Dear List,
I hope I can shed some light on the creation of the Transportation
Center at Aurora. Initially, a panel was created to pick a consulting firm
to handle preliminary plans and direction for the center. We (BN) had a
room reserved in Marina Towers Chicago where different firms came in and
made presentations of "what and how" for the last remaining parts of the
roundhouse-Aurora Shops. Every square inch of every wall remaining was
photgraphed and reviewed in the study done for Aurora. Initially Amtrak was
a sobering consideration as the structures could not move yet the tracks at
Lincoln Street were not in relative close proximity. A funny thing about
laying tracks, what looked to be workable as viewed on a blueprint, lying on
a table, does not seem to translate into the real world of physics, full
scale. I remember a design engineer being always present, having to explain
why this and that would or wouldn't work. About this time a study was done
of projected growth of Aurora, Naperville and Lisle. I remember the stats
and Aurora was to grow at half the rate of the eastern communities.
Possibly this was one of the main reasons for the move of Amtrak to
Naperville......at the very least it gave someone someplace leverage. Also,
if I remember right, care was taken under the cement plateforms at Napervile
for a 4th main in the future. Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Duncan" <cduncan@c...>
To: <BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 2:41 PM
Subject: Re: [BRHSlist] Aurora Shops
> During the 50's I commuted to the CB&Q ofices on Jackson & Clinton in Chi.
> Are threr no more commuting for Chicago bound from Aurora?
>
> cttnghmrl@a... wrote:
>
> > The story published at the time the new center was opened and the old
depot
> > was closed stated that in order to stop at the new station Amtrak would
need
> > to go "down" to the station and climb back "up" to the main line, and
they
> > didn't want to take the time to do so. The suburban tracks at the new
center
> > are considerably below the elevated main line tracks at that point. I
don't
> > know if this truly was a real problem, but it was the excuse Amtrak used
for
> > moving their suburban stop from Aurora to Naperville.
> >
> > Ray Cottingham (who was living in the Aurora area at that time.)
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
> >
> >
> > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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