The Skokie Shops were built in the mid-1920s, as part of a partnership between the
Chicago Rapid Transit Company and the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad. Both the CRT and the CNS&M were partially controlled by businessman
Samuel Insull, who led the consolidation of the entire Chicago "L" system in the early 1920s, and who also invested in utilities and property development throughout the region. The CRT began operating local passenger service over the CNS&M's newly constructed Skokie Valley Route in 1925. Service operated between
Dempster Street station and
Howard Street station, with 7 intermediate stops. The CRT opened the Skokie Shops shortly afterwards to service its fleet of cars, supplementing its facilities elsewhere in the "L" system. The CNS&M operated
interurban service from Chicago to Milwaukee, and used the Skokie Valley Route as a high-speed bypass of its congested main line through downtown
Evanston. During the early years of interurban service on the Skokie Valley Route, the Skokie Shops also serviced CNS&M cars. The
Chicago Transit Authority took over the operation of the "L" system from the CRT in 1947, and discontinued the local service on the Skokie Valley Route in 1948. The CTA retained the rights to use the tracks to access the shops. In the early 1950s, the CTA consolidated more of its maintenance services at the Skokie Shops, reassigning skilled craftspeople employed at its other railyards to Skokie. As a result, the CTA was forced to purchase of track from the CNS&M to retain access to the Skokie Shops. Passenger service over the Skokie Valley Route resumed in April 1964 as a demonstration project, supported by federal funding. The service was marketed as the Skokie Swift, and operated as a
shuttle from Dempster Street to Howard Street. The staff of the Skokie Shops developed an automatic
pantograph control system to replace the manually operated
trolley poles on previous rolling stock, which enabled
one-person operation on the Skokie Swift. The service exceeded expectations and was made a permanent part of the "L" system. The Skokie Shops were cut off from the rest of the "L" network from May to October 2015. An
embankment collapsed at a
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District facility east of the shops, damaging the Yellow Line tracks. Yellow Line service was suspended, but the shops remained operational, continuing their acceptance inspections of new
5000-series cars and overhaul work on
3200-series cars. During the track closure, "L" cars were trucked from Skokie to the
Lower 63rd Yard, the only other CTA facility equipped to transfer railcars to trucks. == References ==