograph, and there is even evidence of a derailment in the tunnel walls in the foreground!
This picture shows the basement of Marshall Field and Company in the 1920s. The track turning off to the left leads to the State Street tunnel. The track turning off to the right is for ash car loading under the building's heating boilers. Note the wooden guards over the 250-Volt trolley wire to prevent electrocution. This entrance was obliterated by the State Street Subway in the late 1930's.
By the mid-1930's plans were drawn up by the city to place the new State Street subway at the same level as the freight tunnels. Construction began on the subway on December 17, 1938. The Chicago Tunnel Company actually got some business hauling out excavations from the construction project which led to its own demise! The subway construction eventually began to obliterate the company's most profitable segment of tunnel, and along with it, many customer connections. The subway was finally opened on October 16, 1943.
Although the State Street subway was not open for regular service until October 1943, an inspection trip was run for city and federal officials on April 2. In this photo, Chicago Rapid Transit Company trainmen pose in front of the inspection train which consists of 4000 Series steel elevated cars built in the early 1920's. Chicago Tunnel Company trains once operated where the center station platform now exists.
To make matters worse, motor trucks stole away significant amounts of business, and by the late 1940's, customers began to switch from coal to natural gas to heat their buildings. The ones that kept burning coal, switched to delivery by truck because unloading from the surface was easier and a complex conveyor system was not required. Even though coal deliveries were made with trucks, it was still more efficient to remove ashes by tunnel. This basically left the company in the ash removal business for the last ten years of operation. In March, 1959 only a hand full of customers remained and the company was forced to suspend operations. The company went out of business in June, 1959 and the tunnels were abandoned.
Two locomotives rest between runs sometime near the end of all operations in 1959. By the time this picture was taken, the Chicago Tunnel Company was finding it hard to pay bills. Do you notice how most of the light bulbs have burned out in this picture? The financial problems got so bad in the last few days of operation, that the company only had two operating locomotives and it couldn't pay to dispose of customer's ashes and cinders. Ash cars were loaded and then pushed into unused tunnels. The company went out of business when it had no more empty cars!
