Had occaision in the 1980's to travel periodically on I65 through Indiana and to pass over the EL/Erie right-of-way. Track was intact for awhile, then removed. Finally observed "vultures" pulling up the ballast. All that was left, eventually, was a dirt path, albeit "wide gauged!".
Steam restoration expert/hero Dick Jensen kept his collection of steam locomotives in a roundhouse on the south side of Chicago, just off 51st street and the Dan Ryan expressway. At that time (late 1960's-early '70's) the house was owned by the Chicago & Western Indiana RR, but I understood that it was an Erie RR roundhouse earlier. As I strolled through the unoccupied roundhouse on stone cold silent Sunday mornings in those days, enjoying GTW 4-6-2 #5629 and 2-8-2 #4070, plus CB&Q 4-8-4 #5632, my imagination drifted to a roundhouse in earlier days alive with noise, gaggles of workers and big Erie USRA heavy 4-6-2's, with prominent Elesco feedwater heaters out front. Things change, as the tiresome observation goes, but certainly not always for the better.
