The five-alarm fire at an old CTA trackside maintenance barn over the weekend may have been the inferno, but for an estimated 100,000 North Siders and north suburban commuters that depend on the Red Line, the hellish part could just be beginning.
Transit officials Sunday said they don’t expect to reopen the Red Line between the Wilson Avenue and Addison Street rapid transit stations until Tuesday morning at the earliest, said CTA President David Mosena.
Randolph Simmons, the CTA’s general manager of facilities maintenance, said it could take as long as a week to resume service.
The Red Line tracks cannot be declared safe until demolition crews have torn down the wilted steel and scorched brick hull of the building at 1036 W. Montrose Ave., four blocks south of the Wilson Avenue stop, and have inspected a track that on Sunday lay buried beneath the fire-scarred debris.
Though the fire was hot enough to melt the steel girders holding up the 500-foot-long by 100-foot-wide maintenance building and turn its brick mortar to dust, Mosena said the adjacent elevated trestle is structurally sound, and that three of the four “L” tracks that pass to the west of the building already have been deemed safe by inspectors.
Before the Red Line resumes service, trains will do test runs over all four tracks. Even if the fourth track closest to the fire is found unsound, full operation on three tracks could resume Tuesday, Mosena said.
A spokesman from Brandenburg Industrial Service Co., the demolition company hired to remove what remains of the building, said crews began their work early Sunday.
Red Line service will be interrupted, and there will be no Evanston Express service for Monday’s commute, CTA officials said.
Southbound Red Line trains will leave the Howard Street terminal as usual, but riders will have to exit their trains at Wilson Avenue, transfer to shuttle buses and re-board trains at Addison Street, on the far side of the fire site.
The buses also will stop at the Sheridan Road station, which will be out of service, midway between Wilson and Addison.
Northbound riders will ride the same shuttle buses in reverse.
Riders of the Evanston/Purple Line local service and Skokie Swift/Yellow Line won’t be affected, except for those who transfer to Red Line trains at Howard.
CTA officials said Loop-bound commuters should give themselves as much extra time as possible, because commutes could take 30 minutes to an hour longer than usual.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation Sunday. Chicago police bomb and arson Detective Ross Horne said the extent of the damage would make it difficult to discover the cause of the blaze.
“As of now, it looks like an accidental fire . . . nothing of a criminal nature,” Horne said Sunday evening.
Though the building ceased operations as a maintenance facility this spring and was scheduled to be demolished, Mosena said it was still used as a storage area for such items as lubricants, paint, epoxies and oils.
Fifty-five buses have been assigned to the special shuttle service, but regular bus operations won’t be disrupted, said Dave Hillock, CTA’s vice president of bus operations.
Recommended bus alternatives include the No. 147 Outer Drive Express from Howard, the No. 136 Sheridan/LaSalle Express from the Loyola/Devon Avenue station, and the No. 135 Wilson/LaSalle Express, No. 145 Wilson/Michigan Express and No. 156 Marine/Michigan Express from Wilson.
Also, CTA customer service representatives will be at the Howard, Wilson and Addison Avenue elevated stations to answer riders’ questions.
CTA monthly passes will be honored on Metra’s Union Pacific/North Line commuter trains, which stop in Evanston at Central, Davis and Main Streets, and in Chicago at Lunt Avenue in Rogers Park and Lawrence Avenue in Ravenswood.
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Despite the plethora of alternatives, for thousands of commuters the last week of October could promise to be a ghastly one, if the shuttle bus service’s first day was any indication.
Twenty-two shuttle buses were in operation Sunday to ferry riders between the Howard Street and Belmont Avenue stations, making all station stops in between. Train service resumed as far south as Wilson and as far north as Addison early Sunday evening.
Those waiting for the shuttles at the Addison station complained that drivers got lost, CTA personnel seemed confused and were rude, and that the delays were intolerable.
“It’s ridiculous. I’ve been waiting here for 45 minutes for a bus that’s supposed to come every 10 minutes,” said 23-year-old Rachel Dillon of Wrigleyville.
“I was supposed to be at work at noon, but I’m not going to make it, obviously,” said Dillon, an advertising sales representative. “A lot of us here in the Wrigleyville area work downtown, and we depend on (the train). It’s a big hassle.”
CTA has some experience, however limited, in handling large numbers of displaced “L” riders with buses. During the 15-month shutdown to improve the Green Line, which began in 1994, the authority’s buses successfully transported thousands of commuters.
Chicago Fire Department spokesman David McKoy said the Saturday night blaze was probably the largest the city has seen since the deadly Paxton Hotel fire in March 1993, when a Near North Side single-room occupant hotel burned, killing 19.
This weekend’s five-alarm fire, fought by more than 160 firefighters, was called in at about 9 p.m. Saturday, McKoy said. It was extinguished at about 11:30 p.m. No injuries were reported.
The building, known as the Wilson Shops, was built in 1900 by the Northwestern Elevated Railroad Co., one of several private rail companies that were absorbed in 1947 by the newly-formed Chicago Transit Authority.
From 1900 until 1908, the Wilson Shops was the end of the North Side “L,” which ran south to the Loop, said transportation historian and CTA employee Bruce Moffat.
Used exclusively to maintain and overhaul electric self-propelled rail cars, the Wilson Shops was the main maintenance facility on the North Side until the operation was moved to Skokie in the 1950s, Moffat said.
The building, which was raised to elevated track level by steel stilts to permit rail car storage beneath it, was surrounded by train tracks.
“In its day, it was quite a place,” said Moffat, author of “The `L,’ ” a history of elevated trains from the 1880s to the 1930s.
To the east of the building, on the Broadway side, were several maintenance spurs. These tracks were cut away Sunday with acetylene torches in preparation for the building’s demolition.