railroad.wikisort.org - Station

Laflin was a rapid transit station operated by the Chicago "L"'s Metropolitan West Side Elevated Railroad and located on its main line. The station existed from 1895 to 1951, when it was closed due to low ridership. The entire main line would soon be demolished for construction of the Eisenhower Expressway and its Congress Line, and the niche served by the Laflin would be filled by an entrance on the new line's Racine station.

LAFLIN   1500W 400S
Former Chicago 'L' rapid transit station
General information
Location	418 South Laflin Street Chicago, Illinois[1]
Owned by	Chicago Transit Authority
Line(s)	Metropolitan main line
Platforms	Originally 2 island platforms, later 1 island platform and 2 side platforms
Tracks	4 tracks
Construction
Structure type	Elevated
History
Opened	May 6, 1895
Closed	December 9, 1951
Rebuilt	1898–1914 (platforms reconfigured) 1905 (casket elevator added)
Former services
Preceding station Chicago "L" Following station Marshfield Terminus Metropolitan main line Racine toward Loop (LaSalle/Van Buren) or Wells Street Terminal

History

The Metropolitan main line opened on May 6, 1895, and one of its several stations was Laflin.[1]

A collision occurred at the station on the night of August 8, 1895. A westbound train was wrongly switched while heading to the station and rear-ended a three-car train whose rearmost car was being oiled and cleaned on the underside by two oilers. The two oilers were pinned to the tracks by the collision, which caused both cars involved to derail, and were injured seriously, one possibly mortally. Despite the oilers' greasy clothes and wooden surroundings, no fire broke out and neither car was irreparably damaged, although traffic on the line was delayed by half an hour.[2]

Laflin station closed on December 9, 1951, as part of a streamlining of service on the main line that included the introduction of skip-stop on the remaining stations. The trackage on which Laflin lay was abandoned in 1954 as the main line was demolished in favor of the Congress Line, and the Congress Line's Racine station opened in 1958 with an entrance on Loomis Street, one block east of Laflin Street.[1]

Station details

Laflin's station house was built of red pressed brick with a stone sill and foundation. Having a flat elevation, it had painted walls and a hardwood floor, as well as a restroom and water heater.[1]

The stairways and platforms of the station were wooden atop steel girders. The main line was quadruple-tracked throughout its length; its stations, including Laflin, originally had two island platforms between an inner and outer track. This proved to create a hazardous curve on the outer tracks, so the station was reconstructed between 1898 and 1914 to have two side platforms for each outer track and an island platform between the inner tracks. Each platform had a canopy with a cast iron frame and corrugated tin hipped roof.[1]

An elevator was added to Laflin, as well as Hoyne on the Metropolitan's Douglas Park branch, in 1905 in order to lift caskets for the Metropolitan's funeral trains, which transported decedents to various such suburban cemeteries as Waldheim and Mount Carmel.[1] Plans for casket elevators at more stations were shelved as they proved unnecessary given the ease with which pallbearers could carry caskets up station stairs. Funeral train service was discontinued in 1934 after having been rendered obsolete by advances in road paving and automotive technology.[1]

References

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