Chicago Surface Lines: Linking Chicago’s Neighborhoods II - Dispatch 9

Chicago Surface Lines-Linking Chicago’s Neighborhoods II Dispatch 9 builds upon the success of Dispatch 8, the first book about the CSL (Chicago Surface Lines) and the neighborhoods it served. Dispatch 9 covers 26 streetcar lines in the 1945-1958 period.  Dispatch 8, Chicago Surface Lines: Linking Chicago’s neighborhoods is also available on this website. 

Chicago Surface Lines-Linking Chicago’s Neighborhoods II is edited by Richard F. Begley, with George E. Kanary and Walter R. Keevil. This 100-page publication includes 20 color pages, 149 photos (28 in color), and two maps (both in color), as well as detailed narratives of 26 streetcar routes.  The table of contents (photo on the website) lists the routes covered in the publication.  There is a chart that shows when these routes were discontinued and replaced by buses or trolley buses.   Also included is a chart that chronologies the significant events that affected the Chicago Surface lines during its existence. 

The book includes a section on Eight Distinctive Lines of Southeast Chicago (including "the Hegewisch line" and South Deering); coverage of Diagonal Lines in a Grid City (including Elston, Archer and Lincoln); as well as information on such routes as Kedzie, Cicero, 18th Street and Chicago Avenue. The routes used about 630 streetcars daily and carried 162 million originating revenue passengers in 1945. Dispatch 9 includes detailed narratives on each route and a wonderful article by George Kanary on his recollections of life on Division Street in Wicker Park. 

The Shore Line Interurban Historical Society that published Dispatch 9 Chicago Surface Lines-Linking Chicago’s Neighborhoods II, is a non-profit organization that publishes a quarterly magazine and dispatches about urban, suburban and interurban passenger rail service in the Chicago Hub region.  For more information on this organization or to join visit their website at www.shore-line.org. 

If you want to learn about the Chicago streetcar lines and the history of public transportation in Chicago, you will love this book Dispatch 9 about the CSL running through Chicago's neighborhoods.