Chicago Surface Lines Models

Built, Painted, and Operated by Phil O'Keefe

The car to the left is CSL Pullman number 297. This is one of two such models in operation on my layout. This car model has a destination sign for the Argo route which was a very short interurban-like line at the end of the long "63 63rd Street" route. The Argo route was nearly all on private right-of-way and ran on 63rd Place between Oak Park Avenue and Archer Road. The Pullmans were probably the most well known cars to operate on the CSL, and they were the last conventional wooden cars to operate in revenue service on Ashland Avenue in 1954.

The photo on the left shows the side view of Pullman 297 in my layout's storage yard before the tracks were ballasted. I solder the rails to brass strip crossties (power is taken from the overhead wire). CSL Pullmans, like nearly all conventional CSL two man streetcars, required passengers to enter through the rear doors, and exit through the rear or front doors.

The photo above shows CSL 4160, a Pullman-built Green Hornet PCC streetcar. Chicago had the largest fleet of PCC streetcars in the United States. Cars like 4160 made up a little more than half of the fleet of 600 post-war cars. The Pullmans totaled 310, and the St. Louis Car Co. versions totaled 290.  Chicago's post-war PCC's were unique with their non-standard door arrangement, and passengers entered though the back and exited through the middle or front doors.

Note the "Mobilgas" tanker truck model behind the car. On May 25, 1950 a crowded Green Hornet PCC went at high speed through an open switch near 63rd and State Street and plowed head-on into a tanker truck loaded with gasoline. Most of the people onboard were burned to death, and the political repercussions of this crash sped up the process of abandoning streetcars in Chicago. They were all gone by June 21, 1958.   Click on this link to read more about it:

Green Hornet Streetcar Disaster

Most of the CSL Pullman PCC's were scavenged for trucks and parts by St. Louis Car Co. to make some of the CTA's 6000-series PCC elevated cars. These re-incarnated cars lasted in elevated service until the early 1990's.

4160 has a route sign for the "36 Broadway State" route with the destination set for 119th and Morgan Streets on the extreme far south side of the city. Green Hornets also ran on 63rd Street, Western Avenue, Clark Street, Wentworth Avenue, Madison Street, and Halsted Street.

Above, car 1405 was one of a group of cars known to CSL platform men and fans as "Matchboxes". Nearly all of these small double truck wooden 1904 cars were converted to one-man operation by the 1930's, but a few lasted in two man operation until the late 1940's. This model has a destination sign for the "31 31st Street" line which was a short route operating between the Lake Michigan and "Bubbly Creek" (see Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle) just east of Ashland Avenue. 

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This page was designed by, and is maintained by Phil O'Keefe

If you have any questions about my layout or my models, please feel free to contact me at:

pokeefe571@ameritech.net

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This website was last updated on May 12, 2003