New Signals at IVANHOE

Just saw this pic of new signals going up at IVANHOE crossing on the former Conrail Porter Branch. Built as the Michigan Central's main line into Chicago, these are likely the mast Michigan Central style small target searchlights on the route along with an equally rare bracket mast so if you happen to be in the area get your but in gear and get out there to get some photos.

 IVANHOE is where the Porter Branch crosses the EJE belt line, now owned by CN. It once supported a well known interlocking tower that was closed and demolished in the 1990's.

Owned by CSX, but previously used as a back door into Chicago from the Conrail Chicago Line, now owned by NS, the Porter Branch has been in a bit of a limbo since the Conrail split of 1999 with a lot of the traffic being from other railroads.  Many of its interlockings are diamond crossings and have already been re-signaled, but the Branch still retained NYC vintage GRS style G block and interlocking signals on the eastern end of the line including CP-243 as of fall 2024.

I had the privilege of riding this line in the fall of 2006 on an Amtrak detouring around a serious Chicago Line derailment where I also got to see the since closed CALUMET tower. 

 
Anyway, I guess we'll have to wait and see if this is the beginning of end of interesting signaling on the porter Branch or just another chapter in a long slow decline.

RRPictureArchives Long Term Outage

It appears that the popular website rrpicturearchives.net has suffered a disc failure that will result in a long term outage.  Based on forum posts, the owner has had to send one or more parts of the database RAID to a third party recovery service. Rpicturearchives.net is well known for availability issues, but this might cause it to be down for many months.  I am posting about it as many of my posts make use of photos hosted on RRpicturearchives and as a result they will present as broken photo links. Hopefully the site will return to functionality, however if it vanishes for good I might be in a position to rehost some of the lost photos, although it would be a labor intensive process. As we have seen before with Blockstation.net and Mark Beij's site, many long time railfan web resources may be reaching the end of their tethers so where possible it might be worthwhile to save local copies of things you care about. 

GLENWOOD Tower Demolished

It has been reported, and confirmed on street view, that the former B&O tower in the Glenwood section of Pittsburgh has been demolished. As covered in my 2022 post, the tower was built in 1908 and closed by CSX in 2003 with the adjacent yard and line leased to the Allegheny Valley Railroad. These lease arrangements can often freeze infrastructure in place as user doesn't own the tower and the owner doesn't want to invest in a potentially asbestos impacted demolition. In 2019 the AVR took full ownership of the former CSX P&W Sub and adjacent Glenwood Yard and at the time of my report I suspected that the change in ownership would unfreeze the situation.  

Turns out I was right and AVR made the expected choice of demolition, as opposed to finding some alternative use for the decayed wooden structure. Unfortunately no trace of the structure remains. 

Mind the Gap! - The case of "3rd Head Restricting"

There's a odd feature in current North American railroad signal practice dating back to the 19th century that hints at the practices of old like a vestigial organ. Lacking a former name, one might call the aspect "lowest head Restricting" or "3rd head Restricting", but its feature is a prominent gap between the top "full speed" or "normal route" head and the bottom lamp used to display Restricting indications. What would be a R/R/Y (or R/R/L) under normal circumstances, becomes R/ /Y, with the middle head omitted. So why does this exist and why is it still in use today.

Low head restricting originates in the concept of the subsidiary signal. In the days of mechanical semaphores a subsidiary signal is a smaller semaphore arm mounted below the "main" arms to give Restricting type movement authority.



In North America, it was not uncommon for this subsidiary signal to be mounted on the ground at the base of the mast or under the signal if mounted on a gantry or cantilever. The New Haven railroad was a proponent of this ground mounting practice and continued it up until they were folded into Penn Central.

As North American signaling progressed into the electric era, signal aspect systems would have an upper head for straight routes, a lower head for diverging routes and then a "subsidiary signal", either on the mast or on the ground, for Restricting/call-on conditions. Interlocking setups like the Taylor system would even have a separate lever controlling each signal head. Although this "third head" position on signals would later see use with other slow speed and combination indications like Medium Approach Medium, the link between the third head and Restricting remained strong. Of course as an economizing measure, some railroads went the route of only using two heads with R/Y as Restricting and simply not having a Diverging Approach type indication (its not strictly necessary). However, one could also economize by eliminating the middle head if it was only serving as a marker, especially if the lower "head" was its own signal on the actual ground. The Erie, along with the Reading, were both good examples of the gap between the upper and third head were left exceptionally large to avoid confusion.

 

 
Of course as signal mounting distances became more standardized, this gap became less emphasized to the point where one could make the argument that there was a likelihood of confusion between R/Y Diverging Approach and R/ /Y Restricting. Here we see an example of two bracket mounted signals with R/ /Y restricting at Chicago's KEDZIE interlocking installed by the CNW in the 1990's.

Today one can accommodate both R/Y Diverging Approach and a Restricting indication on a two headed mast through the use of lunar white or flashing red . At this time NS is the only major railroad to install new examples of R/ /Y Restricting and does so only on its former Southern RR signal territory. 

Of course quite a few railroads, including Canadian Pacific aligned Delaware and Hudson, never went with the economizing feature of the gap and instead went with a three head system with R/R/Y Restricting and R/Y/R Medium Approach. Under the Conrail associated NORAC system R/ /Y of predecessor roads like the Erie and Reading were considered to be a two head R/Y Restricting with three head R/R/Y Restricting as another option. The C&O on the other hand only had R/Y Restricting with any third head left dark because they just had to be different.

Cleveland Line Autos Now on the Way Out

 In another example of either speaking too soon or rolling under the lowering door like Geordi, it has been reported that NS is planning on removing the remaining Cleveland Line ABS Position Lights I recently reported on. 

Scuttlebutt is that NS actually needs the parts to maintain the PL's on the western Fort Wayne Line, however I suspect that after the East Palestine explosion closed the Fort Wayne Line, the lack of PTC on the lower Cleveland may have become an issue. No word on the timeline, but I'll try to track the progress and if the project is a 1 for 1 signal replacement or something that will convert the line from ABS to CTC.

CSX Accelerates Boston and Maine Resignaling

It appears that CSX has put its foot to the floor regarding resignaling the former Boston and Main Eastern Route Main Line. From the MBTA division post at CP-PLAINSTOW to Exeter, new signals are already in place with prep work underway between Exeter and the Maine border. 

Blocks are being lengthened from 2 to 3 miles and even the LED target signals recently installed by Guilford are being replaced. Perhaps the most shocking turn of events is the conversion from NORAC to Seaboard signal rules, despite the presence of NORAC rules and cab signals on both MBTA and former Boston Line territory. This also closes the door on any potential Rule 562 cab signal conversion, even if all of the locomotives running on the line will have to be cab signal equipped. It is unclear when the new signaling will be cut over as CSX has been known to move quickly on new hardware before following up with the logic and testing, but I would suggest that any interested parties move with all possible speed to get their photos, and maybe some video of the flashing Green single dwarf Limited Speed signal at CP-PLAINSTOW.

THORN Tower's Last Act

Amtrak's THORN tower has been staffed 24/7 and routing trains on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line since 1938, however after having gone on a rather extensive diet in recent years, THORN tower appears to be entering its last act. However its not going without a few strange twists.

As a CTC era tower with both local and remote relay based interlockings, THORN presents a fairly easy case for remote control, as was the case with THORN's sister tower COLA back in 1987. Already Amtrak has chipped away at THORN's territory, re-signaling CALN interlocking and transfering control to the Section C dispatcher in 2020.  Now it appears that the plan is to re-signal and transfer control of the local THORN interlocking in the middle of 2025.  

While this would typically mean the closing of THORN tower itself, the news is that the tower will continue in service controlling GLEN interlocking via the 1938 CTC machine and FRAZER interlocking on the 1994 vintage unit lever panel. Much of THORN's work involves FRAZER interlocking as that is where SEPTA trains for the busy R5 Paoli/Thorndale service lay over.

Plans also include the removal of DOWNS interlocking with deadhead movements continuing on to THORN. For years track #2 between THORN and GLEN had been in terrible shape with Amtrak operators and dispatchers looking for ways to avoid using it.  However it has been recently rehabilitated and train managers are looking to make better use of the asset. 

With these changes I would expect to see "C" boards for Rule 562 operation on both sides of THORN and if DOWNS is removed it is possible that cab signal only operation will extend all the way to FRAZER (track #1) and GLEN (track #4). Whatever happens, I'll keep everyone informed.

Some Apalachian Signal News

We first head to the N&W H-Line where ARCADIA interlocking is the next to get hit by the replacement ax. See my previous report for a more detailed status of H-Line signals. This location seems to be pretty accessible for anyone traveling the I-81 corridor this holiday season.

Next comes news from the CSX Big Sandy Sub in eastern Kentucky, known for its surviving C&O signaling. Due to declines in coal traffic, CSX has been removing or shortening passing sidings in a bid to save costs (and sometimes having to restore the sidings in a bid to set money on fire). Anyway while this didn't matter much on the re-signaled main line, its now affecting the classic signaled Big Sandy so expect interlocking removal/automatic downgrade to follow track removal at locations like SK Cabin in Thelma Kentucky. 

Most worrisome is the fate of the milepost 55.7 two track intermediate signal gantry on the other side of town. Although the situation has persisted for the better part of a year, this absolutely constitutes a railfan emergency.

 Finally in another "whoops I missed it" moment, the often photographed "modern" style C&O bracket masts adjacent to US 23 south of Catlettsburg, KY were replaced sometime in 2023. Likely installed in the CSX era, the replacements are typical color light masts displaying the same C&O signal aspects.

Wish I had some better news, but the wins are few and far between.

PHOTOS: Amtrak CORK Tower

 A while ago I posted the first part of my coverage of the Pennsylvania Railroad's 1929 CORK interlocking tower in Lancaster, PA which covered the tower's history and the layout of the interlocking on the PRR's Main Line. Today we cover the tower itself, heading inside to see how it functioned in both its pre and post re-signaling phases. The exterior photos date from 2005 when the interlocking complex was in the process of being resignaled. 

To recap, CORK interlocking and tower were constructed as part of the 1929 Lancaster station project which moved Lancaster's busy passenger depot away from a downtown alignment with slow speeds, lots of grade crossings and partial street running. The resulting interlocking plant spanned approximately 3.3 miles of main line track, which was an outlier for early 20th century direct wire controlled interlockings in North America. Like the contemporary Lancaster station. CORK was built of a dark brick and featured a prominent bay window sheathed in copper cladding. 

 

 

The tower had one auxiliary building that housed the primary compressed air plant and was situated on the south side of the tracks in line with the extreme west ends of the high level station platforms. The tower had an internal staircase with the shelf type relay room on the first floor. With its brick construction and slate roof, the tower was in excellent physical shape as it entered the 21st century. 

 

Heading inside the tower we find a typical layout with the operator's desk sitting in front of the US&S Model 14 interlocking machine. A defect detector readout and overhead catenary section breaker control panel are to the operator's right with the lockers, clock and old telecom plugboard sitting to the left. One interesting feature is that the room has retained its original 1929 vintage overhead lamp fixtures. 

The operator's space is feels like a more cramped version of HARRIS tower with less space around the interlocking machine on all four sides. The gap between the scoreboard style model board and the rear aligned internal staircase is particularly small. As with other PRR Main Line towers, lever blocking devices are stored on top of the interlocking machine and the bathroom is in the left rear corner. Also note the location of the refrigerator, notice board and train order hoops. 

The sprawling CORK interlocking plant was controlled by a relatively modest 67 lever interlocking machine with 49 active levers in its 1960's configuration consisting of 23 levers for switches, 23 levers for signals, 2 levers for electric switch locks and 1 crossing lever for the Reading's Lancaster Branch diamond crossing. The plant was divided into three timer zones, A, B and C with the A timer handling the Conestoga section, the B timer the central Cork plant and the C timer the Reading crossing. The short run was 1 minute with the long run being about 5 minutes and 30 seconds. The tower also had 4 horns for Conestoga, the tower itself, Lancaster West, Dillersville yard and the Reading crossing (Longs Park).

One interesting feature was the presence of Rusty Rail tabs instead of the more usual placard. Besides that the levers were of the standard US&S crank type.

Although CORK's model board was a standard PRR illuminated type, it had several interesting features features. Grade crossing status lights were located at either end of the board to indicate the activation status of the Irishtown Road (east) or Eby Chiques (west) crossings. There were three low air alarms for East and West Conestoga in addition to the Cork main plant. In the post-1960 era two block indication lamps were added for tracks 1 and 4 eastbound. These had some interaction with PARK tower to the east as well as the intervening temporary block station at LEAMAN with track #1 being lit by the regular 2 lever and track #4 by a button on the operator's desk console. Best I can tell this was some technical method to prevent conflicting movements beyond what would be afforded by train orders and the dispatcher. Finally the most endearing model board feature was a framed photo of CORK tower itself that is also present in photos from c. 1992.

 

More Connecticut River Corridor News

 Although my last update on the Connecticut Valley Corridor was only back in March, I have some additional updates from a follow up trip in October. The most significant are alterations to SPRING interlocking in Springfield, MA. The root cause for altering SPRING is to create an interlocked connection between Boston Line Track 2A and the Amtrak Springfield Line trackage. This route was previously used by the old Vermonter and Inland Route Regionals and required the use of hand throw switches to the east of the station. Without a connection at SPRING, Track 2A is only purpose is to serve as an emergency berth for the daily Lake Shore Limited round trip. The new switch allows Track 2A to be used for both CT Rail Hartford Line trains and Amtrak Springfield Shuttles and also creates additional storage space for increased CT Rail or Regional service. 

Of course there always has to be a downside and unfortunately the changes at SPRING will also cause the elimination of what is arguably the last vintage signal on the Amtrak Springfield Line.  Station track #8 is still governed by a US&S N-2 dwarf, possibly dating back to the New Haven era.  Moreover station track #6 is governed by an uncommon US&S modular dwarf stack that was installed in the early-2000's to replace an H-5 searchlight.  Both will be replaced by Safetran modular cube dwarfs that infected the Springfield line back in 2004.

The bad news doesn't stop there as the New Englande Central re-signaling project continues unabated. It currently appears that new standard sized ABS blocks are in service between Walpole and Claremont, replacing the old B&M large block CTC. This also implies that the new signaling at Claremont has been activated. New interlocking huts have been dropped at both the south end of the Walpole siding and the Bellows Falls diamond. At the north end of the Walpole siding the new interlocking retained the southbound searchlight mast, so it remains to be see if there are any searchlit survivors in the Bellows Falls area. I unfortunately neglected to inspect the controlled point south of Bellows Falls, but it is on my list for a visit in the Spring.

A Video Guide to French "Poste d'Aiguillage"

Getting information on interlocking tower / signalboxes outside the anglosphere can be a bit difficult not only due to the language barrier, but also cultural difference about railfanning and content creation.  While I found a comprehensive site on German towers many years ago, similar resources for French signaling had yet to pop up on my radar. This is rather unfortunate as I believe that France has a strong tradition of staffed towers and electro-mechanical era power interlocking machines.It also doesn't hurt that the standard SNCF model board design gives off strong PRR vibes.

Anyway, when doing a quick Youtube search on "Poste d'Aiguillage" I found a somewhat recent public information film detailing the many styles of French interlocking machine, running the gammut from mechanical lever frames to VDU area interlockings. It even gives a shout out to a North American pattern Taylor (GRS) machine. You can watch the whole thing for yourself below.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

There Unitl it Wasn't: Nova's VN Tower

In the early years of my "keep track of towers" hobby, one Class 1 tower stood out for the sheer improbability of its survival. For well over a decade, a wooden tower in absolutely deplorable condition, standing along side a main line in an accessible area with no discernable railroad use managed to not only avoid demolition, but also the all too common risk of fire. I am talking about VN tower in Nova, Ohio on the CSX New Castle Sub. When it was finally demolished in 2013, VN Tower had outlived Amtrak's Three Rivers passenger service that operated on the same line by 8 years.

The story of VN and its longevity is wrapped up in the story of CSX's somewhat neglected B&O Main Line between Washington and Chicago. VN tower was the first significant town east of the Big Four junction in Greenwich, OH and served as an ABS crossover point with control over some adjacent sidings. Similar in style to other wooden B&O towers and painted in B&O beige, VN tower itself closed in the 1980's with the crossovers also being retired leaving just the tower and a pair of B&P CPL ABS signals. (The lack of crossover capacity on the New Castle Sub would in part doom Amtrak's Three Rivers as it frequently wound up stuck behind slow moving freight trains).

Until 1999, the CSX east-west route to Chicago had played a distant second to Conrail's Chicago and Fort Wayne Lines. While the Conrail split turbocharged the western end of this service lane with new signals and a second track, the eastern end of the route had significant numbers of staffed interlocking towers and single direction Rule D-251 track. The line segment between New Castle, PA and Greenwich, OH was no different with a few CTC islands and a staffed tower in Newton Falls. With investment and eyeballs fixed elsewhere for most of this period VN tower just managed to avoid the wreckers ball.

Through 2000's, the decaying tower with its intact lever frame became a local railfan landmark with photos frequently appearing on the major photo archives. VN stayed in this state for so long that people began to speculate that it still had some use, the tower was privately owned or that some local manager was protecting it. In 2011 CSX finished re-signaling the New Castle Sub, banishing the CPL signals and pole line, still VN hung om, now exhibiting a pronounced lean. With other towers, such as HN, being demolished, VN's popularity increased as a photo location due to the well lit east-west orientation of the track.

VN was demolished on November 22, 2013 and the Nova, OH crossing where it had been located went from a must-see for area railfans to a complete afterthought. With all traces of the tower removed and without anything else of note nearby, there weren't many "here's the pile of rubble that used to be VN" photos. VN's demolition over Thanksgiving also made it less salient than other tower demolitions that year so it escaped my notice and coverage. Today I hope to rectify that situation, although the Akron Railroad Club has had a memorial page for VN tower up for the better part of a decade. That site reports that the lever frame and related components were sent to a museum in Utah for some sort of tower related exhibit.

Hidden Gems - Cleveland Line PRR ABS Signals

The whirlwind of PTC motivated re-signaling has wiped out vintage ABS and CTC systems all across the country including most of the main line PRR position lights. However in one tiny corner of Pennsylvania not only exists a remnant population of PRR position lights, but position lights in a single direction ABS configuration. The Cleveland Line between CP-ROCHESTER (Conway Yard) and Alliance, Ohio serves as a backup route for the far more popular Fort Wayne Line. Due to the low traffic volumes is it PTC exempt, which explains how the PRR era signals have hung on. All together there are 6 PL signal locations on the dual track ABS segment between Rochester, PA and Yellow Creek, OH and today I will cover them all in an eastbound direction using photos that were taken over three trips in 2021, 2022 and 2023. 

The first location is at milepost 22 at the east end of Wellsville, OH. It consists of one eastbound PL mast and a new westbound Darth Vader mast that was installed in the late 2010s when CP-YELLOW CREEK was re-signaled. It is located just outside the flood wall and is lit full time with PL signal 221 displaying clear by default and signal 222 Approach.

The next location is at milepost 19 right behind the football stadium of Westgate Middle School in the town of East Liverpool, OH. It consists of two single head PL masts, both continuously lit with a Clear signal indication.

The location is also notable for the presence of 1940's vintage Carnegie steel rail and a somewhat ad hoc run of signal wire between the cabinet and rails.

In the East End section of East Liverpool at the site of the closed Virginia Ave railroad crossing we find the milepost 16 location with another pair of PL masts. This time signal 164 displays Approach by default due to a pair of interlockings, VEZ and MIDLAND, at either end of a single track section a few miles to the east to the east. Because the track #1 does not encounter a diverging route at VEZ interlocking the corresponding PL mast needed no modification and was therefore not replaced. The short single track section seems to have been installed due to the risk of RoW erosion by the Ohio River, but also acts as a "Conrail Crossover". The eastbound 164 signal is also significantly taller than the opposite 165 mast.

The relay cabinets associated with the signals display both US&S and Wabco logos.

Seeing as VEZ and MIDLAND took out the following two ABS locations, the next automatic signal location is across the PA border, just east of te town of Midland and directly adjacent to state route 68 at milepost 8.6. It consists of an eastbound position light and westbound Darth Vader which are lit full time with Clear the default indication eastbound and Approach the default westbound. They are co-located with the Midland hotbox, dragging equipment and high car detector.