Where Were Those Trains Going?

I remember vividly right after going to bed hearing the sound of trains going through Lombard. Our house was about 4 blocks from the tracks where there were frequent trains. There was always a train going by when I was too far away to see what sort of train it was. They did not often blow their horns through Lombard and the other western suburbs. Lombard was a bedroom community and people were aware of the need to be cautious by these high speed tracks. But especially late at night, you could hear the trains anyway. It was the sound of the diesel locomotives and the sound of the train’s wheels hitting the joints in the still-jointed tracks. I could tell if it was just another commuter train heading out to West Chicago or Geneva or towards Chicago. The sound of the F7’s and E8’s were distinctive and recognizable because of the sound of their acceleration away from the Lombard station. Freight trains were different because they made a steady sound with little or no acceleration. They might have had their terminus as close as Proviso Yard about 10 miles east or they might have gone all the way into Chicago. They also could have gone to any number of far away points west but most often to Omaha where the train would be turned over to the Union Pacific to go even farther west – even as far as California.