Terminal Station

Terminal Station
Architect: C. B. Atwood
Area:
Cost: $300,000.

Chicago Tribune, August 14, 1892

Plans for the railway passenger station inside Jackson Park have been completed. Provision is made for a monster depot, in which 26,000 people may assemble.

The development of this station has been the work of many months. The station proper has been designed by C. B. Atwood of the Exposition company. Mr. Atwood is the architect of the Art Palace, the Forestry Building, the Peristyle, and the Passenger Station.

The style of architecture of the big depot is Roman Corinthian. The structure will stand directly west of the Administration Building, and in architecture resemble very much the Peristyle at the east end of the main basin. The two are, so to speak, companion pieces. One, it is intended, shall architecturally supplement the other.

The station proper will be 150×300 feet.Contiguous to this on the west will be a train shed 672 feet long and 100 feet wide. This shed is more properly speaking a place where passengers will assemble to take the trains. It will run north and south, and twenty-four train tracks or sub-terminals will run into it from the west.

The Time of Leading Cities.
The station proper will be one of the most ornate buildings at Jackson Park. Mr. Atwood has spent many weeks in working out a sketch for the building. As a result he has something of which he feels proud. On the east façade there will be three main entrances. These will lead to a main hall, 60×200 feet. Its ceiling, eighty feet high, will be in the form of a groined arch. It is to be a noble hall designed after the best lines of classic architecture.Surrounding the hall on its four sides will be twenty-four clocks. Each one of these will be set to represent the time in the leading cities of the world. The visitor from any land will be enabled to learn the time of day at his home by a casual glance. Over each clock will be printed the name of the eity represented by it.

On the east side of the building there will be a loggia thirty feet wide. Through this passengers will enter the main hall and subsequently reach the train shed. In the center of the hall will be an office of the Bureau of In-formation. The north and south ends of the ground foot will be devoted to various rooms for the comfort of travelers. The second floor will have, also, rooms for the comfort of visitors. One of them will afford accommodation for those who desire to bring their dinner baskets. Tables will be supplied, and as the dimensions of the room are. liberal there is no reason why hundreds of people with dinner baskets may not find it a comfortable dining-room. In other portions of the second floor apartments will be set aside for a writing-room, union ticket office, restaurant, check-room. smoking-room, reading-room, etc. The third floor will be given up to of fices for the railroad men.

The ornamentation of the building promises to be in harmony with the noble designs of the structure. The 25,000 people who may comfortably find room to lounge about in the building will have a splendid view of the Administration Building and the grand basin leading to it from the lake.

On either side of the inain entrance from the east will stand two monster locomotives on pedestals thirty feet high. These locomotives are to have eight drive wheels and will weigh eighty tons. They are being built specially for this purpose by the Brooks & Rogers Locomotive works. Surmounting the roof on each side of the main entrance will be two clock towers. These towers are to be circular in form and ten feet in diameter. In each will be four dials six feet in diameter, so that any one in the vicinity of the passenger station may readily learn the time of day.

Plan of Railway Depot and Terminals at the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Train Capacity of the Depot.
Twenty-four individual train tracks are to run into this main station. On each track it is expected there will be a train of ten ears. Each car it is presumed will hold sixty people, so that in all 14,100 people may be loaded on the cars at one time. After these twenty-four trains have pulled out, the side tracks at the south end of the system will be relieved of nineteen or twenty trains, so that within a short space of time 26,000 people may be hauled out of this station. This station is designed purely for the use of excursion trains. Fifteen of the railroads entering Chicago, it is expected, will run their excursion business into this station.

With the exception of the Illinois Central, all the lines will reach the grounds over the Baltimore Ohio from the south. The Illinois Central has made provisions for connecting its main line by a short cut with the Baltimore & Ohio track.

The drawing shows how the trains are to be handled on the numerous tracks entering the station. The plan was developed by W. H. Holcomb and Engineer Nourse. It will be observed that the tracks are in triplicate order. The middle one is designed to accommodate the switching of the locomotives. On either side of this central track the trains will run in. Passengers will alight on the right-hand side of one train and on the left-hand side of the other. Between the two trains the engine will switch from the front end to the rear. It is said that few if any other stations in the world will equal in size the one at Jackson Park. The method of handling the trains is fully indicated in the drawing.

A number of the railroads centering in Chicago are negotiating for the use of the Baltimore and Ohio tracks for their excursion business. A well posted railroad man said yesterday that he believed only a very few of the roads would undertake a train service between down-town depots and the Fair grounds.

“The haul is too long in most cases,” he said. “Fares will be very low and it will not pay.”

Will Encourage Stopping at the Park.
Supt. Campbell of the Baltimore and Ohio said his road did not propose to run trains from the Grand Central Depot to Jackson Park next summer.

“That is our present intention,” said he. “Something, unexpected may alter conditions, but just now the Baltimore and Ohio cannot see its way to undertake the business. The run from our down-town depot to the World’s Fair is twenty miles by our route. We couldn’t afford to haul passengers for 10 cents unless we got a vast number of them. And, if we could, facilities to handle the trains do not exist in our yards.

“The roads know just what the capacities of their depots are. There is a limit to the number of trains which can be handled, and this limit is far below the aggregate of trains that will come in. Hence the road will encourage passengers to land at or near Jackson Park. As for excursion trains I don’t think any company will try to deliver them down-town. Our own excursion trains, no matter where they come from, will be stopped at the grounds.”

The Baltimore and Ohio railroad, in conjunction with the Chicago and Northern Pacific, will inaugurate a train service Sept. 4, between Altenheim and the World’s Fair grounds.

The Official Directory of This World’s Columbian Exposition, Moses P. Handy

This is a handsome structure, located directly west of the Administration Building, and forming the west side of the great square. The terminal station is of the Roman-Corinthian style of architecture. In general plan this station is divided into three sections. The central is 200 feet in length by the full depth of the building. It forms the great vestibule. The east and west sections are three stories in height, and contain the waiting rooms, check-rooms, lunch counters, and the general railroad offices. The central section extends the full length of the building. A marvelous effect is attained by an immense gallery on the second floor. The gallery is 25 feet wide, and extends entirely around the central section, giving it an aggregate length of some 600 feet. Two broad stairways, built in the highest art known to moderns, lead up to the gallery from the main floor. In actual use the gallery is an additional waiting-room, but it also is a convenient place for friends to meet.

libbey

In the upper part of the great hall there is a frieze of clock faces 24 in number and 5 feet in diameter. They give the time of day or night at twenty-four of the principal cities of the world. The great hall in its principal features and proportions, is adapted from the hall of the Baths of Caracalla at Rome. The construction material consists of wood and iron and the exterior and interior finish and decoration is of staff. Rising above the station are two illuminated balls of metal and glass, 10 feet in diameter. They show clock faces in every direction giving local time. The terminal facilities include everything except baggage rooms. Trunks of excursionists over the various roads will not be taken into the grounds at all, but will be delivered from the down-town depots.

Connected to the west side of the station is the perron, or landing platform, 80×672 feet, with an overhanging roof, from which a system of umbrella sheds, 13 in number, extend westward a distance of 500 feet.

libbey

The entire system of railroads is concentrated here upon 35 tracks. A platform extends along the west side of the building on the level of the second story, with wide covered passage ways leading over the roof of the Perron to the intramural elevated railway, which crosses the system of surface tracks above mentioned.

The entire cost of the main building is $250,000, and of the perron and umbrella sheds, $50,000, making a total of $300,000.

libbey

The Terminal Tracks.
The terminal tracks proper are twenty-six in number, terminating at the west side of the train shed, where are located the entrance and exit gates. In addition to these twenty-six tracks, are nine passing tracks which can be used in an emergency service. Beyond these terminal tracks is the storage yard which consists of twenty storage tracks and four running tracks. In the center of the yard between the storage and terminal tracks is provided a sixty six foot turntable for the purpose of turning engines or cars if required. There there also provided five water cranes connected with a 50,000 gallon water tank, for the purpose of furnishing water to the locomotives. For the operation of this terminal, power interlocking is provided. There are in the grounds two switch cabins or towers A and B. The south tower B, contains seventy levers and controls the entrance into the terminal and the south end of the storage yard. The north tower A, contains 160 levers and controls the north end of the storage yard and the terminal tracks proper. The power is steam, furnished by a battery of boilers at each tower. The steam forces a column of water through an iron pipe under ground, which in turn throws the switch or signal. On approaching the yard a train meets with a signal, and from that time on is completely under the control of the superintendent of terminals, who, acting through the levermen in the towers, guides it to its proper track, without any possibility of mishap or danger.

The station burned down in a fire on July 5, 1894.

Leave a Reply