Signal Replacement on the N&W H-Line

 One of the few remaining holdouts of classic signaling in the northeast has been the former Norfolk and Western H-Line between Roanoke and Front Royal. Although the northern end between Front Royal and Hagerstown was re-signaled nearly a decade ago for NS's north-south corridor, the southern end became a bit of a backwater and due to a fairly recent signal logic update ~2000, there was little incentive to replace the N&W color position lights at interlockings.

Thanks to a Position Light correspondent, I have reports of a gradual signal replacement project by NS that is hitting select locations on the H-Line, most notably centered on the city of Waynesboro. It does not appear to be a comprehensive project with Darth Vaders going up at every interlocking and a cutover date, but more individual projects going one interlocking at a time.  At the type of writing the next interlocking on the list appears to be STANLEY. The full March 2023 H-Line position light status appears below.

 

The new signals are the typical NS garbage, but because this is likely not replacing the fairly modern signal logic, the signal-ing is staying the same with western style route signals displaying N&W signal aspects.

As seen about at BUNEA VISTA both tracks approaching the end of a siding will see the same signal configuration with "straight" route Clear and Approach indications since there is only one route for each line. A second fixed red marker is provided since Eastern roads tend to prefer R/R for absolute signals. The single track mast signal would have G/Y/R over Y/R over Y/R to display R/Y/R Diverging Approach, R/*Y*/R Diverging Approach Diverging and R/R/Y Restricting. The one silver linking is the use of Conrail style blue station signs on the relay hits complete with the "CP" prefix.  It remains to be seen if the Southern green station signs will be retained.