Ride the Rails: 13th Street Incline

The 13th Street Incline is a little-seen part of the CTA rail system by most customers. For decades, it connected trains between the Red Line subway (State Street Subway) to the Green Line South Elevated tracks prior to 1993, back when what is now the Red Line was called the Howard Line and the Howard Line connected south to the Green Line South Elevated, previously known as the Englewood-Jackson Park Line.
In 1993, the CTA changed the name of its lines to the colors that they are today, and changed the Red Line routing to have the Red Line subway connect south via another connector track to the Red Line South to 95th Street, which is still how the Red Line travels today.
Today, the 13th Street Incline is mainly used only by CTA employees and contractors to transfer CTA maintenance and other equipment, though it is occasionally used for train service reroutes, such as the small number of rerouted Red Line trains to Ashland/63rd on the Green Line in 2017 related to the construction of the new 95th Street Terminal.