The memory card had photos from a June 11 status of the St. Joe construction and today (June 24).
Today I visited several projects. Because of the miscellaneous nature of the contents, I'm indexing the photo folder with a post.
June 11 status of St. Joe They are done with the steel studs on the south side and have started adding drywall on the outside. And more plumbing has been done on the inside.
20190624
They have been working several months now on an expansion of Downers Grove North High School. I was surprised that I didn't see much done. My wife explained that they have been doing a lot of work inside the old gym converting it to the new plan. The brown part on the right of this photo was the old gym.
I took various views as I walked East toward the new gym's entrance...
...and then South;
After I got back to Prince Street, I noticed a worker using a lift to access the top of the stairwell that is being torn down. That street cleaner was just driving up and down the street.
So I walked south on Prince to get a view from the south side.
On the way back to the car in the parking lot, I took an overview shot.
I've read about Downers Grove zoning allowing a single family home on a big lot being turned into five luxury townhouses. This is a view of the back (east) side.
It appears that each unit has parking for two cars. Downers Grove allowed some big residential projects to build with just 1.2 cars per unit.
It looks like the house next to Immanuel Residences that got torn down had a double lot. I knew these lots were deep because the back of the lots are next to the railroad tracks.
I noticed that a lot of single family homes on the south side of Gilbert have been torn down and turned into townhouses.
The signs on the fence advertising the new townhouses.
The townhouses south of Gilbert have two-car garages in the back and some additional parking behind the buildings.
The gates were down at Forest while the commuter was stopped at the station. When I tried to read the number of the engine, I discovered it was out of focus. The camera choose to focus on the tree instead of the train. My replacement lens has a manual focus feature. The manual explains two ways of doing manual focus. The way I thought I understood has not worked. I'm going to have to reread the manual and remember to override the focus for framed shots like this.
They have added another gate just for the sidewalk that is further away from the tracks.
BNSF should do left-hand running for the afternoon and evening trains like New Lenox does. This photo was taken a while after the train left, and the pile of commuters that got off in DG are still crossing the tracks. This crowd proceeds to jaywalk across Burlington Avenue. I almost hit a lady walking out between buses. She was looking at her phone the whole time. I managed to slam on the brakes before hitting her. She had no idea how close she came to being hit. She didn't even look up when I honked my horn!
I saw an inbound train was coming as I crossed. I ran to my car to drop what I got from the library than back to an open spot in the parking lot that is on the north side of the tracks. Here it is about to cross Forest. I should have taken a video to record how fast it was going even though it was going to stop just a couple of blocks from here.
It came to a stop well past the station. Commuters who were waiting at the station had to run along the platform to catch up to it.
I had seen other cottonwood trees in bloom so I went out of my way to take a photo of the "big one" north of Tivoli. Evidently the older trees bloom later.
Checking the status of the St. Joe construction. The outside drywall is done and they are painting it blue. My wife said they had painted just the framing around the windows before.
The "trailer" under the platform of the lift caught my eye. Given the cables on top, I assume it is a generator for arc welding. It has "National Wrecking Co" written on its side. Why would a wrecking company need an arc welder? And did this contractor buy it used and not bother to repaint it?
On my way to vote, I noticed the crossing signal was flashing for a long time with no train on the road. I wondered if it was another false closing. No, it is more proof that the signals installed in 2014 are still dumb enough to go down as though the approaching train is going 70mph, the track speed for passenger trains. Then when I saw how slow an intermodal train was going on The Racetrack, I shot a short video to record the speed. The track speed for freight is 45mph. And intermodals are supposed to be BNSF's fastest freights. Since this video is short, I decided to experiment with including a video directly in the blog rather than use YouTube.
I stepped into StJoe's parking lot to get a clear shot of the construction of the addition through the gate.
From the sidewalk, you can see where they have put safety tape along the hole dug for the basement of the addition.
2:26:16 I took this photo to get a timestamp of when the intermodal train finally cleared the road. It took over three minutes for it to pass through town. As you can see, it backed up traffic north of Franklin.
They put a barrier up indicating that you are not supposed to go up that grass to get a better shot. Fortunately, I can read the model number of the Cat through the fence: 314E L CR. Note the big dirt pile behind the gravel pile.
2:27:50 Another "get a timestamp" shot because the gates are going down. It was a commuter, so no more shots of that train.
2:45 I voted and I'm walking East on Warren. A crossing gate bell started ringing, so I stood at the parking lot for Community Bank of Downers Grove to wait to see what is coming. It is an eastbound commuter, and it is still going pretty fast considering that it needs to come to a stop pretty soon. Although, looking at a map, it does have four more blocks to go.
You have to take two photos of a commuter to record direction because the engine is always on the west end. The car on the east end of the train has special controls for the engineer to drive eastbound trains. It is called a cab car. The building behind the the train is called Burlington Junction, and it is finally done. I checked Google Maps, the bank building that was torn down to make room for these apartments still appears on the satellite image.
There was a gap in the traffic, so I quickly took another view of the school construction.
The gap continued, so I more carefully framed the construction activity.
Again, the safety tape outlines where the hole has been dug.
