The Chicago & West Towns Railways
By James J. Buckley
Edited by Richard W. Aaron

CERA Bulletin 138

Eight miles west of Chicago's Loop is a cluster of 17 long-established communities that were served by a street railway and bus system whose roots can be traced back to the late 19th century. The Chicago & West Towns Railways operated five major streetcar lines that provided convenient and inexpensive transportation to the residents of communities of Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park, Maywood, Cicero, Berwyn, Brookfield, and LaGrange.

The West Town's blue and white streetcars provided area residents with transportation to school, work and shopping. The cars were also kept busy transporting visitors to major west suburban attractions such as Brookfield Zoo, forest preserves picnic groves, Hawthorne and Sportsman's Park racetracks, and Hines Memorial Hospital. Whether it was carrying residents from their homes in Oak Park or Forest Park to their jobs at American Can in Maywood or the giant Western Electric Company factory in Cicero, or taking Chicago families on a weekend outing to the zoo, the Chicago & West Towns Railway served as the “family car” in the era before auto ownership and traffic congestion became the norm. 250 pages and 311 photos