The Dead-End Station

     In the early years of the CTA, there were numerous expansions and additions of stations. One of these new stations came about in 1907, when the South Side Elevated (the first elevated line in the city and the ancestor to today's Green Line) added on a service branch to Normal Park. This area didn't see too much traffic, except for the students of the Chicago Normal School, which was a local college. One of the most interesting things about this station was its design though. The station was the last stop on the line, but whereas with other stations you have the end of the tracks, then some sort of yard facilities for various trains(or in the case of the old Westchester station vast expanses of nothingness), the 69th street station simply dead ended into the street. Just one catch though: this station was elevated, which meant that you had an elevated track ending at the street, like this:

     Suffice it to say that this would not have been a good station to have an asleep-at-the-wheel Blue Line driver pull into.

     Over the years, the station's low ridership became evident, and major changes came in 1949 with the great Service Revision. First off, the station became unstaffed, with conductors collecting all fares onboard trains(because we were still almost 50 years away from farecards).  Also, the station turned into a shuttle operation, with only a 1-car train coming into the station to take passengers back and forth to the mainline.  Finally, the station's time came in January of 1954 when it(as well as the entire Normal Park Line) was closed due to extremely low ridership.