DOCK Tower Closes (1937-2017)

Well it looks like the Duke Nukem Forever of re-signaling projects has finally run its course.  While The venerable DOCK tower may have been celebrating its 80's birthday this year, the project to replace it was well into it's second decade.  DOCK was built along with the equally magnificent Newark Penn Station and sat just to the east where it could oversee the operation of three movable bridges over the Passiac River. An impressive structure it sat three levels about the track with the ground floor housing control equipment for the bridges' power supply.

 The last of the main line NEC towers, DOCK had previously run as a trio with UNION to the west and HUDSON to the east all the way into the early 21st century.  Even after HUDSON closed in 2003, the team of DOCK and UNION had remote control of every interlocking between them with trains being "paper" dispatched from the Section B dispatcher in NYC.  Ironically the height of DOCK's power came in the mid 2000's when it was given control over LANE, HAYNES, HUNTER and CLIFF interlockings to the west and REA interlocking to the east.  In fact the tower was staffed by no fewer than 5 people during the peak periods, a Train Director, three levermen and a telegrapher. Together they worked a series of modern unit level panels on either side of a large 155 level US&S Model 14 interlocking machine.

Because of DOCK's importance and traffic density, the re-signaling programme had to proceed very carefully.  Slowly colorized signals replaced the PRR amber ones, electric points replaced the pneumatic ones.  DOCK's extended territory was transferred to the Section B dispatcher and finally on Armistice Day 2017, the whole operation was shut down. 

While I doubt the tower will be demolished, I am not sure of what exactly it's function will be.  C&S hangout or will the bridge tenders still show up from time to time to raise and lower the three lift bridges?