Customer Reviews

Forty Feet Below: The Story of Chicago's Freight Tunnels (Interurbans special)

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Many Chicagoans recall the Flood of '92; a piling near the Kinzie St. bridge was driven through the roof of an old freight tunnel, flooding the basements and sub-basements of many of the buildings in the Loop. This book tells the story of how those tunnels came to be.

The text of the book itself is a surprisingly good read, if a little dry in places. Included in the copy that I obtained are a couple of maps of the tunnels as of 1932, which give some idea of how extensive this network was. If nothing else, this book outlines a great lesson for us all: if you build it, they won't necessarily come (the vision behind building the tunnels lacked one vital thing: customers).

Update: Bruce has published a new version of this book through the Chicago Electric Railfans Association (CERA). ISBN: 0915348357 (searching on the ISBN from Amazon will turn up the book). The new version includes information about the flood and some more recent photographs taken by the author himself, as well as a raft of other information about the tunnels that he has accumulated since the original edition was published. This version is still in print as of Feb. 2005, but is a bit more expensive than the original version.