Modeling the C&E on Chicago's North Side in N-Scale-Belmont & Lakewood Area

[TBurke]

It's been a while since I posted about my N-scale layout featuring the Milwaukee Road's C&E Line circa 1971.  C&E stands for Chicago & Evanston and the Milwaukee Road once went all the way to Evanston.  Its nicknames are the Lakewood line (north of North Avenue) and Kingsbury Line (south of North Avenue). I model two sections, the first on Lakewood from Wellington north to Belmont, and the second one from Eddy Street north to Waveland Avenue, crossing Clark and Addison with Wrigley Field modeled in part where it faces west.

They really are more dioramas than a true layout though trains can operate over them.  I hope to fill the gap one day between these two sections with a new layout that features the CTA line crossing over the Milwaukee Road by Racine Avenue. 

Everything is modeled from scratch and based on historic photos of the areas.  Many of the buildings are now gone.

In this attached picture it looks south from Belmont Avenue and down along Lakewood.  The structure on the right or west is a scrapyard which is long gone while the large complex farther south and across the street at the SW corner of Fletcher and Lakewood is the old Best Brewing.  Both were rail served.  I stretched it a little bit since Best Brewing went out of business in the early 1960s and my layout is set ten years later.

On the left or east at the SE corner of Belmont and Lakewood is a former factory that was rail served at one time though not by the early 1970s.  Just past it to the south is the former Reed Candy factory which was rail served into the early 1980s by the Milwaukee Road.  The buildings were torn down in the late 1980s and replaced by the "Sweeterville" condo complex.  After the line was cut back once again the railroad saved enough track about a block north of Belmont to use as a tail track to back down the Reed spur-much as was the case when the track was cut back to Diversey a short time later and enough tail track was saved to access the Peerless spur.  Reed received inbound shipments of corn syrup and sugar by rail. Wrigley acquired Reed and moved production to another facility. 

The overhead and cross buck type grade crossing signals are operational.  They were purchased from NJ International.  The grade crossings road surfaces represent a mixture of simulated concrete slabs where the line crossed streets with heavier traffic like in Belmont or timbers for the more lightly used crossings.

I hope to post more photos soon to try to add fresh content to this site. 

[TBurke]

Here are additional photos of my diorama featuring in this case the stretch of street trackage on Lakewood between Wellington and Belmont. 

The crossing signal (from NJ International) at the NE corner of Fletcher and Lakewood, by the spur to Reed Candy, is bent just like the prototype probably from being hit by trucks.

[TBurke]

Of note in one of the photos is a structure with a green roof at the far right or south facing Lakewood.  That was the last surviving C&E passenger depot and sadly it was torn down by the late 1980s.  The model is based on a photo I took of it a few years earlier.  It was a private residence in later years.

Another shot shows the scrapyard that was at the NW corner of Lakewood and Belmont.  Into the 1990s the stretch of Lakewood from Fletcher to Belmont was dirt paved. 

I created the street trackage by nailing the Atlas N-scale flex tracks and switches onto a cork bed.  Then I built up the street surface with sheets of stiff cardboard to create a slight crown for the area of the tracks except between the rails.  Putty was used to fill in the gaps.  Between the rails I used sheets of polystyrene carefully cut to allow just enough space for the flangeways.  However since the flanges on the Atlas locomotives and rolling stock are larger in proportion than the prototypes the flangeways are somewhat wide.  The hardest part was doing the trackwork in the streets where there were switch points.

I know the quality of the photos of the diorama leaves something to be desired especially when blown up but hopefully you get the idea. 

Next I will post photos of my layout where it passes Wrigley Field circa 1971.