New Signals at Portland Union Station

For the last year or more, Portland (Oregon) Union Station has been involved in a slow motion re-signaling project that will unfortunately zap the last active vestiges of VC Tower, which closed in 1996 as Oregon's last active interlocking station. 

Until labor dynamic forced a change in the early 2000's it was not uncommon for railroads to splice old interlocking hardware, like switches and signals, into new control logic. VC was one such example where the eastbound signals were left untouched. 

These included a short mast signal off of passenger track #1 with a mix of GRS type E and L&W modular lamps, a modernized GRS type MF triangular dwarf, (popular with UP in the 80's and 90's) off main track #4 and two vintage GRS type MD dwarfs on track #3 and #5 that likely date back to whenever VC tower changed over from semaphore signals. 

The replacement will be an obtrusive double cantilever mast for tracks 3, 4 and 5 and a likely modern type mast on track #1. 

The current two lamp dwarf signals appear to consist of a red lamp over a yellow lamp, which would provide for Y Approach, R/Y Diverging Approach and *R* Restricting, although was not able to observe actual operations. The new signals seem to bring Y/Y Approach Diverging to the table. 

The changes aren't limited to the east side of the terminal. For some time passenger tracks 1 through 4 have been un-signaled with the west end of of those tracks being reached via non-interlocked M23 powered switches. Based on bagged station track signals and a bagged through track mast it appears the west end will also be interlocked, including the presently hand throw station track #1.

This will hopefully cut a couple of minutes off the run time, with trains possibly able to make hotter stops, instead of creeping down the super long platforms.