Madison St. Cable Car near Pulaski by cta web
Via Flickr:
Did you know Chicago once had cable cars? The first cable car service in Chicago began on January 28, 1882. Before cable cars, streetcars were generally pulled by horses. Cable cars were pulled by a moving cable under the street--to go, a "gripman" would operate a mechanical grip that would grab onto the cable and the car be pulled along by it. Because you couldn't have a continuous, moving cable crossing Chicago's movable bridges, tunnels were built to allow for cables to enter and exit today's Loop area from the north and west. The tunnels were constructed under LaSalle, Washington and just north of Van Buren, which later hosted electric streetcars who could then avoid delays from river traffic in those locations. Cable car services, provided by three different companies on certain lines, continued until 1906 when both the last horse-drawn streetcars and cable cars were replaced with self-propelled electric streetcars (trolley cars).
PHOTO: A Madison St cable car "grip car" and heated trailer car, near Pulaski. Between 1888 and 1893 cable cars debuted on the Milwaukee Avenue, Madison Street, Blue Island Avenue, and Halsted Street lines of the West Chicago Street Railroad Company and the Chicago Passenger Railway Company.