HALLETT Tower Closes (DB DRAWBRIDGE too)

Just got the bad news that what I believe is the last "tower" style tower in Ohio closed some time in late April.  HALLETT, located north of Toledo, was owned and operated by the Ann Arbor regional railroad and also served as its dispatch center.  It was the last in a plethora of Toledo area towers, including STANLEY, WALBRIDGE and IRONVILLE, that made it onto the 21st century. 

Although it appeared as a strange garden shed, it actually housed a US&S Style S electro-mechanical machine, although from what I heard all of the "armstrong" levers had been removed with the entire plant controlled by the suspended miniature levers.  Apparently CSX paid to re-interlock its portion of the plant while the Ann Arbor diamond crossing was turned into an automatic interlocking.

Word is that the Ann Arbor dispatchers are still on site, but will likely be moved to some centralized office belonging to it's corporate parent in another state.  This also leaves DELRAY tower in Detroit as the last remaining Style S electro-mechanical machine in North America.



In other Ohio news I just learned, but was not surprised, that NS DRAWBRIDGE tower in Cleveland, Ohio had also been downgraded from a tower to a bridge cabin with a bridge tender. Located at the Junction of the Cleveland and Chicago Lines at the mouth of the Cayuga River, the tower had been re-signaled by Conrail and modified by NS, but still retained some PRR PL dwarf signals on the far side.  Like HICK tower in Indiana, the plant was re-signaled again along with NS's general Chicago Line re-signaling project and NS took the opportunity to place switches and signals under dispatcher control.

All of this came to light as NS recently took away what little authority the on site bridge-tender had to open and close the span upon their own authority resulting in massive delays to local marine traffic as the clearance is only a few feet.  While one may struggle to think of any towers in Ohio that ARE still open, I am pretty sure a number of bridges still include on site control of switches and signals, including RU tower in Lorain.