Glyn Ellyn's War Memorials

 When I was walking back to my car by the Glenbard West High School after checking out Glyn Ellyn's downtown, a plaque on the ground caught my attention. I looked around some more and found some war memorials. In the following picture, note the stone on the right with a plaque, the dark maple tree in the middle, and the four lighter maples on the left.

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The plaque on the stone is:

Each of the trees have a plaque in the ground in front of them.

The plaque for the dark (red?) maple is:

And the plaques in front of the four lighter maples are below. I tried to clear the bark and grass off of each, but I see I missed a few blades.















































And in a view from the Glenbard West HS towards downtown, you can see the Vietnam War Memorial Trees just beyond the turn of the sidewalk.

Glen Ellyn, IL: Historic C&NW Depot and Railfanning

Today's Depot: (Satellite)

Andy Zukowski posted
North Western Railroad Depot in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. C1910  Photo by C.R.Childs
Richard Fiedler shared

(Street View is not working. I do have a couple of shots of today's depot below.)

A lampost banner

Since I was at Willowbrook Wildlife Center, I decided to keep going north and see what I could spot on the old Chicago & North Western Railroad (CNW) tracks even though it was 4:30pm and approaching rush hour. When my kids were still home, I would visit Glen Ellyn about every Fall because they played volleyball. For the first time in my life, I was able to find a parking spot in front of the Glenbard West High School. It helps to visit before school has started.

Their nickname is The Hilltoppers. Which struck me as a strange nickname for a HS until I saw where it was built---on top of a big hill.

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The above view was from the middle of the block. Below is from the corner that is closer to downtown.

From where I was standing, I turned from the above shot towards the NNE to the below shot towards the Southwest. The parked cars in the distance are at the east side of downtown and just north of the CNW tracks. The brick building on the left beyond the trees would be on the other side of the tracks.

The reason I took this photo is that it struck me as strange that the hill the highschool is on is the only hill in the area. The building to the right is their gym. I walked towards town. Just this side of those cars is a crossing that is at the end of the platforms for the train station. And you can see there is a parking lot on the south side of the tracks as well.

I've noticed that the time stamps on the pictures are about an hour earlier than they should be. I went upstairs and took a test picture. But it was only 4 minutes off. I don't understand what has happened. But the important thing is the relative time, so I'm going to use the time stamp on the photos. I arrived in town at 15:47. The first train was a outbound commuter at 15:54.

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Note that the UP has retained the CNW convention of running left-handed. I walked past the clump of trees on the left to get to the downtown. This shot is towards ENE.

I found a better "town name" shot later, but I include this shot because the "From Chicago" arrow is wrong! I'm taking this picture on the south platform looking South. So it is pointing West. Chicago is east of Glyn Ellyn. And this is an error in a station where the trains run left-handed so a customer is going to be confused and paying attention to the signs. I'm afraid the error is going to worsen the confusion, not fix it.

The tracks curve after they leave the station, so you can get some different shots of trains here.

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I need to research when the depot was built. Metra's modern depots look like they kicked a container off a train and punched some windows into it. This is certainly much more stylish than that. But it doesn't look original either.











I went back to the crossing to get to the north side of the tracks to take an overview picture with the clock tower I had been seeing. It is just to the right of the trees on the left.

And then I walked over to get pictures of the building that has that clock.
 

It is the Civic Center, Police Depot and whatever words are probably behind the left streetlight.

It occurred to me that I can use the clock tower picture to calibrate the camera's time stamp error. But then I discovered that something changed the Modified property of the file. I found a file that wasn't modified and verified that the times are indeed off by an hour and 4 minutes. I need to check for Daylight savings time issues.

And as I left town the eighth train, an outbound commuter express, went through town in a little over an hour, including a couple of freights---covered grain and containers+TOFC unit trains.

Willowbrook Wildlife Center

I needed to go to the library of the College of DuPage. Since I pass the Willowbrook Wildlife Center on the way to the library, and since this blog has been a little light on "nature", I planned on stopping there after I went to the library. The center is part of the DuPage Forest Preserve.

I haven't been there since my kids were little. It has changed. Most of the displays in the back contained birds.

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But they had some reptiles (turtle, three snakes).

But what I find interesting is the hospital.

I was trying to get some of the 6 incubators along the far wall in the background. The two you can see were labeled "grey squirrel". And I see there are some squirrels in the cages in the middle of the room. Below we see that up front there were two baby racoons and a mouse. Note the stuffed animals in the cages in the middle of the room. Are they surrogate moms?

At the front of the center, they had several other displays including a mock up of a house to document how to deal with animal pests.

I unfortunately chopped the red text of the sign about "eyes". But the example provides more information than the words.

I picked up a brochure on how to deal with skunks. We have dealt with two racoons and an opossum in our yard. But when we had a skunk living under our den, we called the pros. The skunk had been spotted walking beside our house with some little skunks following her. Now I'm studying the chipmunk/ground-squirrel page because that is what is under our den.

The outside area has a lot more cages than I remember. I don't know if it is because it is bigger than when I last visited years ago, or if I was so busy watching the kids that I never noticed the animals.

The sign on the Red Foxes cage reads:

One of these foxes was found in 2003 on a Lombard homeowner's back porch. She was suffering a badly fractured frount right leg. Due to the severity of her injury, Willlobrook surgeons amputated her leg.

The other fox is a young male that was found in 2008 as an orphan. During an early examination, it was found the fox was deaf and cannot be released. He also has a nervous habit of circling when he gets excited.

I took several pictures because the guy was active. Finally, the gal stood up and turned around and then layed back down. I could see it was her right-front leg that had to be removed. Unfortunately, she turned faster than I could get a good picture of her.

Most of their cages are not very big.

But their flight cage is big.

I did not spot a sign as to why this bald eagle is a permanent resident. I'm glad I was able to catch him looking at me. I did not realize that an eagle can turn its head as much as an owl can.

When I Googled the center, I came across a Tribune article about another eagle.

I include the  Barred Owl cage even though the photo was not very good as another example cage because the one from Illinois came through their wildlife clinic while my daughter was working there as a volunteer vet student. I saw only one of the three owls when I visited the cage. I'll let you play "wheres waldo".

The left sign reads:

Look into my eyes...

Owl eyes are very different from our own. Their eyes are relatively large for improved sight at night. Plus, their eyes are not capable of "rolling" because a bony structure hold thems in place. They compensate by having a long flexible neck that can turn 270-degrees compared to a human's 180-degrees. In addition, owls have three eyelids for added protection. 

The  sign next to it reads:

Barred Owl

Two of the barred owls have vision impairment. Both wings were injured on the other bird, possibly by a collision with a car. All three birds were transferred from other rehab centers; downstate Illinois, Rockford, and Kane County.

 

Newburgh, IN

 

Newburgh, IN, is another "technology" town. That is, it prospered in the 1800s because of a technology, and then its economy floundered because that technology waned. So there are a lot of older buildings that did not get extensively remodeled or replaced. And now the town has a lot of cute shops (e.g. soaps, stained glass, books, antiques) and eating places. In this case, the technology was river traffic.

Looking downstream from the Old Dam we see the east end of the downtown.

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My wife found the building near the right. It is the Evansville Suburban and Newburgh (ES&N) Traction Station built in 1912 and now preserved as a remodeled private residence. A traction station would be a depot for an interurban. My guess is that the tracks used to run down the street through town.
 

And on the left of the overview of the east end of town you can see a couple of decks of the Edgewater Grille where we ate while I waited for Tow 3 to come down the river.

Looking downstream from the Grille, we see the river walk and a materials handling facility.

Looking upstream from that river walk, we see, the Edgewater Grille, the powerhouse of the Old Dam, Tow 3, the Locks and Dam, and the Alcoa Warrick Operations.

A plaque in front of the big tree reads:

The library has been remodeled into part of the Town Hall complex. And a plaque explains the phone booth that is on the right side of the old library building.

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There are "recycled" bank and hotel buildings, but of special note was an icehouse. I had to cross the street to take the picture, so naturally, the traffic on the road picked up while I tried to cross the road, take the picture, and come back. (Ice harvesting overview)

And finally, the last picture I took during a few hours that provided material for 9 postings including four tows passing through the locks: 1, 2, 3 and 4.