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 | WAY |
Ship-to-Shore station WAY served the ore
carriers on Lake Michigan headed to Gary Indiana steel mills and
towboats, many on the Illinois river but on the other rivers
also. I remember hearing WAY many times during my teenage
years in Indiana. However the 1971-2 AT&T map
erroneously shows only frequencies for the lakes. The 1971-2
map shows it as a Bell System station, but it's missing on the 1976
map. However, the station did not cease operation until April
of 1978.
WAY
was really located about 30 miles north of Chicago's Loop off Sheridan
Road in Lake Bluff, IL - about 600 yards from Lake Michigan.
It also had auxiliary facilities on Chicago's Navy Pier (2MHz and VHF)
and remote HF receivers in Glencoe and Zion, IL.
The
June 30, 1937 FCC Annual Report indicates that during the fiscal year
Thorne Donnelley had applied for a radiotelephone station at Lake
Bluff, IL serving the Great lakes and particularly the southern end of
Lake Michigan. One year later the FCC Report indicates that
the Lake Bluff application had been approved during the past 12
months. The 6/39 Report states that WAY had applied for
increased facilities during the past 12 months. These
increased facilities may have been for frequency allocations above 3
MHz which were approved during the FCC fiscal year that ended June 30,
1941. The FCC Annual Report for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1943 indicated that public hearings had been held on the
application of WAY for authorization to communicate with ships on the
Mississippi River and connecting waterways.
 WAY Building Unless otherwise noted all photos on this page are courtesy of Robert Weppler |
 Lloyd Frye took this photo of the WAY building from the top of the truck-tower that the WAY crew used for remote TV pickups. The metal addition with the corrugated top housed a large diesel AC generator capable of powering the building. Starting and switching were manual and it was test run regularly |
Several former operators at WAY
have told similar stories about WAY's unusual beginnings which were
roughly as follows: Thorne Donnelley was the son of the
founder of the telephone directory publishing company R. H. Donnelley
and a Chicago radio pioneer. In the early 1920s he was one of
the founders of Chicago's first station WDAP
which later morphed into Chicago powerhouse WGN, and he was one of the
founders of the National Broadcasting Association. In the
1930's he sponsored hamfests on his estate at Lake Bluff, and used his
amateur radio station (W9PZ) there for marine communications with boats
on Lake Michigan. This and a perhaps a little prodding from
the FCC may have been the genesis of the idea for a commercial marine
radiotelephone station. In any case, as indicated above, the
license was sought and approved. When WW2 broke out oversight
control of all marine ship and shore stations was given to the Navy
which restricted all unnecessary marine radio communications.
Additionally, in April 1942 Donnelley entered the military
service. It's unclear whether Donnelley or the
federal government instigated the idea, but in the end the Bell System
(Illinois Bell) took over the station. Its purpose
then being communicating with the big boats that were so essential in
moving the ingredients required for the northern Indiana steel mills to
maximize production for the war effort. Depending on the
source both 1941 and 1942 are mentioned as the time of the Illinois
Bell takeover.
 WAY Operating Room - ca. 1952 The supervisor is Dick Klavohn The operator on the left is Bob Heile The operator on the right is John Tobias The
photo on the right is courtesy of Lloyd Frye and shows the WAY operating position in 1962 - Left to right are Lloyd Frye, Ralph Modloff and Tom Coll |
 |
 |  Lloyd Frye provided this photo showing him working with the "new" 1KW Aero-Comm transmitters - ca 1960 The
photo on the left is ca. 1952 and shows the power supply and other gear that was behind the operators in the photo immediately above it. |
Here's a short 1962 Illinois Bell
article about the station that indicates that WAY was
authorized 13 shortwave frequencies at that time. One was
2182 and there were 6 for the rivers and 6 for the lakes.
WAY was a 24/7/365 operation. There were 3 shifts, days, evenings and nights. Some shifts worked 10 days straight followed by 4 days off. Holidays were just another work day.
WAY operators would receive and pass calls to LD ops, (usually females) in Chicago - there were no female ops at WAY. For a time, land callers placing calls to the Chicago Marine Operator would reach an operator who would then pass the call to WAY for completion. Early on, calls originated by ships were passed to the local LD operator, and later (once the capability was in place) they were dialed directly by the WAY operators . The ships had accounts with WAY or would use "collect" or credit card. For a time, the WAY operators filled out billing tickets that were sent daily to a billing group.
WAY held regular company schedules with the river boats where all of a barge company's boats called in with their position, fuel reserve, tow makeup, etc. One operator stated that several of the barge companies had their own shortwave receiver and could often hear the boats better directly than they could through the WAY phone patch. Of course, they transmitted back to the boats via phone patch thru WAY. It appears that WAY was not a rigidly formal operation as some of the captains and pilots knew the operators by their first names.
Were there regular schedules with Great Lakes boats as well?
Like several of the other Inland Marine stations WAY occasionally made contacts with aircraft. One op remembers contacting N1M - Arthur Godfrey's DC-3. Another op recalls occasional contacts with N7UP, not the soft drink company, but Union Pacific Railroad.
The short Illinois Bell article linked to above indicates that Way began VHF-FM operations about 1962. Illinois Bell's VHF-FM equipment was located on one of the high buildings in downtown Chicago, and Chicago operators patched the calls to the Lake Bluff site for a while, but that arrangement soon changed with the Chicago operators completing the calls putting WAY out of the VHF loop. This and the Sun-Times article below do not agree. Can anyone help me get the story right here? What was at Highland Park, TX, RX, control point?
While there were some tests in the late 1950s using Collins Model ???? SSB gear with the Great Lakes excursion boats SS North American and SS South American WAY never made the transition to SSB operation - instead ceasing all HF operation at the Lake Bluff site in 1978. Here's a Chicago Sun-Times article about the closing of the station but also containing some historical tidbits.
The WAY operator crew didn't just sit around waiting for marine calls. The operators' official titles were Communications Maintenance Men, and they certainly lived up to the title. In addition to serving as operators at the station they did multiple jobs having responsibility for some of Illinois Bell's mobile telephone and microwave work, frequency measurements for broadcast stations, maintenance of the power company's mobile gear and even some remote TV pickup work for TV stations. They were a busy bunch of guys!
 Primary frequency standard on the right and secondary standard on the left. Joe Bolsinger (left) and Larry Gilbrith making a frequency measurement |
 Warren Glasel (left) and Ralph Nelson in the repair shop. |
Here's a better view
of just the monitor receivers and frequency standards.
Can anyone contribute more
information about this station? Seeking business cards, QSL cards,
frequency/channel lists, advertising, etc. for this station.
Some of the WAY crew and their recollections.
