WALBRIDGE was one of several active towers that ringed Toledo into the first decade of the 21st Century. Technically a PRR tower, WALBRIDGE stood at the triangular junction of the C&O Northern Branch, PRR Toledo Branch and the Toledo Terminal ring railroad. Like many PRR towers west of Pittsburgh, it lacked the fancy architecture and bay windows, and was instead a pretty basic brick box with a US&S Model 14 interlocking machine controlling a pneumatic interlocking plant with position lights in all the typical places.
Like many of the survivor towers, it stayed in service due to the personal service needed to manage the trains of conflicting railroads, namely CSX and Conrail. After Conrail was broken up, it was pretty straightforward to rationalize the lines around Toledo, eliminate a lot of diamonds and close the towers. Anyway, Railroad Media Archives has posted another fantastic video from 1993 showing operations around WALBRIDGE including interior video as trains moved through the plant. You can cut to the exact time of the interior video or watch the whole thing.
For some additional reference here is how the interlocking machine and model board looked in 2001.
Unfortunately the tower was demolished in 2015. If I ever find more than the handful of interior photos I'll write up a longer piece on it, but today just sit back and enjoy the video.
No comments:
Post a Comment