1972

Chesapeake & Ohio
Chicago, Illinois (Forest Hill Crossing)
June 18, 1972




Forest Hill Crossing (referred to in the first edition of the Train Watcher's Guide to Chicago as the 75th Street Crossing) saw shared tracks of the Chesapeake & Ohio and Belt Railway of Chicago, as well as the Norfolk & Western's former Wabash line, cross lines of the Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania. Here an eastbound C&O transfer run with caboose no. 3196 on the rear is crossing B&O rails, with the former Wabash in the foreground.

The "for progress" slogan dates back to the Robert R. Young era on the C&O, when the iconoclastic financier was shaking up the railroad industry with such provocative ads as those declaring that "A Hog Can Cross America Without Changing Trains—But YOU Can't!" and calling Pullman cars "rolling tenements." He also pulled the C&O out of what he considered the reactionary Association of American Railroads, instead setting up the rival "Federation for Railway Progress."

Sadly, the Federation for Railway Progress and its newsletter Railway Progress didn't last long following Young's suicide in 1958. For a brief time (August 1958-January 1959) Trains proudly carried the banner "Including Railway Progress" on its cover and masthead, then quietly dropped it.




This page posted 7/1/2018. Text and photo ©2018 Lamont Downs.