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January 1943. "Freight operations on the Indiana Harbor Belt railroad between Chicago and Hammond, Indiana. The train pulls out of the Chicago & North Western yard." Photo by Jack Delano, Office of War Information. View full size.
the Proviso Yard of the C & NW, located about fourteen miles directly west of the Loop between Bellwood and Stone Park. When I was a kid I'd ride my three-speed Hercules north up Westchester Boulevard and Bellwood Avenue to where the latter dead-ended at the yard. Then I'd wander around within about the largest rail yard in the region watching mammoth freight trains being assembled. Only in retrospect do I realize how dangerous that was. The IHB's main line passed by a few blocks from my home, and I clearly remember steam engines of the Milwaukee Road, which had trackage rights on the IHB, chugging away pulling freight (usually northbound) amid heavy coal smoke with screeching whistles, in the early 1950s and maybe later.
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