It's always been interesting how few tower videos there are compared with like aircraft stuff where Youtube can not only provide videos of every approach, but also how to start up and steal most types of commercial airliner as well xD I guess part of it was that much of the towers vanished before the smartphone revolution, but it's still interesting given how many fans are also railroaders and how it was clear since the 1980's that all the 1930's tech was going to vanish sooner rather than later.
Sometimes it turns out that these sorts of videos may just be hiding in plain sight. One such nondescript channel goes by the name of M. P. Hicks and contains all sorts of general VHS-quality railfan content from around the globe. However Mr. Hicks also appears to have been a railroad dispatcher and was able to fenagle all sorts of cab rides and tower visits. Here we see a 1990 video showing a Conrail run from Pavonia to Abrahms Yard via Arsenal. Of course in 1990 this route had not yet been separated from Amtrak so SHORE, NORTH PHILADELPHIA, ZOO and ARSENAL towers were all manned and were controlling the movement. Moreover, even the pure Conrail parts had vintage signaling and some closed towers were still standing, like NORRIS.
In this video we have a METRA cab ride on the MILW-West line that ends with a visit to TOWER A-5.
In this video with no description and a completely non-rail related title, are embedded 7 minutes of footage showing the operation of an 80's vintage computerized dispatching system complete with a lamp based model board display!
Mr M. P. Hicks has scores of videos uploaded, but there isn't always a good way to find it without skimming through them all. Of course some are explicitly labeled as cab rides like this one on the Chicago to Milwaukee MILW route that starts with a slow tour of the vintage CTC machine in the Chicago CP dispatch office.
Anyway, happy hunting and enjoy the ride :-)
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Yahoo Shutting Down Yahoo Groups
For those you who who either didn't get the e-mail or don't log into their old Yahoo or Hotmail accounts anymore, Verizon, corporate parent of the internet giant formerly known as Yahoo!, announced that it is pretty much gutting the Yahoo Groups service and converting it to a a system of e-mail lists. If you are wondering why this impacts the signaling and rail history communities it is because those groups were some of the best communities for discussing rail history and signaling between the years 2000 and 2007 when other, more hip, venues became available.
Not only were these groups' archives web accessible, Yahoo also provided a small amount of user file storage which was a huge deal when the only other solution was to run some sort of private message board or file store. As part of the changeover these archives and file stores will be deleted on December 14th, so if there is any content that needs to be saved, get it now.
While I don't think the loss of a couple hundred megabytes worth of documents and low res photos from groups such as Railroad Signaling, RailwaySignaling 2, Interlocking Towers, Block Tower and AmtrakNec will be the Internet's worst loss, these archives are an important record of the signaling discussions that took place on the adolescent web. Most of these groups have barely been used in almost a decade and some were infiltrated by porn and other span posts as the moderators moved on. Unfortunately, increased internet and privacy regulation has made the user uploaded content a potential source of liability and therefore it is being deleted.
Those boards with active communities are currently looking to move to Groups.io which has a a Yahoo Group data migration system. If you were part of one of these communities you might want to check back in to see if your group is moving and if there is anything you want to save, do it before December.
Not only were these groups' archives web accessible, Yahoo also provided a small amount of user file storage which was a huge deal when the only other solution was to run some sort of private message board or file store. As part of the changeover these archives and file stores will be deleted on December 14th, so if there is any content that needs to be saved, get it now.
While I don't think the loss of a couple hundred megabytes worth of documents and low res photos from groups such as Railroad Signaling, RailwaySignaling 2, Interlocking Towers, Block Tower and AmtrakNec will be the Internet's worst loss, these archives are an important record of the signaling discussions that took place on the adolescent web. Most of these groups have barely been used in almost a decade and some were infiltrated by porn and other span posts as the moderators moved on. Unfortunately, increased internet and privacy regulation has made the user uploaded content a potential source of liability and therefore it is being deleted.
Those boards with active communities are currently looking to move to Groups.io which has a a Yahoo Group data migration system. If you were part of one of these communities you might want to check back in to see if your group is moving and if there is anything you want to save, do it before December.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
Signs! Signs! Everywhere a Sign! - Western Freight Roads
Well it's time to cross the Mississippi and get this series finished up. Today I will be exploring the signs of the Western freight roads. Today this would be UP, BNSF, KCS, CP (former SOO) and CN (former IC).
We'll begin with the BNSF and you can't spell BNSF without ATSF. Spoiler, western railroads had a big thing for white signs and black lettering so most of this post is going to be discussing all the ways one can do a white sign with black lettering and in my opinion the ATSF did the best job with white signs on black letters by adding a black border to the signs and a somewhat distinctive font. In this photo below we can see an example on the BNSF Raton Sub showing a single interlocking with a free standing ATSF style sign (probably from late in the ATSF era in the 1990s, and then more plain black on white BNSF signage mounted on the relay hut.
Elsewhere on the Raton sub we see a non-black border sign with the same ATSF font.
And finally we have a BNSF standard font.
On the BN side of the house we see a similar style of free standing black on white sign using a two post support. On certain single track territories, interlocking signs would sometimes be replaced by a station sign similar to the one seen below.
Note the variety of fonts.
We'll begin with the BNSF and you can't spell BNSF without ATSF. Spoiler, western railroads had a big thing for white signs and black lettering so most of this post is going to be discussing all the ways one can do a white sign with black lettering and in my opinion the ATSF did the best job with white signs on black letters by adding a black border to the signs and a somewhat distinctive font. In this photo below we can see an example on the BNSF Raton Sub showing a single interlocking with a free standing ATSF style sign (probably from late in the ATSF era in the 1990s, and then more plain black on white BNSF signage mounted on the relay hut.
Elsewhere on the Raton sub we see a non-black border sign with the same ATSF font.
And finally we have a BNSF standard font.
On the BN side of the house we see a similar style of free standing black on white sign using a two post support. On certain single track territories, interlocking signs would sometimes be replaced by a station sign similar to the one seen below.
Note the variety of fonts.
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