Chicago memory, part 2 - stacks, tracks and tanks...

The only day during my Chicago trip with acceptable weather was the day I had free from work, so I took the train on the old Union Pacific (I believe, it said UP), trainline with the METRA commuter train north to the suburbs to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden.  More about the garden later, but the trainride was an experience in itself.



The double-decker traincars were something else.  You walk in at the end of the car, and then climb up or down - up to the second floor which are just two narrow strips of floor with a line of seats along each window wall, and open to the level below in the center.  Below there were two rows of seats as on a normal train car.  It was all tiny and low above, but the openness to the level below made you feel not so claustrophobic.  The conductor didn't even bother walking upstairs, he just stretched out his hand from below up to us at our ankle-level to get our tickets.  They sure do things different in Chicago.  Maybe their bridges are too low for a regular double-decker commuter train car?



So, I sat on the top floor, looked out through greenish tinted and dirty train windows, and saw the city go by, through old industry areas, nice little neighborhoods, and they all looked so much cleaner than in the East, even if poor.  I started taking photos of watertanks and smokestacks, one after another.  Old smokestacks used as advertising space, or cell phone towers high or low, and so on.  Old water tanks, which I think are so American because I never see them in any other cities of the world, of various shapes and placement, and sometimes also with advertisement on them.  One had fallen down.



We passed the Morton Salt factory, where they make (made?) the table salt that 'when it rains it pours', so you don't have to deal with clumps in your salt.  I have bought Morton salt many times and it still has the same old nice design on its containers in the supermarket.



And there were train tracks of course, and old and new train things next to them.  Old flat cars and smaller things.  Two diesel engines, one yellow and another red, but very blurry on the photos so not included here.  It was an interesting experience, a real trip through history from a higher point than usual.

Click on the little thumbnails to see the photos larger if you like - there are so many that I added them as thumbnails this time. I apologize for the grittiness of the photos but they were taken through a train window and most at rather high speed.