LINCOLN Lefty: Story of the PRR's Left Handed Dwarfs

 Anyone looking at the NORAC signal aspect charts may have noticed that the familiar PRR dwarf position lights have a curve to them (or yaw) that can go both ways. For all four dwarf indications, Slow Clear, Slow Approach, Restricting and Stop, one will see two entries on the diagram chart, one with a left hand curve and one with a right hand curve. To the uninitiated this can be dismissed as having to do with clearances or which side of the track a dwarf signal is placed, but it actually represents a fairly early change by the PRR to make a more practical signal vs a more conceptually accurate signal. 

The first PRR position light signals were designed as a replacement for semaphores. Version 1 or "tombstone" position lights (due to the shape of the backing) consisted of 4-lamp lines with an off-center pivot point that directly mirrored the shape and function of a semaphore blade. The position light dwarf signal was no different, but used two lamps to mimic the right to left sweep of a dwarf semaphore. Originally only three positions were provided, stop, low speed prepared to stop and low speed, again matching the function of the dwarf semaphore. 

Between 1918 and 1925 the three lamp system with circular mounting became standard for high signals, but the dwarfs, unable to be simplified further, retained the design aesthetic of a semaphore blade sweeping out a curve. The one major change was that someone noticed that the 4-lamp PL dwarf could display the reverse \ for free and a distinction between "proceed expecting stop" and "proceed expecting obstruction" was able to be made. The result was the left-handed dwarf position light.

Made of cast iron by Union Switch and Signal, the left hand dwarf had bulb access hatches on both the straight and curved sides. The rest was a sealed unit with a small vent on the back. 
 

This model of PL dwarf would go on to be installed at all the great PRR signaling achievements of the 1930's such as ZOO and HARRIS, however the march of progress is never satisfied and the desire to simplify the design merged with the desire to reduce confusion. The new dwarf would be reversed such that the curve would proceed in a high hand direction with the Restricting \ position being reduced in size compared to the Slow Approach / Position. The design was also changed to one with a single large rear access door, possibly enabled through advances in large gasket technology. 

The new style position light proceeded to almost entirely replace the old, especially as the staffed interlocking towers and their electro-mechanical interlocking machines were replaced by CTC starting in the 1970's. By the 21st century left handed PL dwarfs were a rare sight with most appearing at those parts of Amtrak and Conrail territory that had escaped re-signaling since the 1930's. However while out at LINCOLN interlocking on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor in Metuchen, NJ, I spotted a left handed survivor  governing movements out of the MoW yard.

Somehow escaping replacement in the early 90's when LINCOLN tower was closed and re-signaled, LINCIOLN's 5W dwarf is now one of the more accessible left-handed PL dwarfs, mounted on the side girder of the Lake St bridge for all to see.

Hopefully it will escape scrutiny and continue to perform its job for years to come. 

Amtrak's New Position Light Configuration

Following from Pennsylvania railroad practices, Amtrak used the following two configurations for all of its "complete" position color light mast signals at interlockings. They either have a lunar white Restricting \, or they don't. In both cases the single central lunar white Stop and Proceed marker has been retained.  

While most other North American railroads have shifted to using Restricted Proceed in place of Stop and Proceed, Amtrak, and the NORAC rulebook for whom Amtrak is the biggest member, have both retained the Stop and Proceed practice.  

So consider my surprise when saw the recently installed colorized position light signals at Amtrak's new LEGGETT interlocking on the Hellgate Line. The restricting \ is present, but, please correct me if I am wrong, I believe this is the first time I have seen Amtrak PL interlocking signals without a Stop and Proceed marker. 
 

Part of  the Penn Station Access Project, these colorized position lights are the first of many that will wipe out the last stretch of amber position lights on the NEC (PHIL is a point, not a stretch) and they appear to indicate a shift at Amtrak towards that all important stop before entering an occupied block.

In case your wondering the typical Amtrak signal progression is to display a Stop and Proceed if there is an obstruction within the interlocking limits and a Restricting (if available) if the interlocking is clear, but the block beyond is not. The stop certainly seems like a worthwhile safety precaution, but the distinction between it and Restricted proceed is minimal, mostly just the salience of entering a stretch of track with an obstruction or broken rail. 
 

As you can see the new signals on the replacement Portal Bridge have retained the Stop and Proceed marker, but that project was designed and specified some years before Penn Station Access. So it remains to be seen if this is the shape of things to come, or a one off trial. 

 

 

Overland Route Elephant Ear Replacement

Despite its status as an evil empire, Union Pacific has a surprising amount of legacy signaling on its premier transcontinental route between North Platte, NE and Ogden, UT. Sliding just under the falling boom of Safetran scallop-shells and off-brand LEDs, in the late 1980's Union Pacific chose US&S hardware for its overland route CTC project. This includes style N single housing color light signals and their extra large "elephant ear" backings. Similar to multiple projects on the Seaboard part of CSX, the Union Pacific elephant ears managed to survive the 2010's PTC push with the overlay being applied without signal or signaling replacement. 

Well it seems that one major shortcoming has these survivors on somewhat borrowed time. They are still connected to a pole line and here we can see that at least near Sidney, NE, some of the 80's signaling is being removed.  If this is a localized project or something larger remains to be seen, especially if UP's capital budget is constrained in future years.

Signals of the Reading and Northern Lehigh Line

Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, today home to the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area, was the West Texas or Saudi Arabia of the 19th century due to its massive reserves of Anthracite coal. A premium product demanding premium prices, anthracite coal was the way that industrializing America kept warm in the water months after the landscape had been stripped bare of trees for firewood. This is how the Wyoming Valley could fund the operations of three major railroads (the Lehigh Valley, Central RR of NJ and Delaware Lackawanna and Western) and similarly explain why those railroads seemed to evaporate without a trace when the world moved on to oil and natural gas.

Perhaps nothing optimized the uniquely American phenomena of direct railroad competition like the LVRR and CNJ, whose main lines were both functionally and in some places literally parallel. In the 1960's the anthracite collapse was well under way and a decade before Conrail, the CNJ had decided to throw in the towel and allow the LVRR to consolidate its operations to Scranton. North of its large yard in Lehighton, PA, the LVRR was able to stitch together a hybrid route, using better aligned portions of the CNJ over the Pocono mountain summit between White Haven and Laurel Run. Later, Conrail would choose to use the CNJ main line between Lehighton and Allentown creating a Frankenstein's monster "Lehigh Line" between NYC, Scranton and NY's Southern Tier. As the region's industry continued to shift, Conrail shoveled off the Lehigh Line north of Lehighton to the upstart Reading and Northern in the 1990's.

All this history is necessary to understand why the signaling on the Lehigh Line portion of the Reading and Northern's main line between Reading and Pittston, looks the way it does. Recently made visible by the series of R&N Iron Horse Rambles and its regular weekend Lehigh Gorge excursion service, the current signaling on the upper Lehigh Line reflect its unique history. In the 2024/2025 time frame I was able to gather enough content to put together a signaling guide covering the old Lehigh Line between Mauch Chunk and Pittston.

We begin at R&N's COAL interlocking, which was built new by them to support the R&N's "Main Line" concept between Reading and Pittston, but also its Lehigh Gorge tourist operations. Using a salvaged lattice cantilever mast, COAL connects what was the old CNJ route to the former LVRR route at the south end of the Lehigh Gorge.

Into the 2000's, Conrail (later NS) owned and operated this portion of the Lehigh Line as a double track Rule 251 main line. Traffic was so light that the southbound track was used bi-directionally with northbound trains needing to get a Form D, while the southbound track had its signal system taken out of service and used for R&M excursions and freights. NS moved first to convert the southbound track to Rule 261 (CTC) operation, with the R&N converting the former northbound track to Rule 261 in the late 2010's. Each track has a single ABS signal location in this line segment, NS at LVRR milepost 126 and the R&N's at its own milepost 124.

A quick note on Mileposts. In the Conrail era the Lehigh Line would alternately use legacy mileposts from the CNJ, LVRR and LVRR Mountain Cutoff. The Reading and Northern switched this to its own mileposts that continues the Reading Company chaining from the old Reading Terminal.  Somehow this has managed to match up with the legacy CNJ mileposts within a few tenths, but LVRR mileposts are off by several miles. I will be using the R&N mileposts for most of this article.
 

CP-M&H JCT marked the transition between double track ABS and single track CTC through the Lehigh Gorge and, starting in the 1990's, the start of the Reading and Northern lease. CP-M&H JCT was re-signaled by Conrail around the time of the lease and has the typical Conrail hallmarks of a CorTen steel relay hut and color tri-light signals. What sets CP-M&H JCT apart is the use of "budget" L&W brand modular signals in the tri-lights. It's entirely possible that the lease arrangement had Conrail responsible for some portion of the signaling system (the interlockings still appear in CR's 1997 signal charts) resulting in signaling that looked Conrail, but with different hardware.

When the R&N lease came into force the arrangement still created a gap in the R&N's conceptual Main Line between Mauch Chunk and CP-M&H JCT where they had to run under Conrail rules and dispatching. When NS finally transferred the northbound track to the R&N in the mid-2000's, they were so thrilled to be in total control that they built a new interlocking back-to-back with CP-M&H JCT named INDEPENDENCE.

The mast is for CP-M&H JCT and the dwarf for INDEPENDENCE.

CP-M&H JCT wasn't an isolated re-signaling as it appears that all of the signaling in the Lehigh Gorge proper was replaced around the time of the lease. This was possibly due to the desire to replace any pole line based system due to the inaccessible nature of the right of way in the Lehigh  Gorge. The new Conrail style signaling again reflected the economic decline of the region with a shift to extra long 3-4 mile signal blocks versus the standard 1-2 mile length. ABS signal locations in the gorge are at R&N milepost 130, 133/134 and 138. The 133/134 location split the Jeddo tunnel for visibility reasons.

134S from behind

It appears that the pole line was retained to supply 440v power to the signal locations, however it is unclear if this supply is still in service.

The end of the 90's re-signaling is at the controlled holdout signal CP-WHITE-HAVEN, which is just a few miles shy of the alignment change from LVRR to CNJ. I do not currently know the status of the CNJ main north of Lehighton prior to 1965, but the re-signaling boundary is surely related to the relative utility of the CNJ signaling versus the LVRR signaling. One possibility could be a post-war investment in CTC by the CNJ to cut costs that exceeded the standard of whatever the LVRR was up to at the same time. 

A Superb Web Resource for Railroad Defect Detectors

 It's not often that one gets a new web resource that isn't annoyingly flawed (yeah you Open Railway Map) or compromised by enshitification (like Gas Buddy). I might be late to the party on this, but Defectdetector.net has somehow managed to document every railroad defect detector in North America and then provide the information via a clean Google Maps type interface. Not only do we have both large and small railroads included, each pinned location has the full set of details about the detector including make, model and, if available, a recording of the output. 

Of course nothing is perfect so if I had to provide feedback I would recommend ways to map defunct detectors and historic recordings. I would also enable filtering based on detector details like type (HBD, DED, etc) and also collect data on the information contained in the radio readouts like axle count or temperature. 

One specific usability issue is the SP/DRGW practice of equipping every automatic signal location with a physical impact stick style DED that is attached to the signal system, as opposed to a radio readout. This results in many Union Pacific routes having every ABS signal location pinned as a DED. While this can be helpful in some sense, it also clutters/slows the interactive map interface.  

While this site represents an amazing resource, I worry it will not last as Google maps integration isn't free. Airraidsirens.net, which I assure you is a thing, makes use of a Google Maps layer that fully lives in the Google ecosystem.

View From the Head End

Recently a Youtube channel appeared called View From The Head End, that was posting complete head end cab videos from Amtrak trains. These were not the more typical "reversed" videos taken from a rear facing window, but legit head end videos that documented both signals and signaling. More significantly the videos were up to date, likely all recorded within the last couple of years. My first thought was that someone had recently retired because since the early 2000's Amtrak (and I assume most railroads) have been somewhat anal about employees moonlighting as content creators. Well, I guess they hadn't retired because if you haven't noticed the link is broken and the entire channel is gone.

While the practice of workers recording head end videos to feed Youtube channels seems to be quite common in Europe (where I should add its practically impossible to fire railway workers), there are surprisingly few full-line inside-the-cab videos from North America. Up through the early 2000's there was a cottage industry head end videos being sold at "Train Shows" on either VHS or DVD. Some of these were professionally produced by outfits like Pantex, while others were made by AV savvy employees with access to a Hi-8 camera and a capture card. Unfortunately the rise of The Internet brought this wildcat era of video to an end as the speed of information made it easier for previously underground works to become known by regulators, the media and lawyers.

In the early years of Youtube, spotty internet connections and the more ephemeral nature of online data encouraged folks to save off important video content like head end videos. This practiced has decreased as the internet became more reliable overall, however when you find something that seems too good to last, you might want to leap into action and save off a local copy. In a sliver of good news I was able to watch some of the videos before they vanished and resolve some outstanding signal questions I had.

Meanwhile if you'd like something similar to watch I can provide two pairs of videos from the late 2000's covering an Acela trip from Boston to NYP (head end) and the Former Conrail Chicago Line between Buffalo and Albany (rear facing). Intended for Train Show (tm) sale both had been scrubbed of ambient cab sounds and the Chicago Line also being video reversed (which I was able to undo). Although mostly silent, the Chicago Line video in particular captures the NYC/Conrail signaling immediately before its complete replacement ~2010.

Caltrain EMU Cab Video Signal Survey

After the loss of the Caltrain gallery car railfan window I wasn't holding out much hope for having anything worthwhile to do on the Caltrain system as European spec rolling stock typically come with bulkhead style cab doors. However videos have been appearing showing that front facing views are present. This have the added benefit of providing a southbound signaling survey as previously such photos and videos were only possible facing northbound. 

I have already covered changes between San Jose and Tamien and can now confirm that the remaining Southern Pacific style signals in the terminal area have been replaced. The good news is that the few SP target type signals on the north end near the tunnels are still in place although unfortunately the triple unilens stacks at CP-COMMON were replaced by a standard LED modular type in a three virtual head configuration. Another note is how bad the sight lines for some of the wayside mast signals have become. This makes clear the advantage for position lights and cab signals in electrified territory. Although the freight spec PTC system Caltrain uses is kinda like a cab signal, moving to a Rule 562 coded track circuit arrangement might save them a lot of trouble. 

You can watch the video for yourself, but despite the hype the weekend and daytime local service is still highly underwhelming with little in the way of interesting signaling or routing. Although faster than diesel, the speeds are still slow compared to a limited stop run and unfortunately these have been largely curtailed with the fastest peak period trains still 3 or 4 minutes slower than the famed 4 or 5 stop Baby Bullets of the 2004-2024 time period.