Forty-six years ago today (3 days after my baptism, in fact!) my favourite railway suspended passenger service for the last time. The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad began life in 1902 as an electric interurban railroad linking the city of Chicago to its western suburbs in DuPage County and the Fox River valley. It was powered by an electrified third rail and was popularly known as the Great Third Rail. Freight service was suspended in 1959 and the railway itself folded altogether in 1961. It was done in by the building of the first great expressway out of Chicago, the Congress (later Eisenhower) Expressway, which took away the CA&E’s one-trip access into “the Loop.”
I became interested in this defunct railway at around 8 years of age, a year or so after the last of the trackage had been torn up. I took up this interest again during graduate school. While studying for my written comprehensive examinations, I bicycled almost daily along the abandoned right of way, now known as the Illinois Prairie Path.
Two years ago I composed the following to commemorate the centenary of the CA&E: “The Great Third Rail Rag” (© David T. Koyzis, 2001). It is written in the style of the popular music of the time.
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