‘If not for the railroads, we’d be another St. Louis’
Area man champions role of trains in Chicago history
Dave Daruszka opened a recent presentation on the history of Chicago’s railroads by blowing a handheld train whistle.
“If you’re standing on the tracks and you hear this sound, you’re dead,” he told members of the Norwood Park Historical Society in late September.
Having retired in 2013 as a locomotive engineer for Metra, Daruszka, a resident of Chicago’s Morgan Park neighborhood, spoke the truth. As vice president of the Lockport-based Blackhawk Railway Historical Society, he also seemed intent on waking people up about the upcoming 175th anniversary in 2023 of railroads coming to Chicago.
Daruszka, who speaks on rail topics at libraries and local historical societies, is leading a campaign to make more people aware of how railroads fueled Chicago’s explosive growth from frontier cow town to America’s third-largest city.
“Chicago wouldn’t be here if not for the railroads,” said Daruszka. “We would be another St. Louis.”
That’s the notion behind his efforts each autumn toward getting the city’s railroads a month of recognition.
Minus 2020 due to the pandemic, Daruszka has obtained annual proclamations from the city of Chicago since 2017 declaring October Chicago Railroad History Month, in honor of the first run of Chicago’s first steam engine in October 1848.
Besides working for Metra, Daruszka also worked for the Wisconsin Central and the Chicago & Northwestern.
“There isn’t a mile of existing track in the Chicago area I haven’t traveled,” he said, having compiled notebooks of train yard maps and cheat sheets for understanding the abundance of complicated rail traffic signals.
“When you’re a young boy and you get attached to railroads, it kind of follows you throughout your life,” Daruszka said. “I was studying design at IIT, and my first memory of that place was being in the main campus building and seeing a train come whizzing by. It was the Rock Island. I knew I was in the right place.”
Daruszka eventually transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago,
completing his degree while working for the Chicago & Northwestern. While not employed by the railroads, he worked as a special projects coordinator for CAN-TV and as a prop designer, information technology person and graphic artist for other concerns.
Daruszka, also a past president of Ridge Historical Society, is clearly captivated by local history,
As he tells it, Chicago’s first mayor, William Butler Ogden, switched transportation loyalties. He started as one of the lead financiers of the I & M Canal, but then began using his influence to raise funds for building Chicago’s first rail line.
On Oct. 25, 1848, Chicago’s first locomotive, the Pioneer, made its first run west on tracks owned by the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. The Pioneer was used for hauling materials to build sections of track that eventually connected Chicago with the nation’s first Transcontinental Railroad.
“That train is now in the basement of the Chicago History Museum,” Daruszka said.
Chicago’s rapid growth related to the moxie and vision of those who risked their fortunes to establish the earliest rail lines.