I took this photo in January of 1990. I had a few shots left on a roll of black and white film, and decided to use them at Brighton Junction that afternoon. The many heavy cranes, equipment, and MUD, give away this photo being taken during winter construction.Brighton Junction is located just west of the intersection of South Archer and Western Avenues on the southside of Chicago Illinois.
Brighton Junction was an old fashioned steam era manual railroad junction with semaphore signals and a shanty for the junction operator. This junction was automated in July of 2007.
The shanty and one set of semaphore signals were supposed to go to the Illinois Railway Museum located in the village of Union Illinois.
2 comments:
Eddie: When you wrote "...the shanty and one set of semaphore signals were supposed to go to the Illinois Railway Museum..." are you making reference to the rumor circulating around that the shanty has been burned?
I've seen that on one of the internet rail forums, although the poster readily admitted he heard this through the grapevine but could not confirm.
Let's hope it is not true.
Hi Anthony!
Gee, I never even heard about that particular rumor. I certainly hope that it isn't true.
The large set of semaphores located just on the immediate north of the shanty, were supposed to go to a transportation museum in Virginia somewhere. The smaller single masted east /west set that was located east of the shanty by the former Illinois Central Gulf tracks were supposed to go to the Illinois Railway Museum. I hope that some local urban dufas didn't torch the ricketty old shanty.
Thank You.
Eddie K.
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