Chicago Austin: CPD dispatched that several freight trains were being burglarized between Cicero and Lockwood. Lots of merchandise taken off trains and loaded into vehicles NBCSky5 has witnessed this. @metra and CPD in the area. Also @Metra delays. Live #NBCSky5 @nbcchicago pic.twitter.com/8zJQhQonqc
— Mike Lorber (@NBCSky5) October 11, 2024
CHICAGO — At least six people were arrested Friday after a large group of thieves began looting a stopped Union Pacific intermodal train on Chicago’s West Side, an incident that also led an interruption of Metra commuter service for more than two hours during the Friday evening rush period.
WLS-TV reports police reported to the incident near the 400 block of North Lamon Avenue about 4 p.m. TV news helicopters captured images of large groups of people opening containers on the stopped train. A Union Pacific representative told the station “the train was stopped, waiting interchange with a partner railroad, when thieves began opening containers.”
WFLD-TV reports merchandise stolen included air fryers, other appliances, and flat-screen TVs; Union Pacific said some of the items had been recovered as of Friday night.
Metra service on the UP West line was halted before 5 p.m. near the Kedzie station because of “ongoing police activity,” the commuter operator announced on X.com, advising passengers to seek alternate transportation because of anticipated extensive delays. Service west of the incident scene resumed about 6:50 p.m., according to a later post on X, but service remained disrupted or delayed through the 11:40 p.m. departure from Chicago.
Paul H when the UP got hit so badly in California a year or so ago they started putting on special locks. When the loads got into the yards in Chicago security would remove them prior to their departure from the lot.. Locks were then shipped back to the west coast to be used again. I’ve heard that they have let the security people who applied the locks go and the ones who removed the special locks in Chicago go also. Probably just using bolt locks now which bolt cutters can handle most of them.
Need a better way to secure the containers. Many containers have nothing more than standard Masterlock that can be easily removed with a bolt cutter. Don’t tell me I’m wrong. where I worked (I’m Now Retired), almost every container had one of these locks on it.
Sorry Mr. Giblin but I worked as a railroad Special Agent for years in the Inner Zone and there is no smell to what I’ve posted.
Watch the aerial news footage that is available.
The reason it even became news worthy is probably because of the Metra’s disruption of service and the blocked roadways as everyone with a vehicle showed up to get their own TV. One scene shows two guys wanting the same box, the one guy won and the other guy just had to wait for the next box to be unloaded. If it was planned then the entire neighborhood was involved and the engineer too so he would stop his train at the correct location and the other railroad that was holding the UP train out of their yard.
Mr. Giblin, Mr Foster was right, it ended up only two arrests made and they were back on the street Saturday if I’m not mistaken was the next day. Looks like the new Illinois system is working well. Illinois must have a high dollar value limit to make this just a misdemeanor charge.
So the Rockwell Gardens are gone.. The C&NW did put up fencing on the east side of the Rockwell north of the Eisenhower. It helped a lot with the theft issues by eliminating the slide paths that the juvenile thieves used from the r-o-w into the back doors of the apartment buildings. It made them go under the tracks and hit from the west side or up a little further north by the L tracks where their wasn’t any fencing. They just had to carry the loot a little further.
A manifest theft problem that was an issue were the bridges on the Rockwell. If a plug door on a reefer got opened it would hit the edge of the girder bridges and the door would pop clear off exposing the load. We even had a slow, slow moving intermodal eastbound go into emergency west of Kedzie when a teen ran behind the train and got the E-O-T off. We caught a teen easily on the Rockwell one day when the slack ran in and he got his foot crushed. He had been on his way to his apartment after leaving court for a previous charge. Never had to go to court on him as he was shot by a rival gang member a week later. Reference the mentioned Bud theft, it was easy to spot them as Budweiser used MRS boxcars.
John, back in the day when I worked the area an intermodal train would not be allowed onto the mainline to interfere with a a scoot. Westbound intermodals would be held on the Rockwell until the scoot was past. Eastbounds would be held back by Proviso or Oak Park.
I wouldn’t hold my breath on fencing as to hard to do because of track being above street level. Area is retaining wall, then ballast, then main lines. Thefts have always occurred there when a train is parked. C&NW and UP since 95 haven’t fenced it. The goal is to not stop a train there which the UP dispatcher hasn’t been instructed about. It must have been a long train if it couldn’t get into the CSX or NS facility and hung back that far onto the mainline. I wonder if other traffic was ahead south of the Rockwell Sub. blocking it.
Charles, unless things have changed manifest sheets don’t show customer info or product info on intermodal other than FAK (freight all kinds). Hazardous loads are much more detailed with info for first responders, etc. It could have changed as I retired in 2007 but I worked that area for years.
Like you, I too was a railroader back in the day. In my case, the late sixties, early seventies. At that time, the road crew only brought a train bound for another railroad to the terminal at the end of their “road district”, where a yard crew would take over for delivery to the final destination yard. Some of our super Van piggyback trains were made up in the Ashland Avenue yard of the Chicago Junction Railroad. Some were also delivered to the CJ. When we’d take a van train from Englewood to the CJ, we expected to keep rolling at all times. If we were stopped at say, Root Street to await a signal to cross over, we could look back and watch our train being swarmed by looters. This portion of the joint line with Rock Island and Nickel Plate was directly beside high rise, subsidized apartment buildings (since demolished).
When we’d return with the power and caboose, the main line would be littered with boxes, merchandise and debris. Nothings changed in 50 years. Cultural problem perhaps?
Daryl: This is correct, I have seen countless NS consists sitting and holding on the wye where the Rockwell Sub direct trains to the UP West line. Ostensibly to wait for Metra traffic to clear. Since I always saw them sitting there during rush, it was obvious.
As for going the other way, remember that UP added a third set of rails at the Des Plaines River, which allows longer container trains to pass through without interference to Metra. The switch to reach the Rockwell is just east of Kedzie (and of note, I got the street the perps used wrong, it is Kinzie Street, I always got Kedzie and Kinzie mixed up).
I looked at Google Maps just now and sure enough the sat caught an extended container consist sitting on the center track west of Kilbourn. Kilbourn is the last and only grade level crossing of the UP West (Geneva Sub) in the Chicago City limits. Why that is I am not sure, but it probably has something to do with the BRC bridge nearby.
Was it a backlog on the Rockwell that caused the consist to sit? I don’t know, but the fact I am seeing it on sat photos must mean that UP is having troubles pushing east bound containers through.
Inside job? Here’s where I need to ask a question to the professionals on these pages. What level of detail is written down on the manifest? Do workers on the railroad (or drayage workers) have easy info on the contents?
Or the destinaton — one can assume that a box headed for Best Buy is high value consumer stuff — but there also are a number of middlemen on some shipments that it might not be apparent the box is headed for Best Buy.
For anyone who saw the news helicopter based videos, there were at 10, maybe 12 containers all open. Containers are just too random to know what inside, these people hit each one several at a time looking for the goods, in this case, big screen TV’s from China.
Also this train was not sitting in a yard, but it was being yarded in transit on the center track awaiting a clear signal to cross over to the Rockwell Sub to get down to Clearing. It was probably waiting out a Metra train to pass.
There is no fence here on the ROW and its on the one spot along Kedzie Ave. where it is fairly easy to get up the embankment. Watch for a new set of fences to go up along this section in the next week.
I have seen Metra delays going west due to NS consists coming up the same Rockwell Sub as it switches into the center track on its way to Proviso. Just remember the UP West line is left handed, so a freight going east is waiting for the westbound Metra traffic to clear.
Amazing how little people know about the train operations and this area of Chicago.
Tracks in this area are elevated with no street crossings. Concern about getting into the yards? to commit the thefts. It wasn’t in a yard but on the mainline. Inside job is equally uninformed. A stopped train is visible to anyone driving on the street or living next to the tracks. The longer the train is stopped it is a magnet for the neighborhood. The looters don’t know what is in the containers, they just break into the containers and hope to get lucky and if not they move onto the next one.
Word of a stopped train being looted spreads faster than wildfire in the neighborhoods. I see no mention of any UP Police involvement. I wonder if they had anyone on duty at that time of day or if it just went to the on call Special Agent. Surprising on the arrests being made but a source said it may have involved some firearms.
Sorry Mr. Achenbach I don’t buy it. I’ve lived in the Chicago area most of my adult life and know most Chicago neighborhoods. I’ve worked for two Chicago-based railroads and several area trucking companies. You’re entertaining post just don’t pass the smell test.
This one was too smooth an operation just to be a collection of “convenient coincidences”. There are railroad tracks all over the West side of Chicago. So why just this one unless it had been staked out advance. Ironically there is plenty of good railroad operating information available on several railfan websites. And I can assure you the brothas probably know all about them.
@ Mr Giblin: The last time I heard about an “inside job” on a Chicago railroad was when the Budweiser train was coming up the IHB. Seems a overnight security guard had heard a yardmaster talking about it and the word got around the neighborhood that a beer raid was in the works.
They knew the load was going to be tied up for the night. So a bunch of locals arranged to bring their vans and trucks to the other side of the yard, where there were a lot of trees and scrub to hide in when they backed up to get the loot.
After the boxcar (this was the 1970’s) lock was cut and the slid open, the game was on and cases and cases of Bud were making their way to all of the vehicles parked next to it. The boxcar was about half empty when the railroad police arrived and everyone scrambled like roaches. Some idiots took off running through the yard and were jumping through slow trains.
Chicago Police ended up going door to door in the adjoining neighborhood looking for the contraband beer.
No one was arrested, some of the beer was recovered by the police, and the security guard was fired.
Where are Mr. Harriman’s security people now that you need them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeATCwk5PTQ
Bring back the prison strap for these looters.
Six arrested (Out of probably 50 or so that were raiding the area). They are all probably released already. UP and the police will he forced to apologize because the neighborhood will say the youths were tempted by the railroad and arrested all because the train was stopped there. Service suspended? I would have kept both tracks open for max speed, and let the thieves gamble with their lives. And Omaha, WHEN are you going to quit stopping trains east of Oak Park?
So, how did they get private vehicles into a railroad yard? And was the crew still there? If so, maybe some back and forth movement of the train might have been in order.
The train was stopped immediately adjacent to a public road. There is some video of the event.
What some call “looting”, others call “economic justice”…
They may have been arrested but IL has the most generous non-bail required laws so they could well be back on the streets.
Mr. Foster may I respectfully disagree. Under the new Illinois system it is up to the presiding judge and the state’ attorney’s office to interpret that law and they make the actual decisions on pre-trial release. Same for the actual trial process. I am happy to say that here in my home county of DuPage we have a very tough law-and-order states attorney who consistently keeps arrested individuals incarcerated without pretrial release. He then obtains the maximum sentence regardless of crime with strict restrictions on parole.
In January 2025 Cook County gets a new state’s attorney who promises to be just as tough as we are in DuPage. Slowly but surely the citizens of Illinois are making the new law work.
I would be more concerned about how the gangs knew exactly where the train was stopped at and exactly what kind of stuff was in which containers. Smells like inside job to me.
Not to get political, but James is right. The SA here in Dupage has been very successful in getting pre-trial detentions, and so far, I have yet to hear of any cases of release and re-commitment of crime, even in Cook. Gotta look beyond the noise.
James,
Cook is not DuPage. The latest update says that 2 of those arrested had been released on Saturday.
I hope you are right about the new Cook States Attorney being tougher on releases and crime in general.