Signs! Signs! Everywhere a Sign! - Eastern Passenger Roads

In Part 1 of my look at railroad station signs I covered the East Of Mississippi Class 1 freight railroads, NS, CSX, CP, etc.  Here in Part 2 I am going to be covering the passenger roads in the northeast, Amtrak, SEPTA, NJT, LIRR, Metro North, etc.  Surprisingly, as time has gone on the passenger roads have become significantly less labeled than their freight counterparts.  This could be due to cost cutting, a compact territory that makes getting lost less likely or simply a desire to hide operating practices from the general public. 

Amtrak operates its own trackage as part of the Northeast Corridor, Springfield Line, Harrisburg Line and, for a time, the Atlantic City Line.  Inheriting the infrastructure from bankrupt roads that would be later folded into Conrail, Amtrak would often just leave the old, typically Penn Central, sign in place.

The first thing Amtrak decided to properly brand were its manned interlocking towers where they

adopted a white on blue motif that would last through the present day. 

For remote interlockings constructed during the early NEC Improvement Project era, the Government dollars didn't really cover signs so Amtrak had to settle for stenciling on the relay hut.

The next standard that appeared around 1990 was a totally-not-Conrail white letters on blue background sign which also appeared on the Atlantic City and Springfield lines that were re-signaled at that time.

In the late 1990's Amtrak decided to add a touch of flare with a colorful sign that really showed off the old pointless arrow logo.  These appeared in just a few locations.

Meanwhile, further north Amtrak experimented with a white on black sign.  These are mostly seen on the Boston to New Haven segment and in northern New Jersey.

Which leads us to the present standard which I would call "low observable".  Not sure why Amtrak doesn't want to advertise it's interlocking names, but at least they kept the white on blue.

Moving on to NJT, they pretty much decided to go with the Conrail style, albeit with a slightly different font and size. 

Of course the Atlantic City line still has it's fair share of ex-Amtrak signs.

SEPTA has a smattering of former Conrail signs, but at this point has pretty much gone with leaving it's interlockings unmarked and since most of the system has been recently re-signaled, this means most of them are now this way.

If there was ever a SEPTA trademark sign, it would be this plain black on white style.  SEPTA would also include the "CP" prefix in most instances.

Although sometimes it was painted out.

The Long Island Rail Road has always had a thing for secrecy in order to guard the jobs of its overpaid workforce.  Therefore only manned interlocking towers would be given signs, typically with black block lettering on a white background.

More recently absolute signals have been plated with the interlocking name and signal number at most locations.

During its original wave of re-signaling, Metro-North used a square New York Central style blue on white sign with "CP" and a number. 

Later this would be economized and made much less legible.

It was also employed West of Hudson on the NJT operated Port Jervis line.

Finally the MBTA has gone with placing small font black on white signs on the front of the relay huts in a manner similar to the Boston and Maine.

In some instances the red on white text is used.

Well that covers the major passenger operators in the east.  In the next part we'll head west to look at UP, BNSF and CN.