No Joy in Signalville

This month's news post is going to be another of the all bad variety.  It seems that the worst effect of the Midwestern oil boom is that railroads are flush with re-signaling money.  We start out at the western end of the CBQ Chicago raceway in Eola, IL where the boom is falling on the massive searchlight interlocking complex there.  Although I would hardly call this a surprising development with the concrete relay huts and above ground cable runs,  Luckily this interlocking is able to be photographed from both METRA and Amtrak trains,

 Further west I had previously had hope for the BNSF Chillicothe sub due to what were clearly 2000's re-signaled searchlit interlocking plants.  However it appears that STRONGHURST was not among these (again note the above ground cable runs) and it was recently saw the Darths turned on.

Going about as far west as is possible, the new signals on the Donner Pass route between SWITCH 9 and SHED 10 were cut in.  Good thing I took an encore trip on the Zephyr back in June.  See my trip report for information on other parts of the line.

The small target searchlights are coming down at CP-287 near Syracuse on the Chicago Line.  I assume this is part of a larger re-signaling project.  The larger question will be what happens to the "new" Conrail signaled CP-290.

The new signals on the CSX Philly sub have been cut in through the Ankin siding.

 Moving over to Ohio the C&O signals on the Northern Sub in the Richmondale, OH area have also finally been removed.

 Saving the worst for last it appears that for some reason the Kansas City Terminal is replacing some of its searchlights in the Union Station area.  I was hoping that KCT's independence would insulate it from the resignaling mania sweeping the nation.  The real danger is replacement of SANTA FE JCT and its pneumatic point machines.

In an update to a previous news item I noticed a photo of the famous 4-track "modern" PRR PL signal bridge at CP-ROCKVILLE.  The bridge is now down to 3 PLs as one of the yard tracks was lengthened by installing a new Vader mast a few hundred feet to the west.