Quincey Station

"The L" ~ Quincey Station

"The L" (as it is affectionately know by locals) is seemingly another great Chicagoen icon. It is noisy, a bit rickety in some
parts (degrading iron supports, perishing wooden stairs and platforms - made with soft wood!) BUT! it is a fantastic and
completely fun way to access most parts of the city. We loved the fact that you could see most of the city from the carriages
as you rocketed around from station to station - just "do the Loop" is what the locals would tell us and we'd see where to go.
Quincey Station, shown here, was delightful and had obviously undergone some recent reconstruction. The system has such
character its obvious defects (rails run less than 2 meters from city office windows and residential buildings for starters)
can easily be over looked. Basically it still leaves the Sydney monorail a fairly quiet approximation, cold. It felt safe and was
extremely reliable but is not the only form of train transportation in the city. The Chicago "Red Line" is the city subway
line, we unfortunately did not enjoy witnessing some really seriously dangerous looking thugs bully other passengers,
we took it once only. Long, long walkways for making connections were very dodgy and just felt threatening, no escape
and very lonely; this was around midday too. It did put us off but we can't be sure we were just unlucky our first time.
One suspected that if you had the choice the Loop or the bus would have to be it. Buses were great too, also as
reliable as the Loop and a very clean, modern service. The drivers without exception in our case had impecable manners, to
their own passengers at least, we did witness the odd bit of "bus-driver rage" though particularly against cyclists (perhaps
that part of their driver training was taken in Melbourne Australia?).