Tag Archives: CTA

Rail Photo of the Month: October 2024

Posted on by

2600 Series Car 3109

Location: O’Hare Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 22, 2003

After a month’s break, the photos of the month are back!  There’s still a huge queue of photos for me to sort, caption, and upload to the site, covering a period of over 24 months at this point, and one of the reasons there were no photos of the month posts for September did not help to make the queue any shorter.  I have reason to believe there might be some time in early 2025 to make headway on that backlog, but we’ll see.

In the meantime, let’s return to our “regularly scheduled programming.”  I had intended to run this photo last month, so here it is, slightly later than planned.

Last month, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Blue Line extension to O’Hare Airport.  The extension opened on September 3, 1984 and to mark the occasion, the CTA operated its vintage 6000 Series rail cars between the O’Hare station and the nearby Rosemont Yard.  When the Blue Line reached O’Hare, it was one of the only direct transit connections from a city to its airport at that time.  Chicago would become the first city in the United States to have direct transit service to two airports when the Orange Line to Midway Airport opened in 1993.

I have never been on or seen the CTA 6000 Series cars, so I don’t have any photographs of them.  However, I have been on and photographed the 2600 Series cars that served the Blue Line when the O’Hare extension opened in 1984.  These cars remain in service on the Blue, Orange, and Brown Lines.

For more photos of Ride On’s Gillig Advantage 40 foot buses, please click here.  

Rail Photo of the Month: June 2023

Posted on by

Bombardier 5000 Series 5040

Location: Quincy/Wells Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 9, 2014

This month, the Chicago “L” celebrates its 131st birthday!  The first section of what is now known as the “L”, then operated by the South Side Elevated Railroad, began service on June 6, 1892.  The line ran from a station at 39th Street (between the current 35th-Bronzeville-IIT and Indiana stations on the Green Line) to Congress Terminal.  When it opened, a ride on the steam powered trains from end to end took 14 minutes and cost five cents.  The line was later extended to Jackson Park and the site of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (World’s Columbian Exposition), where incidentally, the concept of an electrified third rail to power trains was introduced.  This form of traction would ultimately be used on the entirety of the “L” as well as on underground and elevated train systems around the world, replacing steam powered locomotives. 

The Lake Street Elevated Railroad and the Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad came into existence after the South Side Elevated, and each railroad had its own terminal on the edge of Downtown Chicago.  Financier Charles Tyson Yerkes had bought up many of the streetcar and elevated railroad lines in Chicago in the 1890s and proceeded to build an elevated loop track in Chicago to connect the individual lines.  The Loop was completed in 1897 and its two tracks along a 1.79 mile (2.9 kilometer) route remain in service to this day.  

In the featured photo, a relatively new train of 5000 Series cars is seen departing the Quincy station, which opened in 1897 shortly after the Loop was completed.  Some of the station’s features are original to its 1897 opening.

For more photos of CTA 5000 Series trains, please click here.  

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2021

Posted on by

Flxible Metro-E 6177

Location: Madison Street at Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 30, 2007

It has been over ten years since my last proper visit to Chicago.  I’m not sure when my next one will be, but one thing that won’t be there is a Flxible Metro-E such as this one.  The CTA retired its last Flxible Metro buses in 2010, and the fleet now consists solely of New Flyer and NovaBUS models.  

For more photos of CTA buses, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: April 2020

Posted on by

3200 Series 3274

3200 Series 3274

Location: Quincy/Wells Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 9, 2014

As of this writing, the Chicago Transit Authority is the largest transit system in the United States that is still running normal weekday service despite the Covid-19 Health Crisis.  Ridership is down 82 percent on CTA trains and about 76 percent on CTA buses according to local news reports.  Transit workers are considered essential employees, so despite the “stay at home” order in place in Illinois and many other US states, they are still reporting to work in order to help other essential workers, such as doctors, nurses, paramedics, firemen, and police officers to their jobs.  Determining how much service ought to run in light of lower ridership numbers and the desire to maintain social distancing protocols is a challenge that agencies will be wrestling with as this crisis continues.  However, regardless of how much service is operated in Chicago or wherever you are, be sure to thank the transit employees and other essential employees for their service, especially in these times (assuming you yourself have essential business, otherwise, please stay home).  Being a transit employee is challenging enough in normal circumstances as it is, so your thanks will be even more appreciated now.

For more photos of CTA’s 3200 Series trains, please click here.

Rail Photo of the Month: October 2019

Posted on by

2200 Series 2222

2200 Series 2222

Location: Polk Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 30, 2007

Yesterday, the Chicago Transit Authority celebrated its anniversary.  On October 1, 1947, the CTA assumed the operations of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (the ‘L’ system) and the Chicago Surface Lines (the streetcar system).  In recent years, the CTA has marked the occasion with a “Customer Appreciation Day.”  This year’s edition included the first public run of the 6000 Series trains since their retirement on December 4, 1992.  The 6000 Series cars were introduced in 1950 and featured “blinker doors” to facilitate better movement within the cars for ingress and egress.  They were also the first cars in the CTA rail fleet to be married pairs.  

To celebrate its 72nd anniversary, the CTA ran the cars in the Loop during the midday yesterday.  I wasn’t in Chicago, so I don’t have any photos of the event.  (This post could turn in to a lament about how it has been too long since I’ve visited Chicago, but it won’t.)  Instead, I decided it was fitting to share a photo of a 2200 Series Car that featured the same type of blinker doors that the 6000 Series cars featured.  The 2200 Series cars were retired in August 2013, and like the 6000 Series cars, a limited number have been preserved for historical purposes.  

For more photos of the CTA 2200 Series Cars, please click here.

 

Oren’s Reading List: Transportation Gifts

Posted on by

The holiday shopping season is well underway.  If you’re reading this, odds are you wouldn’t mind receiving or are looking for ideas for transportation related gifts.  The Chicago Tribune recently compiled a list of CTA and METRA themed holiday gifts and links to where you can find those items for purchase.  Many other transit agencies, including New York City Transit and WMATA, also have online gift stores that you can peruse.  While a friend of mine has received three copies of Transit Maps (and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact based on my conversation about it with him), I hope some of these links are useful if you’re looking to make sure the person you are giving  Happy shopping!

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Rail Photo of the Month: September 2016

Posted on by

CTA 5000 Series 5040

CTA Bombardier 5000 Series 5040

Location: Quincy/Wells, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 9, 2014

The Chicago L is one of my favorite rail systems in the United States. The mostly elevated system twists and turns its way through the Chicago skyscrapers in the Loop in a way that no other transit system does in this day and age. Right in the middle of downtown, it feels like you can just reach out and touch the passing buildings. And to top it off, at Tower 18, you have one of the busiest train junctions in the country, and it is a flat junction at that!

I have yet to ride the CTA’s newest rolling stock, the 5000 Series, pictured here. The 5000 Series introduced a number of features to Chicago for the first time, such as AC traction, which is pretty much standard on new rail vehicles these days.  However, some of the features proved to be a bit more controversial.  Gone were the colorful roll signs that identified a train’s line color and destination, replaced with amber LEDs.  That didn’t last long, as the CTA opted mid-order to have multi-color LED signs installed on cars that had not been delivered prior to the decision to switch being made.  Cars that had the amber LEDs received colored LED signs through retrofit.  Another change was a mix of transverse and longitudinal seating.  Unlike the amber LEDs, this feature was not modified, though Chicagoans might prefer otherwise.

As I said, I haven’t been on one of these trains yet, though I look forward to having the opportunity the next time I find myself in Chicago.

For more photos of CTA’s 5000 Series cars, please click here.

Oren’s Reading List: Stories Behind CTA ‘L’ Lines’ Strange Curves, Dips and Twists

Posted on by

CTA 2600 Series: 2726
The L in Chicago is one of my favorite transit systems to ride in the US.  The system is mostly elevated and at times it feels like you can just reach in to the apartment buildings you pass by because they are that close to the right of way.  But another highlight of the system are the many sharp twists and turns the trains take as they snake their way through the city.  How did some of these, such as the two 90 degree curves on either side of the Red Line’s Sheridan station (pictured here), come to be?  Chicago radio station WBEZ looked in to this question and offers the answer in this article on their website, accompanied by an audio report as well.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

New Arrivals

Posted on by

Over the course of redesigning Oren’s Transit Page, I was also continuing to travel, take photos, and add them in to the queue to be included in the redesigned website once it launched.  Now that the redesigned website is here, keep reading to find out what new material was added in conjunction with the redesign.  This isn’t an exhaustive list but rather just the “highlights”, there is plenty of new content scattered around the whole site.

NABI 60-BRT 9574 on Main Street at Aliso Street
Los Angeles, CA
July 11, 2014

Starting off in the United States, I traveled to a number of places for the first time in my life in 2014.  I made a Midwest swing in May 2014 that resulted in the creation of sections for Minneapolis-St. Paul (just prior to the Green Line opening) and Kansas City.  After that, in July 2014, I did some long distance Amtrak travel (with some flights in between) and visited Los Angeles and San Diego for the first time.  Also on this trip were stops in Denver (in time for the soft reopening of Denver’s Union Station), Chicago, and San Francisco.  I had passed through Denver before but I had never used or photographed its mass transit prior to that summer.  The stops in Chicago and San Francisco were my first in each city since 2007 and were quite brief, but there are new photos in those sections as well, including my first photos of the CTA 5000 Series cars.

The Washington, DC section now includes photos of some of the newer buses to ply the region’s streets, such as WMATA’s New Flyer XDE40 buses and Ride On’s Gillig Advantage/CNG buses.  On the rail side of things, there is now a gallery for photos of the new WMATA 7000 Series railcars, manufactured by Kawasaki.

PCC 3263 at Capen Street
Milton, MA
May 2, 2011

I last traveled to Philadelphia in 2012 and was able to get a last round of Silverliner II and Silverliner III photos, in addition to my first Silverliner V photos.  I made two trips to Boston, one in 2011 and the other in 2013.  On the 2011 trip, I rode the southern end of the Orange Line for the first time, and both trips included a number of trips on the Green Line and Red Line.  I also was able to get photos from along the Ashmont-Mattapan High Speed Line right of way and of various MBTA buses, including the trackless trolleys, in Cambridge.  Finally, for the first time since Oren’s Transit Page’s initial launch over 15 years ago, there are new photos in the Atlanta section.

There are also new photos from New York City, but due to the immense size of that section, it was decided to leave it “as is” in the old format and add the new photos to the Uncaptioned Photos gallery for now.  The New York section will be updated with the new design as soon as possible.

North of the border, there is a new section for photos from Niagara Falls, Ontario.  My only trip to South America to date was in 2010 so there isn’t anything new in the Brazil and Argentina sections (while Buenos Aires is on my bucket list, I haven’t found the occasion to get myself down there just yet).

Crossing the ocean to Europe, I visited both Hungary and Portugal for the first time.  My stop in Budapest was a layover between flights in 2011 that was measured in hours rather than days, but it was enough time to photograph some of the city’s trams, buses, and trolleybuses and whet my appetite for another trip there that will be longer 13 hours. I spent almost a full week in Lisbon, a city that shares many similarities to San Francisco including the fact that its trams are a tourist attraction in and of themselves, and visited continental Europe’s westernmost bus stop for good measure.

Bombardier Flexity Outlook “Cityrunner” 3069 at Place Royale
Brussels, Belgium
November 21, 2013

In 2008, I unexpectedly found myself with 90 minutes in Brussels due to a missed train connection, which was just enough time to get some transit photos before the next train to my destination came.  In 2013, I was in Brussels yet again, this time for a full 8 hours between flights, so that section has seen some additional expansion including a new gallery for photos of the Belgian National Railway.

Finally, in the Middle East, the Israel section has expanded further and to my knowledge, Oren’s Transit Page’s Israel section is the largest of its kind on any English language website.  The Jerusalem Light Rail opened to passengers just after I began the long process of overhauling the website, so many photos of revenue service along the length of the entire line are now included on the site.  The Metronit bus rapid transit system in the Haifa region opened in 2014, and there are also photos of that.  In addition, there are many new photos of the many bus operators that operate throughout the entire length of the country.

I hope you enjoy exploring the site, whether you choose to browse the new sections, old sections, or a mix of both!  And if you have a favorite section, let everyone know what it is in the comment section below!