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.