DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

Fittingly, a troupe that debuted as Chicago Transit Authority (the eponymous agency brought legal action to get that name changed) asked that question.  For years, the South Shore Line, properly the Chicago South Shore and South Bend, issued all-year-around printed timetables, advising that all published times shown were those in effect in Chicago.  When both Indiana and Illinois were on Standard Time, the South Bend passenger had to mentally add an hour; for that part of the year when Illinois and the Indiana Region observed Central Daylight Time, the South Bend passenger might not have had to make any changes, as Indiana was far enough west in the Eastern Time Zone for those counties on Eastern Standard Time to stay on Eastern Standard Time.  Those changes might not have inconvenienced too many passengers on the east end of the railroad, as, well into the 1960s, the railroad offered a memory pattern schedule with hourly South Bend Limiteds, with Gary Expresses on the half hour.  Conditional and positive stops for the morning Limiteds sufficed to serve any passengers from LaLumiere or Hudson Lake or New Carlisle for Bendix or downtown South Bend.  These days, the conditional stops are gone, although with all trains pulling out of Michigan City to form South Bend departures, there are morning departures for any local passengers so inclined.

Conditions were more complicated on the North Shore Line, the much-lamented and more than a little bit missed Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee.  Yes, the railroad operated entirely in the Central Time Zone.  After the War, though, Illinois observed Daylight Saving Time whilst Wisconsin did not.  So much for agricultural interests favoring Daylight Saving Time.  The cock crows at sunup, irrespective of what's on the clock, and farm kids know about morning chores before they head off to school.  Thus, when Wisconsin did adopt Daylight Saving Time, that ended on the final Sunday in September, whilst Illinois stayed with it until the final Sunday in October.

A RAINY FREEDOM WEEKEND FOR RAILWAY PRESERVATION.

The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad quit business on 3 July 1957 upon receipt of a favorable court ruling.  The Wheaton Shop blackboard is now property of the Fox River Trolley Museum.

Preservation operations began on a short stretch of electrified trackage in 1966.  For Indepedence Day, visitors were offered rides at the 1966 price of fifty cents.

A short stretch of the Aurora Elgin and Fox River Railroad remained in service as a diesel-powered railroad to move coal from an interchange with Illinois Central to the state hospital in South Elgin.  The Railway Electric Leasing and Investment Company made a deal with the railroad to operate trolley cars, initially on a very short stretch of electrified track.

CLOSING DOWN AHEAD OF THE RAIN.

In 1957, the Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad abruptly suspended all service just past noon on 3 July.  Passengers at Desplaines Avenue were more than a little bit cranky when the train they were hoping to board all of a sudden was moved past the platform without boarding, and nobody offered any substitute transportation.  Things got more interesting as offices closed for the holiday.

These days, the Illinois Railway Museum offer visitors a chance to experience living history, as we documented for 2016 and 2017.  Everybody is in on the plot and there's no unpleasantness when the trains set down at the Seemann Road platform.

Last week Friday, the show was ready to go on, but the weather gods had their own say.  For safety reasons, no electric cars operate during thunderstorms, and to protect the vintage cars, the wood interurbans, which the cash-strapped interurban continued to operate right up to the end, do not run in the rain.

At about 11.30, it looked like business as usual at Wheaton, where steel cars from Elgin and Aurora combined to make up a mid-day Chicago Express.

A few Chicago and North Western Bi-Level Commuter Streamliners were operating in those days, although the control cab cars and push-pull operation came later.  The smoke is rising off Shay 5, which was pulling a short coach train.  The threatening skies are to the northwest.

OH, THE HUMANITIES!

Joanne Jacobs notes, "You can major in Taylor Swift and minor in K-pop -- but shouldn't."  That's in endorsing a recent lament for the kind of work students get away with to earn degrees.

In its early years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison offered courses covering Virgil, Cicero, Livy, logic, calculus, ethics, chemistry, constitutional law and other touchstones of a classical education.

In the year of our Lord 2026, students can stroll past Lincoln’s statue looming atop Bascom Hill on that very same campus to study video games through feminist, queer and ecocritical lenses.

Culture warriors are busy bludgeoning universities for their ideological monocultures: founding civics institutes, prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion statements in hiring and cutting federal funding to questionable research — but mediocrity is arguably as large a problem as ideological capture.

Maybe the humanities disciplines should have stuck to close reading and creative writing.  It's not as if nobody's noticing.  "Dear reader, it's straightforward enough: think of 'the humanities' as 'those disciplines that deconstruct reality as a hobby' and you won't go far wrong.  That reality has a say in what gets deconstructed never ceases to catch the academy by surprise."

STEAMING INTO THE WEEKEND.

The downtown crossing of the Lincoln Highway (Illinois 38) and Fourth Street (Illinois 23) is a good place to photograph trains, with favorable sun angles most of the day.  Several photographers (videographers? smart 'phone owners?) set up there for Big Boy's passage on Tuesday.  Stand back, the engineer is blowing the boiler down!

Yes, I am still preparing a video that will feature a few of the moneymakers before and after Extra 4014 East's passage.

STEAM TRAINS CONNECT PEOPLE.

Union Pacific's Big Boy once again demonstrated that proposition on its way across Illinois en route to a rendezvous with brother locomotive 4012 in Scranton and an Independence Day event in Philadelphia.

That WBBM-TV report showed one of several freight trains that were going about their business on Tuesday afernoon.  As has become my custom of late, I'll let others do the train chasing, and pick a comfy spot to watch.  The weather was favorable for hanging out under a tree, and in due time there will be a video forthcoming featuring the freight trains before and after the steamer.

DISCOVERING THE ELECTRIC PRESERVATION RAILWAYS OF THE STATE LINE.

Mercedes Streeter of The Autopian stumbles upon the East Troy Electric Railroad.

Countless historic American streetcar and interurban lines have disappeared since their heyday, but I found a place where you can still experience a commute like it’s 1920. This is the East Troy Electric Railroad, Wisconsin’s last running interurban railroad, and it’s one of the most tranquil rides you’ll ever take that doesn’t even surpass 15 mph.

The East Troy Electric Railroad is one of my favorite kinds of museums. Nestled in the town of East Troy in southeastern Wisconsin, this museum doesn’t really have the marketing of the Illinois Railway Museum or the federally recognized status of the National Railroad Museum. Instead, it’s a museum that you hear about through word of mouth or stumble upon on social media, and it has the same kind of lovely charm as a mom-and-pop shop. The museum is small enough that, if you’re not paying attention, you could drive right by it and not notice it was there.

We've called attention to the East Troy Electric Railroad numerous times.  It's unusual among preservation railways in that its busiest season is fall, for apple picking and leaf peeping.

AN INTERURBAN RETURNS TO HOME RAILS.

Well, a short stretch of rail close to its old home rails.

The Village of Villa Park is working with Illinois Prairie Path, labor unions and two railroad museums to give new life to a piece of west suburban transit history.

The Chicago Aurora and Elgin Railroad was an electrically powered interurban rail line that connected much of west suburban Kane, DuPage and Cook counties to the Loop. Passenger service operated between 1902 and 1957, and freight service ended two years later. Most of the railroad’s right of way, including the portion that went through Villa Park, was converted into the Illinois Prairie Path walking and biking trail.

Now, Villa Park plans to bring one of the old CA&E railcars, known as Car 321, to the former train station near the intersection of Ardmore Avenue and Central Boulevard. Union laborers would restore the exterior to its original condition and rehab that interior so it can be used to host community events. The village plans to build a short stub track to mount the railcar on, and a shed to protect it from the elements.

The Roarin' Elgin shut down late enough into the emergence of a railway preservation movement in these United States that there were interested buyers of cars for preservation, and its inability to attract sufficient capital to completely replace its fleet of wooden cars with steel cars meant a substantial roster of wood cars of relatively low scrap value were available to preservation enthusiasts.  At one time, the seven cars numbered 315-321 all remained in preservation.  Car 318 was the casualty of a rough shunt on Penn Central en route from Indiana to Wisconsin and became a parts donor to sister cars in the Illinois Railway Museum collection.  Car 315 is being rebuilt at the Rockhill Trolley Museum in Pennsylvania in closer to as-built condition, meaning revealing the stained-glass arched upper sash windows that many an interurban covered over to make the car look more streamlined, and Car 316 has received a similar backdating at the Fox River Trolley Museum.  Car 319 returned from an Ohio mobile home park to the Illinois Railway Museum a few years ago, and it often runs in the Roarin' Elgin wood car train.

IT'S TORNADO SEASON.

Model railroad swap meet season is winding down, as later sunsets and warmer temperatures draw people out of their basements.  One of the final shows of the year in the North West Frontier is the Depot Stove Gang show at Lena-Winslow High School.  The traders run heavily to secondhand HO scale trains, as well as Lionel and American Flyer.  The show offers a convenient excuse to patronize a local craft brewery that knows how to make lagers and stouts.

It's probably a good thing this sort of craft project wasn't a thing when I was in kindergarten or elementary school as I would be tempted to add a dome or two to each of those tank cars.

School administrators are comfortable enough with the traditional forms to post advice in the lunch room.

You'd think some of those things would go without saying.  Such, though, are the times we live in.

And now the students, and their teachers, and the support staff, have a new challenge.  "Lena-Winslow School District prepares to go back to school after devastating tornado."  That storm hit Friday a week ago, as students were gathering for a concert.

Part of the school’s roof was ripped off during Friday’s storm, causing damage and leaving students and staff sheltering inside.

Band director Renee Schultz says dozens of students were already in the building for a music event when the weather quickly turned.

She says the moment the tornado hit was intense.

“It felt like the building got picked up and sucked up,” said Schultz. “There was a pressure change and then it was like how people describe it, like a freight train and the doors shaking and all of that.”

Despite the damage, no one was hurt. Superintendent Tom Chiles says students and staff responded quickly and professionally.

“Their reaction to the whole situation couldn’t have been any better,” said Chiles. “I thought our adults handled it really well and then the kids listened to those directions very well and that’s why we didn’t have any injuries.”

The storm left visible damage to the building, including the stage area and parts of the roof.

Chiles hosted an open house Wednesday which allowed families to walk through the school, ease some anxiety and feel more comfortable after what many describe as a traumatic experience.

“I just felt it was important that if kids really did feel a lot of trauma, to have mom or dad with them when they got back into the same space again,” explained Chiles.

One parent says their six-year-old daughter was at school when the twister hit.

“So, we wanted to make sure to stop back in and make sure she was good to go, and it looks like so far so good,” said Morgan Howe a parent at Lena-Winslow School District.

Chiles says repairs will take time and could be costly, but much of the building has already been secured and cleared for students to return.

The kids listened when the adults talked, and that made tornado day less bad than it could have been.  Classes resumed Thursday.  If the Depot Stove Gang announce tornado relief efforts we'll let you know.

A FALLEN COLOSSUS.

For years, ferroequinologists have used the concrete coaling tower east of YD Interlocking (where a secondary line once crossed the Overland Route) to frame their photographs.

That's a short Chicago and North Western business train, which might have been a corporate extravagance even then, on an inspection trip in May 1989.

IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR HOCKEY.

Current and past players for Wisconsin and Ohio State competed on Team Canada and Team U.S.A. for a gold medal in women's hockey.  Team U.S.A. secured that gold.  Then the current players returned to college, where Wisconsin secured the regular-season championship in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (the conference alignments in Olympic, or "non-revenue," if you will, sports are bizarre) after which Ohio State won the conference tournament.  Thus when the national championship bids were issued, Ohio State were the top seed and Wisconsin the second seed.  They met again for the national championship.

University of Wisconsin official photograph retrieved from WTMJ.

Wisconsin's women won their ninth national championship, and if you thought Connecticut versus Tennessee was too frequent a final in women's basketball, it has been either Ohio State or Wisconsin skating with that trophy you can't drink from each of the last four years.

And those sports pundits who had reservations about Kirsten Simms being on Team U.S.A?  All she did this tournament is get Wisconsin back to the finals with an overtime goal against a scrappy Penn State team.  And 1980 Team U.S.A. most valuable player and current Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson is conference coach of the year.

Well done, kids.

CLIMATE CHAOS IN THE STATE LINE.

If you don't like the weather, go to the next county.  The Sunday morning map of watches and warnings had the springlike stuff to our southeast and fulfillment of the groundhog's fears to the northwest.

By evening, the groundhog's forecast was verifying here, although one might be forgiven for thinking "early spring" south toward Bloomington and Springfield, with another day of tornadoes.

This morning, DeKalb was in the "blizzard warning" area, not for any new snow, but for the prospect of high winds and light powder being blown around.  Local authorities were recommending against travel.  The sun is high enough and strong enough now that getting concrete surfaces mostly clear suffices to keep the blowing and drifting stuff under control.

Snow cover through most of Advent, cold with little snow cover through January and into February, now the sort of snow with almost enough moisture to congeal in the snow-thrower, and if it's a little deeper, can bring on cardiac events.

To the north, Wisconsin got it, with Weather Channel storm-reporters braving the blizzard conditions in downtown Green Bay.  Amtrak's trains between Chicago and Milwaukee were running.  I'm not sure about the trains toward the Cities and the Dakotas.

That's Amtrak 334, close to time, and lost in the snow cloud is an older B32-8 pushing.  I was hearing radio chatter about one of the trains' newer Charger diesels, like the one leading, having troubles.

We are now on Daylight Saving Time, which will bring us the weird phenomenon of sunset around 7 pm and heavy snow on the ground.

MARCH IS FOR MODEL RAILROAD SHOWS.

The Karlson Brothers Circus regularly show at Delavan's Train Show.  "The train show and swap meet season tends to run from November into March.  The Karlson Brothers Circus showed at last weekend's Delavan (one of two Wisconsin towns claiming to be midwestern home of the itinerant circus) for the first time in five years.  That ballyhooed March 2020 show never happened, because the politicians panicked."

The past two or three years the show has participated with several other State Line O Scale modellers and at the request of the Mayor, our display is in City Council chambers.

As is our practice, it's up to children of all ages to notice some of the sight gags.

In the past two or three years, the collection of college mascots in the menagerie has expanded.

The Circus World Museum in Baraboo has a short orange wagon with monkey bars in the ceiling, and if you look closely, there is a monkey hanging from the monkey bars.  Yes, some people did contort themselves to get a closer look into the wagon and see that yes, indeed, there's a set of monkey bars up there.

The circus train continues to draw interest from model railroaders.  The locomotive is a Saginaw bronze casting from before the War, fitted with brass wheels and a modern transmission, and the onboard power and sound are now working.

Next up, the big Chicago area O Scale show in another week.

WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, MAKE TZATZIKI.

A week after the Sycamore Tom and Jerry's restaurant serving Chicago-style gyros and all sorts of other foods suffered a catastrophic fire, the owners announced plans to continue in business, using temporary quarters (a restaurant that has had multiple owners offering multiple varieties of food: thanks, Illinois taxes) until they build a new eatery at their existing location.

In a social media post Saturday evening, the restaurant said it secured a temporary location at 265 W. Peace Road in Sycamore – the former Eggsclusive Cafe – with plans to reopen by early March. Work is underway to prepare the space so the restaurant can resume serving customers as quickly as possible.

Sarah Meyer, Tom & Jerry’s general manager, said the restaurant’s management team first looked at the space on Feb. 1 before signing a lease two days later. She said workers have been inside the location most days since.

“We are still overwhelmed with grief, but I think at this point we are all so busy making plans that we are just forging ahead,” Meyer said.

The Sycamore Road restaurant suffered an electrical firing in the ceiling.  Details about the anticipated reopening, which might be by increments such as no drive-through or a limited menu, will be forthcoming.

SENDING IN THE VARSITY.

Yesterday's compare-and-contrast post featuring protest culture in the government schools of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin noted an after-school event at Genoa-Kingston High School organized by the school's chapter of Turning Point U.S.A. that was a voluntary event too far for the professional protesters.  As we published yesterday, we did not know who the outside speakers were.  Later last night, the fourth estate saw fit to let us know.  "Erika Kirk, Linda McMahon speak at Genoa-Kingston High School ‘History Rocks!’ event."  That's right, the current chief executive officer of Turning Point and the Secretary of Education whose mission is to roll back that department.

“I was able to lead a portion of the presentation and introduce Mrs. Erika Kirk onto the stage,” said Oliver Piotrowski, Genoa-Kingston High School Club America Chapter President. “The overall vibe was very patriotic. People were cheering. People were very happy to be there. They were happy to have the opportunity to see Erika Kirk and Secretary McMahon.”

Around 2 p.m. Thursday, a group of protesters gathered near the high school. Some demonstrators held signs protesting against Trump administration policies, while others showed up to voice their opinion over the decision to hold the event at the school.

That's right, one paragraph describing what happened at the event, and the balance of that story devoted to the same protest-centric coverage we noted yesterday.  The print coverage in DeKalb's Daily Chronicle also mostly rehashed the protesters' positions.  "Turning Point USA, history event draws protests in Genoa."  There was reporting from inside the event, students posting their videos on social media.  And people wonder why Washington's Post downsized itself and the other traditional newspapers are as if skin suits.  Outside the event, the cold civil war continued.

Numerous cars passing by on Route 72 honked in apparent approval of the protesters.

The driver of a car with two American flags flying in the back and “Trump” written on a side window passed by the protesters multiple times while revving the engine.

The education secretary came to Genoa from another school event, at Chicago's Hope Academy, which Chicago's Tribune describes as a "private Christian school."  That event was also part of the "History Rocks!" tour, which is your tax dollars at work with a little help from non-governmental organizations of a traditional patriotic persuasion.

IS THE CHILDREN LEARING?

Instead of Senior Skip-Out day, high schoolers of all grade levels organize, with the concurrence of their teachers, protests against immigration enforcement.

The protests began before the first protester had a fatal encounter with law enforcement in Minneapolis.

Protests against the Trump Administration's immigration enforcement tactics were held across the country [January 20] — with dozens of those protests happening in Southeastern Wisconsin.

The demonstrations were organized by The Women's March in what they called the "Free America Walkout," encouraging the public to walk out of school or work in protest of ICE.

In Milwaukee, hundreds of Rufus King High School students walked out of class [January 20] morning and could be seen walking through the Rufus King neighborhood.

"It's really important for all these students to be out here because ICE's policies are not only affecting politics, they're students like us, students around the nation, and it's causing a lot of fear, which becomes an issue in our communities because everybody deserves to be safe and feel safe in their own communities." Kali Maafree, a Rufus King student, said.

Rufus King is notionally a magnet school, although its academic performance is on a par with many urban schools.  There might be forces at work other than active immigration patrols making people feel less than safe in their own communities.  "That's not an urban design problem, that's what happens when you celebrate transgressivity and call bad behavior authenticity.  The same community members who would like to stop the bad driving are also now at work to reduce the gang gunplay.  There is still hope for a hurting world."  You only have to walk two blocks south or three blocks west of the King campus to find the bad driving.

A THIRD PLACE LOST.

Last Saturday, the Tom & Jerry's restaurant in Sycamore suffered a major fire.  The building is condemned.  We'll see what transpires for rebuilding.

There are a number of eateries in the State Line trading under the Tom & Jerry (as in the cartoon characters) banner.  I don't know who has rights to the theming.  The restaurants do not comprise a chain, nor are they under common ownership.  In addition to the now-closed Sycamore restaurant, there are others in Belvidere, Loves Park, Machesney Park, and Rockford that appear to be affiliated, and there was once another in DeKalb.

The menu at each is what you'd expect of a Chicago area fast casual eatery: Gyros, Burgers, Ribs, Hot Dogs, Italian Beef and Chicken, with other offerings.  The DeKalb and Sycamore locations served as useful third places as the managers let patrons linger and some of the regulars knew each other and caught up on things there.

A WELL-DESERVED RETIREMENT.

Yen Ching to close after 4 decades in DeKalb.  The family business serves good food, and some years ago they moved from downtown near the railroad crossing to near the university.

After being in DeKalb for nearly 44 years, Yen Ching has decided to close its doors.

The restaurant is owned by husband and wife John Yin and Marilyn Yin. Their only other staff member is Marilyn’s sister, Caroline Zinger. John serves as the sole chef, while Marilyn manages the restaurant’s finances and paperwork.

Yen Ching is an Asian restaurant in DeKalb that offers authentic Chinese cuisine with items such as sweet sour chicken, egg drop soup and crab rangoons.

John Yin began working in his family’s restaurant at the age of 10, which made it second nature for him to manage an entire kitchen on his own. Although there have been other employees over the years, none ever proved to be a complete fit.

“We’ve had employees, but over the years we realized the easy way is to do it yourself,” Marilyn Yin said.

Even when things get hectic, as it often does at an eatery with a strong local following, the ladies manage to stay cheerful.  This year, the owners will be offering lunch Tuesday through Sunday and dinner each day.  The regulars, which include long-time DeKalb residents from all walks of life, wish them well.

GOOD HELP, HARD TO FIND?

Little Caesars opens first self-service restaurant in Rockford.  There's a video clip at the link.  "Restaurant" appears to be a misnomer, as there are no tables to eat in.  A Horn and Hardart has more charm.

Little Caesars photograph retrieved from WIFR.

What have I been telling you for over twenty years, dear reader, about the "slovenly, poorly trained people" who might not get the order right, who have no clue how to handle change, who can't manage a "we are sorry and hope to do better next time?"  Is it any accident that the first of these outlets is in Rockford?  "Perhaps the mayor would like to have more Rockfordians equipped to finish college, that is, to not be among the inefficiently many people in institutions pretending to offer higher education. That, however, is a call for stronger common schools, or perhaps stronger commitment to the Habits of Effective People among Rockfordians."  Rockford's schools, and its television stations, emphasize high school sports to the exclusion of almost everything else, including the etiolation, etiolation of pizza, pizza.

The restaurant at 3134 11th Street removes the traditional walk-up counter. Customers can place an order on the Little Caesars app or website, go to the restaurant and grab their items from the mobile order pickup zone.

Another option for customers is the new Hot-N-Ready self-service station inside the restaurant. Guests can select and scan items, then pay for their order without going through a cashier.

“It’s really intuitive, and the self-checkout is very similar to what you might see in a convenience store or at the airport. So, it makes it very easy, and who doesn’t want a hot fresh pizza really quickly,” said Trish Heusel, Vice President of Innovation at Little Caesars.

Hot, fresh, and to order suggests there might be someone, or has the kitchen side been automated as well?  I wonder, this being on Rockford's South Eleventh Street, how much security is on duty.  And people buying from this automat don't have to pay the incompetence tax.

Managers say the new design keeps today’s customers in mind, with an experience focused on speed and convenience.

“You can get in and out of the store in less than 20 seconds,” said Heusel.

Little Caesars got its start in Detroit.  I wonder if the innovation will be available south of Eight Mile.

A TEAM THAT WILL LIVE IN IGNOMINY.

For years, some sports pundit has offered "Bottom Ten" rankings for college and professional teams.  I'm old enough to remember one iteration listing Bay (Green) along with Bay (Tampa), the aftermath of the Lombardi Era being nearly thirty years in the wilderness with a team not much better than an expansion team, and another iteration featuring the Los Angeles Lambs.

These days, the pundit is Ryan McGee with ESPN, and he hits close to home.  Go, Northern Ill-ugh-noise.

The Other Other Huskies are one of a whopping six #MACtion team stuck at 1-and-something, but won, er, lost out for this spot over the other five because: 1. They actually played a game last weekend; C. They lost to San Diego State, which isn't terrible, but the final score of the game was 6-3; and secondly, we wanted a chance to hype this week's Pillow Fight of the Week, when they host My Hammy of Ohio, which is now 1-3 after beating Lindenwood, a school you've never heard of unless you are a big Pierre Desir fan.

That's the way to motivate fans on homecoming weekend at the teachers' college that claims to have invented homecoming.