At 11:38pn on January 10th, 2020, the Long Island Railroad's QUEENS tower was
closed with control passing to the dispatch office at Jamaica. This is the first expansion of the Jamaica dispatch office's control beyond the Port Washington Branch and the Jamaica Terminal. QUEENS tower was built in 1924 in the style of other towers on the main line like DUNTON, JAY and HALL.
QUEENS interlocking had actually been re-signaling in the 2008 time period with the Model 14 and NX panel being replaced by a VDU system, however the LIRR had a commitment to the quality of service provided by local tower operators and the tower remained manned.
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| Old Model 14 machine for the local 4-track crossovers |
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| Old N-X panel for the adjacent high speed equilateral turnouts. |
While not much will change from the outside, this is likely the next step in the LIRR's change to a more Metro-North style of operation with reduced aspect dwarf signals and centralized dispatch from a single location.
Please look out for a more in depth article on the history and operation of QUEENS tower as I have a good collection of both interior and exterior photos.
Some LIRR employees on the Railroad.net site have indicated that LIRR plans to demolish the tower.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is important to be vigilant, MNRR has made made waves about demolishing its historic towers for years, but only managed to succeed with DV. For example MO was asbestos abated yet remains in place while OW was to be taken down as part of the Tappen Zee Bride project yet it remains standing. With no property tax liability, a major asbestos issue, requirements to perform historical analyses and valid uses as MoW bases or police stations I would expect towers like QUEENS to hang on unless there is a pressing need to make way for something else.
DeleteI know you talked about the various railroad websites that have disappeared, so you might be interested in the following two.
ReplyDeleteThe sites are related to railroad signaling. The links on the site are slowly decaying. I think the site only still exists because it's on a University of Denver server. The author, James Calvert, was (is?) an Electrical Engineering professor there.
The second "site" is actually only one page. The user is etuttle, but the format of this site matches the jcalvert pages, so not sure if it's the same guy or not.
Here are three ways to get to the pages:
Google search for "site:http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/rail"
Google search for "site:http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/"
Home page: https://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/railhom.htm
Thanks for the links!
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