Post-Thanksgiving News

Tis the season for signaling (or re-signaling) news.  I first have something to report from a recent Chicago trip in that the large search-lit UNION AVE plant immediately adjacent to Union Station has been completely re-signaled, including the two "new" semaphore bridges on the curve into Union Station.  I was hopeful that the re-signaling effort I had seen last December would have dragged on like the Aurora/Eola effort, but no, they wrapped it up in under 12 months.

Gone.

Also, new signals were going up at METRA's Blue Island Vermont Street complex.  Site of METRA's BLUE ISLAND tower, it is not clear if these are isolated replacements, or a plan to fully re-signal the interlocking and close the tower.

 No matter where the 80's Santa Fe searchlights may be, BNSF appears ready to hunt them down like these ones in Texas.

 Moving down south, somehow NS keeps finding more Southern Rwy signals to replace such as these near Thomasville.

 More signs of waste down in Southern territory with this freshly painted Southern mast signal already flagged for replacement at Villa Rica, GA.

 NS had long been replacing signals on the Chicago Line, but here at CP-379 if you look closely, a more modern bracket mast in the opposite direction appears to have been spared.  Keep an eye out on that one.

 This classic NY Central 4-track gantry in Elyria, OH will not be so lucky.

 I finally found an example of NS not throwing away old signal structures on a line in Tennessee.  If you look carefully you can see the modern style gantry is one of the first generation varieties.  It is also not a cantilever.

With the decline in coal traffic one even wonders why NS is investing in its former N&W region.  The mixed PL/CL cantilever is well represented in railfan photography.

We leave off with a little comic relief in the form of a pair of new Darth Vaders near Montreal that are mounted on what have to be some of the tallest signal masts I have ever seen.  I'm assuming there's a clearance issue, but I'm not sure what it would be.

 

Down in CSX land, somehow the C&O main line has still not been completely re-signaled, so that's a bit of a plus, but make sure you act soon as new signals are starting to go up on the last remaining sections. 

To finish with a bit of good news, the Heber Valley Railroad acquired a former DRG&W 3-track signal bridge from the UP re-signaling efforts in Utah.  The bridge included three GRS searchlight signals.