Chicago Tunnel Company
The Chicago Tunnel Company emerged in 1912 from the Illinois Tunnel Company , which built a freight tunnel network under downtown Chicago . This was the model for the construction of the London Post Office Railway .
history
Construction of the tunnels began in 1899. The complete system - almost every street in the city center was tunnelled - was completed in 1906. The 1.80 meter wide and 2.30 meter high tunnels were officially only approved for laying telephone cables, but the Illinois Tunnel Company secretly began to build a rail system.
Experimental phase
The first tests began a few years after completion with power rail trains . At first the live busbars were in the track bed, later overhead lines were used. The cargo was brought into and out of the tunnels via cargo stations or directly from warehouses, offices and shops via elevators .
business
In 1912 the Illinois Tunnel Company , a subsidiary of the Illinois Telephone and Telegraph Company, was restructured and renamed the Chicago Tunnel Company , and all telephone cables were removed from the tunnels. Over the years the network has been expanded to include a rail line of around 100 kilometers, 149 four-wheel electric locomotives with more than 3,000 freight wagons served underground.
The main business was transporting the coal for the heating in the city center. But at the end of the 1940s, trucks began to compete with the tunnel system for this business. In addition, more and more customers switched from coal to natural gas , so that the Chicago Tunnel Company's rather complex underground transportation system became increasingly unprofitable over time. Almost the only market that remained was the removal of the ashes from the city center.
Shutdown
In 1956, the Chicago Tunnel Company had to declare its bankruptcy . The tunnel system was abandoned and in the summer of 1959 the entrances were closed. All elevators, overhead lines, trains and freight carts have been removed and scrapped. Only two locomotives remained. One of them and some wagons are preserved in the Illinois Railway Museum ; the other is still in one of the tunnels.
catastrophe
In 1991, new posts were installed on the banks of the Chicago River near the bridge on Kinzie Street to prevent barges from colliding with the bridge. Due to a calculation error, the tunnels under the river were damaged during the work.
In 1992, a cable company employee noticed that the floor of the tunnels near the Chicago River was unusually damp and muddy. He found the point where the water seeped into the tunnels along the posts and filmed the damage. The official reaction, however, was very sluggish: no immediate emergency measures were taken, and the money for the repairs should be laboriously procured through official channels. Finally, a contract worth USD 7,000 was awarded to repair the damaged area in the tunnel - albeit too late.
In April 1992, renewed work on the river bed caused an even larger hole in the tunnel ceiling and the river poured into the tunnels. The entire network of tunnels, many of the cellars of the buildings in the Loop banking and business district, and an underground shopping center were flooded. The power and telecommunications cables installed at a later date were also severely damaged and there were short circuits or shutdowns for safety reasons. The accident resulted in days of power and telecommunications failure in Chicago. The Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange had to cease operations when the technology in the building's basements failed due to the ingress of water. As the freight tunnels were once connected to the subway system and were only barely walled up later, the water began to flow into the subway network after a while.
The city was able to close the holes relatively quickly. To this end, 65 truckloads of rubble and concrete were unloaded over the leak for three days. In addition, the upstream locks of the Chicago River were closed and the downstream locks opened for the duration of the emergency measures , in order to lower the water level of the river. The water was pumped out of tunnels and cellars and all tunnels below the river bed were provided with their own seals. The damage amounted to approximately $ 1.95 billion.
The tunnels are still used today for power supply and telecommunications.
See also
- CargoCap , an automated freight underground system that has only existed as a draft
- Seattle Underground
literature
- Bruce Moffat: Forty Feet Below. The Story of Chicago's Freight Tunnels. Interurban Press, Glendale Cal 1982. ISBN 0916374548
- McGraw Publishing Company (Ed.): Chicago Freight Subway . In: Electric Railway Journal, Vol. XL, No. 14, October 5, 1912, pp. 589-591 and Fig. XLI - XLIV. (English)
Web links
- Chicago Tunnel Company Railroad Home Page
- Frédéric Delaitre's Lost Subways
- Freight tunnel flood
- Video documentation in English on youtube (English, 2'36 ")