Nostalgia & History > South Shore Saturday? CSS&SB, that is........

These shots were taken on November 5, 1978, when some friends and I made a roundtrip from Randolph Street Station in Chicago to South Bend, IN. The old cars had about five or six years to live and the South Shore was always an interesting and enjoyable subject to shoot.

Shot 1: Motorman on Car 24 peers intently through the front window, eastbound towards South Bend. No Ipods, cell phones, Blackberrys or other not-yet-created electronic devices to distract this man.

Shot 2: Car 24 rests at the "new" South Shore station in South Bend. This station was built after the CSS&SB discontinued their street running into downtown South Bend. Amtrak also used this station.

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You would have enjoyed this trip, just about 20 years earlier in 1958, when an Illinois Central MU train went down the CSS&SB. Shown here in Michigan City:

http://www.davesrailpix.com/ic/htm/ic117.htm

Thanks for the photos -- waves of nostalgia wash over me. I started riding those cars in the fifties when I was in grade school. My favorites were the combines. Somewhere I too have some slides of the South Shore from that era...need to start digging around.

Just for my information: Were/are the operators of the South Shore commuter trains motormen or engineers? I suppose it's a fine point, but I recall reading something about interurban operations in the SF Bay area. Some of the operators were motormen and others (I think it was on the IE) were engineers.

A friend of mine who worked in train service and "engine" service on the South Shore referred to the position as "engineman" in a recent e-mail. I guess that will have to do.

Silver Sky