The El Tour through the Chicago Architecture Foundation

The El station at the Chicago Public Library 

The Harold Washington Library Center - the Chicago Public Library.

Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.  The blank space in the middle is where the building's controls are located.  The top of the building is a yard for prisoners.

Our tour guide for the El tour.  I have taken other tours with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and she has been a guide.  She is really good.  She did a great job of providing a historical description of the El. 

Quincy Station - restored.

Ceiling in the Quincy station.

This is from a station overlooking Wabash.  The building on the left is a Sullivan building.  The entire street is part of the historical register.

Since the street is on the historical register, the buildings can't be torn down and their facades cannot be altered.  The buildings, however, have been radically changed.  The modern glass building "behind" the historic buildings - actually comes out of the middle of the historic buildings.  The historic buildings are the street level of this modern glass skyscraper.

The historic building look historic from the outside, but you can see by looking through the windows that these old facades hide a giant parking garage.



Trump Tower, down the El line.

This is another Sullivan building on Wabash.

Trestle Trail - Cloudcroft

There is a trail just outside of Cloudcroft that takes you to at least 2 trestles. This first trestle is one of the S trestles that has fallen down. It was one of 20+ trestles that moved the cloud climbing railway from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft.

Below is the Mexican Trestle on the same hike.

Train Taping with Walt

Last Train of the Day

Colfax, NM

Saturday on the Rails

The day started with breakfast at the Lamy Station Cafe.









The Lamy Train Station (and library!)










Setting up at Algadones for the Rail Runner and Amtrak.

Thursday Night Rail Runner

This is the bridge going to over the Interstate to the new 599 Rail Runner station near our house. Walt was in town to tape a special set of cars on the Amtrak - so we took his visit as an opportunity to ride the train from this stop for the first time.


Setting up to tape the incoming northbound Rail Runner.




The new Flying Star in the Rail Yard downtown Santa Fe.


Arrival of the Rail Runner into the downtown station.



Heading home.


Train leaving the station.

Santa Fe Rail Yard

The Rail Runner made its second visit to Santa Fe this weekend. It will begin runs between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in December. It was pretty exciting to get to step aboard and dream about making the trip.





The Santa Fe Southern excursion train makes its way between Santa Fe and Lamy. While we were in the rail yard the Rail Runner had to move to let the Santa Fe Southern get on its way.

Our Weekend

We road the Cumbres and Toltec train this weekend. We took it on Saturday - a cold and rainy day. It was still a lot of fun, just colder than we expected.



Chama's depot.


Here we are in Chama while it was still warm.


The leaves were beautiful. This is one of the highest elevations of the trip - this is looking south. The cars along the road are rail fans who followed the train all day taking pictures, video, and waving.


On the ride from Chama to Osier - we stood outside between the railroad cars to enjoy the fresh air, scenery, and train sounds. We had lunch in Osier. The meal they served was really good - turkey and all the fixings or meat loaf. It was so cold, we stayed in the dining room until our train left about an hour and a half later.


The last non-tourist passenger train to stop in Cumbres did so in 1951. In a video we watched about the Cumbres and Toltec Railroad as it exists today, we learned how the mayor of Chama worked (against many odds) to save the railroad might as an historic tourist train. He worked with the governors of New Mexico and Colorado to buy the railroad - an amazing feat, really.


This is our return trip. The trip from Osier back to Chama required that additional cars be added to our train (there is a train from Antonito, CO that also arrives in Osier - you can take the train the whole route from Chama to Antonito or do a round trip between the locations). Our train between Osier and Chama had 16 cars and over 600 passengers. We were told it was the longest train of the season.


People waiting in Chama for the train's arrival.