NJT (CNJ) ESSAY Tower Demolished

 I have the sad duty to report the demolition of ESSAY (aka SA) tower in South Amboy, NJ. Nominally a CNJ tower on the jointly PRR/CNJ operated New York and Long Branch commuter line, it entered in service on Jan, 7, 1942. Since its closure around 1990 the tower had a second life as a maintenance base and had been kept in good shape. Unfortunately it ran afoul of the Raritan Bay Drawbridge replacement project and was demolished on August 29, 2023.

A few years ago I had caught a report that ESSAY was on track to be demolished, but looking at the EIS plans, it did not appear that the new bridge alignment would impact the tower. Unfortunately it appears that the initial reports were correct and we have lost yet another good condition, late model, brick interlocking tower.

This was unfortunately a more recent example of me not acting on intel of an impending demolition with literally years of advance notice. Unfortunately the location was both off my usual path and was not immediately accessible for photos, especially with all of the bridge construction activity. 

ESSAY controlled a modern interlocking plant with a Model 14 interlocking machine and pneumatic signals. It was located at the south end of the drawbridge and the junction with the electrified PRR Jamesburg Branch. It was also notable for overseeing the largely hand operated power change between electric and non-electric at the South Amboy station where the last operational GG-1s wound up their careers in 1983.

The good news is that NJT is generally supportive of its towers as I, in hindsight regrettably, took the time to visit those at SUMMIT and DENVILLE on the DL&W side back in June.

You Want to Live in the Box?

As housing costs in some of North America's most desirable areas continue to skyrocket, enterprising vagrants have discovered a somewhat innovative solution in the form of taking over disused railroad relay bungalows. The problem of the homeless setting up camp in rail related buildings such as stations and interlocking towers has existed for some time with the resulting fires used for heat and cooking inevitably leading to destructive fires such as those at SO and SHORE. However over the last year I have encountered multiple instances of persons living in disused metal interlocking bungalows which, as primitive as they are, can keep out the wind and rain. 

The fist was on a disused rail line in Colorado where between spring 2021 and winter 2022, someone moved in, ripped out all the relays and set up a cot on the old CTC relay cabinets. The second was in New Hampshire where the residents were at least thoughtful enough to lay in a supply of Narcan for their overdosing needs.

Now, these locations had been out of service for years, but it shows the lengths that the unhoused will go to. For the signal enthusiast there is always the slight risk of running into a disagreeable resident while out on a documentation exercise, however the more pressing risk is that these actions create a persistent nuisance that will prompt railroads to remove out of service bungalows that may have otherwise been abandoned in place, potentially full of vintage relays and other goodies.

My only suggestions for the enthusiast to err on the side of salvaging historic materials before they are broken up and dumped outside.

LIRR East Side Access Signaling Surprises

When the LIRR's new East Side Access opened to Grand Central Terminal earlier this summer and I was expecting the signaling to follow the pattern of the LIRR's other recent projects with the new reduced aspect signals like G/L that have become the new standard. However, now that cab view videos have become available the new signaling setup came with a few surprises.

Once trains enter the ESA tunnels at HAROLD interlocking they are exclusively presented with transit style 3-lamp signals displaying single light Green, Yellow and Red aspects. Although these two videos can't necessarily reveal all possible operating conditions, the lack of anything aside from Green, Yellow and Red over both straight and diverging routes implies that those are what one gets in the ESA tunnels even with track speeds up to 45mph. It also appears that intermediate signals are provided in the few parts of the route that have significant distance between interlockings.

I suspect that the decision was made to lean on both the track speeds and speed code based cab signals to simplify the ESA wayside signaling based on the LIRR's existing practices before the implementation of the Reduced Aspect Signals. Remember, ESA has been under construction for almost 20 years and the design work was likely completed a decade before the Main Line capacity expansion projects motivated the new signals. A review of the videos shows a combination of diverging routes at the prevailing line speed (15, 30 or 45mph) or sufficient distance between the signal and the turnout for a cab signal code drop to take effect. On the outbound video there appears to be an unprotected slow speed crossover so I am not sure if that would rate Green signals over cab drops or a Yellow approaching a flashing red or what. I made some inquiries and I will post an update if those pan out.

All in all, the signaling is more interesting than an endless string of Green over Lunar and the use of US&S transit style signals is nice, but its unfortunate we didn't get a full set of LIRR "tunnel" signals similar to the Atlantic Ave branch.

The Final Months at AC Tower

Looks like the Railroad Media Archive has done it again with a video covering the last few months of operation at the former Erie AC tower in Marion, Ohio from November 1994 to just before its closing on January 18, 1995. AC tower was located at the crossing of the compass east-west Erie and Big Four (NYC) with the compass north-south N&W and C&O.The Erie and Big Four alignments would be merged into Conrail and eventually became the Indianapolis Line on a largely Big Four routing with the Erie RR main being largely abandoned. By the mid-90's it was finally time to retire the old Taylor Model 2 machine.

In the video the things of note are the various communications duties of a tower operator and the lever manipulation sequences, specifically the use of crossing lock levers to set the direction of travel through a diamond. 

AC Tower model board and manipulation charts as preserved.

Although the tower was closed in 1995, it was moved to the nearby station grounds and preserved as a semi-restored museum. Hopefully they will get the expertise to restore it in a similar fashion to HARRIS. Because of the "lateness" of the conversion, the N&W and C&O signals were retained on the two non-Conrail routes until about 2012.