The Park Forest Historical Society will present "Along the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Rail Line" by author Cynthia Ogorek on Sunday, 23 February 2014. Ogorek will be selling and signing her books at the event.
Ogorek is a public historian and author based in Calumet City, Illinois. Specializing in Calumet Region history, she has produced a series of three books on the region’s transportation history. Her latest, Along the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Rail Line, has won awards from the Illinois State Historical Society, the Illinois Women’s Press Association, and the National Federation of Press Women.
The author says the secret subtitle for the book is “The non-rail fan's guide to the South Shore--a history of the railroad for ‘the rest of us.’” Once a treasure in the Sam Insull utilities empire, today it is the only functioning electric interurban in the United States.
Ogorek will give an overview of the history of the company as well as describe how an electric interurban line works and the historic sites you can see from the windows of the South Shore train as it travels the ninety miles between downtown Chicago and the South Bend airport. From a world-class city through the rolling agricultural acres, from steel mills through a national lakeshore, some 200 vintage photographs illustrate the unique view of the Calumet region that South Shore passengers have experienced since it started in 1901 as a three-mile-long trolley line in East Chicago, Indiana.
Date: 23 February at 2:30 PM
Location: Park Forest Village Hall, 350 Victory Drive in Park Forest.
For more information about the event, contact Jane Nicoll of the Park Forest Historical Society at 708-481-4252. Learn more about the Historical Society at www.parkforesthistory.org.
Photos: Beverly Shores South Shore Railroad Station, Broadway Avenue & North side of U.S. Highway 12, Beverly Shores, Porter County, Indiana. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS, Reproduction Numbers: HABS IND,64-BEVSH,12--2 and HABS IND,64-BEVSH,12--4.