Caught on Camera: Vanishing Towers

While searching through the North American Interlockings website, I happened upon some Pittsburgh area towers with somewhat recent photos that I wanted to check up on.  The towers in question were CP-3 and CP-3Y on the P&LE and BECK on the former PRR Mon Valley branch.  Since I didn't know the exact location of the towers, I could not rely on Google overhead as a positive indication of demolition because it could simply be my inability to locate them.

Typically I would find as many old photos as I could and use landmarks to try and determine the position of the tower.  However because some of the photos were recent, I pulled up Google Street view and used the back in time feature to back as far as I could to see if any towers appeared.  Let's see what I found.

BECK Tower April 2008

BECK Tower July 2007

Well in the case of BECK, a suspicious driveway leading to a patch of trackside gravel revealed the tower I was looking for.  Clearly having met it's end between July 07 and April 08.  Moving on to CP-3 in McKeeys Rocks I discovered...

Tower CP-3 April 2012

Tower CP-3 April 2007

Yup!  There it is.  Demolished between 2007 and 2012 for additional bus parking.  Anyway, just thought I'd share this little tool.  It won't work everywhere due to the service not being Google Railroad View, but a lot of towers were in sight of busy roads.  

Reading Line Runaway!

So a few days ago there was a runaway incident on the NS Reading Line.  If you had seen some of my previous photo sets on my other blog, this line had recently been converted from Rule 251  ABS to Rule 261 CTC so I have some photo coverage of the area in question.  The incident involved a tank car with 75 tones of paraffin, rolling out of an industrial siding and onto the main line, following the descending grade eastward into the Lehigh Valley.  At CP-BURN the runaway car was routed, either intentionally or by happenstance, onto the former LVRR routing towards Bethlehem, where it eventually slowed down enough in the Bethlehem yard area for an employee to mount it and apply the handbrake.

Diverging route at CP-BURN

The most amazing thing is that there is actually a video of the runaway car taken from the overpass at BETHLEHEM where an astute railfan was able to position himself based on radio traffic.  What caught my attention was that the dispatcher actually had lined a route through the interlocking plant and displayed a Clear signal indication to the wayward tank car!  (I guess because it can shunt the track circuit it didn't count as a track car ;-) ) It's also worth noting that the single car had no issues shunting the track circuit and dropping the signal.



The important take away is that despite the billions in investment, this situation was not PTC preventable as the runaway car has no operable brakes no any sort of digital electronic anything.  Good old track circuits and CTC gave the dispatcher the tools to detect the runaway and route it onto a safer route with no high traffic grade crossings, and the Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893 provided the grab irons for an employee to grab a hold of to then work the hand brake.

Signs! Signs! Everywhere a Sign! - Eastern Class 1 Freight

Station signs are a uniform way of figuring out where you are on the railroad.  Sure mileposts work to, but important landmarks like stations and interlockings and block stations aren't always placed at whole mileposts.  Station signs aren't only a navigational aid, but in many cases a reminder device as many movement authorities are given between stations and if thew sign isn't obvious one is more likely to blow right by it. Of course every railroad is going to have it's own idea about what makes a good sign, some even have more than one.  Here in Part 1 we'll look at the eastern freight railroads, in Part 2 the western freight railroads and then in Parts 3 and 4 the eastern and western passenger railroads respectively.

Kicking things off,, Conrail use what I think is the most visually distinctive station sign in modern times using it's trademark blue and the Futura Bold font.  The signals were typically placed on either side of the main relay hut, although interlockings with two huts could support one each and of course special circumstances could lead to other mountings.  The standard signal was a reflective white lettering on a blue background.

However an alternate version existed that also contained the milepost.  This existed for a time in the late 80's and early 90's, but I'm not sure if ever fully replaced the regular signals. 

There was also this deluxe style sign with a white border and a different font that may have been a one off due to a rush order or something. .

Conrail used a slightly different sign for it's DCS block limits which was based on the PRR style of a vertical name surmounted red and yellow lamps..

Conrail's signage is still relevant today because after the split-up, Norfolk Southern decided to keep the style on all of the former Conrail territory (with a few exceptions early on).

Elsewhere, Norfolk Southern adopted the style of the Southern Railway with a green background and white lettering.  The signs are smaller than the Conrail variety and use a stick mount with one plate in each direction.  Some of these Southern style signs have appeared in Conrail territory, although the practice seems to have ended.

Southern era signs sometimes have a white border around the outside of the sign.

Moving on to CSX, CSX is a party pooper and doesn't really use station signs.  At interlockings it just stencils the interlocking name on the sides of the relay cabins.

 The policy applies even to new interlockings in Conrail territory. 

CSX used to use a Direct Traffic Control system with their own signage.  But DTC was largely replaced on CSX by DCS using mileposts.

The Guilford Rail System, currently known as Pan Am Railways, is known for painting some of it's rolling stock in a retro Pan Am inspired livery.  When it comes to station signs however, they can barely be bothered. 

A change in milepost prefixes has further degraded the artistic styling of the already bare bones signs. 

I have previously discussed interlocking names on the former Delaware and Hudson, and likewise, their interlocking signs reflect the period of Guilford ownership, although the association with Canadian Pacific did make things a little better.

The newly re-signaled interlockings have a more standard Canadian font, which I assume is bi-lingual in some manner.

Well that's all the Eastern freight railroads I have photos for.  Sorry Florida East Coast and Grand Trunk Western :-P

NS Dispatching Desks Moved to Atlanta

Following the lead of CSX consolidating all of it's dispatchers in Jacksonville, NS is moving all of it's dispatchers to Atlanta.  This will result in the closure of the Conrail era Harrisburg office on Interstate Drive as well as the Fort Wayne office.  NS will also be re-adjusting a number of territories to coincide with the move because one might as well have one period of screwed up service instead of two. 

Now I previously discussed this in the context of CSX which first consolidated it's dispatching offices and then unconsolidated them only to re-consolidate them again. The benefits of consolidation are reducing manpower requirements with a single extra board, reducing overhead and placing operations next to management.  Downsides are reduced territory familiarity and vulnerability to natural disasters, including mild snow storms which frequently paralyze Atlanta. An ancillary benefit is forcing higher paid veteran workers who are tied to a specific area to quit or retire.

In the case of NS they are actually moving all of their corporate offices too Atlanta with the corporate HQ making the move from Norfolk, VA.  You might recall a post I made about the demolition of the Terminal South interlocking tower in Atlanta.  Well this was to clear the space for the construction of the new NS HQ, which will at least be located vaguely near some railroad tracks.  Will NS decide to reverse the decision at some point?  Probably, new management always needs to do something different and after a couple snow storms or hurricanes snarl freight traffic, some institutional investor might complain loudly enough.  At least for now everyone is jumping on the consolidation bandwagon.