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Replica 'L' Stop Signs Up For Sale

CHICAGO (CBS) -- If you have a fondness for your neighborhood 'L' stop – or an 'L' stop on the other side of the city as the case may be – you can now commemorate it on your very own living room wall.

As WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports, Brooklyn-based Underground Signs is marketing replica signs of CTA stops. They are 9 inches tall and 72 inches long, and are priced at $299.

LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports

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It's not just train buffs who are interested in this sort of thing. To some people an 'L' or subway stop has a special meeting.

Some people might be eager to honor the Cubs and Wrigley Field with an Addison Red Line stop sign, or the White Sox and U.S. Cellular with a Sox-35th sign. The Fullerton Red-Brown-Purple Line and UIC-Halsted Blue Line stop signs could prove popular with students from DePaul and the University of Illinois at Chicago, respectively.

The aging punks of the world might be in the market for a Belmont Red-Brown-Purple Line sign. And wouldn't a Damen Blue Line stop look perfect next to that concert poster from the Double Door?

Underground Signs apparently is not selling the sign for every station in the system. A look at the Web site for the company indicates that Rogers Parkers can get a Howard or Loyola sign, but there are no signs listed for sale for the Jarvis or Morse stops.

The company also does not list signs for sale for the Granville, Thorndale, Bryn Mawr, Berwyn, Argyle, Lawrence and Sheridan stops on the Red Line alone; nor any of south of Roosevelt and north of 95th-Dan Ryan -- except the Sox-35th sign -- on the southern stretch of the line that is coincidentally closing for five months for renovations starting next spring.

The company also stocks signs for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, including not only the New York subway system, but also the Long Island and Metro-North railroads – the rough equivalent of Metra in New York.

Signs for the Boston subway system are also available.

Chicagoist reports the CTA will receive a percentage from all signs sold.

The CTA itself also sells gifts, from wooden trains to posters and shower curtains depicting the 'L' system map.

And CTA memorabilia is in such high demand that a trend of stealing system map signs right out of trains developed at DePaul University recently. It reached the point where the CTA was missing close to 200 maps and advertisements that had been mounted inside trains, more than 150 of which were found inside DePaul dorm rooms. The students admitted to stealing the signs from reasons ranging from "spite" to "the sport of it."

But there was no word of station signs among the items found at DePaul.

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