Typical Days of the Past

In the early to mid 1900s, the downtown area of the City of Joliet was filled with people, businesses, and of course steam engines. Before the tracks were elevated, these locomotives passed right through the city on ground level. Back when train service was at its peak in the 1940s, who knows how many engines would storm through downtown each day. Since its construction in 1912, hundreds of thousands of steam engines roared past the Joliet Union Station, a sight that is now rarely seen. The last time a steam engine passed through Joliet, to my knowledge, was September 1992. I was 9 years old, and my dad did not take me out of school to see it. My dad went to see it though, along with my Uncle and Grandfather.

The above posted video was taken by John Rockey, posted with his permission. You can see his webpage at www.railroad-crossing.com This video of the Santa Fe 3571 is rare look at a sight and sound that citizens of Joliet used to experience on a daily basis for over 70 years. In the background you can see the southeast face of the Joliet Union Station.

Union Station Project - Part 2

After a half dozen trips to Union Station, and many hours of calculating and sharpening pencils, I have completed the templates for the upper level of the structure. I started by making rough, semi-scale drawings on graph paper. The rough sketches made it easy to fill in measurements I was missing.

I did not realize how many measurements I needed until I began to complete the rough sketches. I found myself wanting to estimate on areas that were either hard to get to, or areas that just did not seem to be important enough to get exactly right. In the end I decided against this and ended up taking measurements for everything,from window trim, to the width and height of every block on the building. Luckily for me, the block pattern in the first two rows repeats itself up the entire height of the building, which makes it easy to calculate the heights of the upper decorative moldings. After I completed the rough sketches, I made scale drawings of each face of the building.

The next step will be to transfer these drawings onto the 1/4" MDF that I will use to make the exterior walls and cut out the window and door locations.