A Streetcar ‘Roll-Runner’
Chicago’s traffic survey photographer encountered this virtual wall of dark-green, Pullman-built streetcars operating on Milwaukee Avenue at the height of the July 1, 1919, evening rush. The view looks east-southeast with the Chicago & North Western bridge over Grand Avenue off to the left.
Closest to the cameraman, Chicago Surface Lines 1043, a 1911 “Small Pullman” works an Elston-Downtown trip; leading it “Big Pullman” 573 on the Milwaukee Avenue line is crossing the heart of the intersection, while another “Big Pullman”, the 373, is clearing the intersection. Traffic lights were still a few years’ in Chicago’s future — note the policeman between the 1043 and the 573. About 500 officers worked the downtown traffic detail in this era.
At the time, CSL was pumping an average of 300 cars per hour through this intersection each weekday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. So, a dedicated (and quick!) photographer could have burned through 100 rolls of slide film (had it existed) at this location. The title pays homage to slide-trading railfans, who, in the days of heavy swapping, would have shot as much film as they had on a particularly good subject.
Lines passing through the intersection in 1919 included the aforementioned Elston-Downtown and Milwaukee services, as well as Division-Downtown, Grand, Halsted, Milwaukee-Armitage, plus through-routes 6 (State-Milwaukee), 8 (Halsted-63rd), 13 (Halsted-Archer), and 18 (Halsted-Madison).
A total of 21 through-routes were established in the 1907 ordinances allowing the Chicago City Railway and the Chicago Railways to operate the surface transit service in Chicago. Both companies worked quickly to establish as many of the required through-routes as they could, recognizing that some of the specified lines had physical impediments or restrictions to be overcome. Operating experience with the initial routes led to modification of some of the routings and terminals in the July 1912 ordinance.
Those ordinances also provided for the establishment of additional through-routes as warranted by traffic. One of the most-famous of these was the longest-lived; through route 22 was the Clark-Wentworth service, which would survive as a car line until 1957. This line illustrates many of the principles of the through-route service, that it would eliminate wasteful overlap and the routes would avoid congestion by requiring establishment of additional central area terminal facilities.
A final point on the magnitude of the operation presented in this photo — all cars then in service were two-man; oneman cars would not begin in Chicago until 1921.