Caught on Camera: Original BART CTC Dispatch Center

Control centers with non-video displays are a true work of art and are vanishing just as quickly as the interlocking tower.  Wiring up a custom, semi-immutable display with all sorts of tiny lamps and pieces that could become obsolete within a year just cam't compete with a giant display wall that costs a couple thousand dollars and can be driven from an off the shelf TV.  However there was a time between the advent of centralized control center and the cheap video display wall that all sorts of these one off boards were constructed.

One such modern, but not too modern control center was that of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, which opened for business in 1972.  I've actually seen photos of it's control center in a number of 80's vintage rail transit books that would always feature BART and WMATA as examples of the future of rapid transit.  Here is the best example of those photos.

Click me, I'm high res.

I'm not sure if Westinghouse means it is a US&S product as US&S was a part of WABCO at the time, but WABCO was not the same as the "Big W" Westinghouse so they might have gotten the contract as more of an industrial control thing as opposed to a railroad signaling thing.  Anyway, note the spartan NASA style consoles with integrated phones and displays (and probably ash trays).  All of that and the wall sized model board is pretty distinctive so there was little chance I'd miss it when it appeared in the 1971 George Lucas Science Fiction film, TXH 1138.

Yeah, there's no mistaking that is the BART system!  Filmed in 1970 or 1971 the BART control center would have still been in the shrink wrap, with much of the system still under construction or still on the drawing boards.  Still, BART knew enough about what they were going to do to have the whole model board cut and dry 4 years ahead of time.

If you are wondering why there are two copies of the BART layout on either side of the room, it's not because the dispatcher have poor eyesight.  The display on the right is for rail operations, trains, signals, etc.  The other one on the left is the power dispatcher's diagram that shows the sections of third rail, substations and feeder lines. If you loo closely you can just about see the power distribution lines apart from the track sections on the power board.

Well chosen camera angle to disguise anything actually written on the special purpose interface. 

 

They've even got those snazzy phones!

 Probably hitting a key on the telephone concentrator.

Great view of the train movement board, but I'm interested in how in 1970 the entire operation could be staffed by just three people (although maybe each desk would support multiple persons at peak times).  Also, if you go back to the first picture note the size of the room vs the small number of dispatch desks.  I suspect one desk was for the power director, another for the train director and the one in the middle was some sort of chief or a service coordinator who could make announcements and such. 

THX 1138 used a lot of the to-be-opened BART system as locations for it's dystopian underground society.  In fact, the climax was filmed in a BART tunnel where the tracks had yet to be laid.  The rebar formed sort of a ladder effect so to simulate climbing up a shaft the camera was rotate 90o and the actors made to "climb" horizontally.  Amazing what good old George Lucas could think up when he didn't have CGI as a crutch 😏