NECR Resignaling Project is Complete

I can report that the re-signaling of the New Englande Centrale's main line that hosts Amtrak's Vermonter north of the Massachusetts border has been completed. While I had previously reported on the state of this project, I can confirm that all legacy signaling has now been replaced. While the diamond at Bellows Falls was perhaps the most visible of the final round of changes, the north end of the Putney siding was also re-signaled. 

As always there are a few interesting details I should point out. The previously reported signaling anomaly at Bellows Falls resulting from a old double to single track conversion, has been eliminated. Trains at Bellows Falls now get a Clear signal indication for a straight route at Wapole siding as opposed to the previous Approach Medium to Medium Clear. 

The holdout signal at SOUTH BELLOWS FALLS has been retained, evidently to allow interchange with the Green Mountain Railroad without needing to seize the main line all the way to Putney.

The entire NECR portion of the line has done away with the Boston and Maine / Guilford practice of ultra-long ABS blocks. Now signal blocks will be a more uniform 2-4 miles which limits the impact of track circuit failures and increases capacity.

Having been re-signaled just prior to the start of the most recent project, the South Putney interlocking will be the only non-standard signal location on the line with a poor man's bracket mast for southbound trains and the use of Safetran scallop shell modules as opposed to Progress Rail square modules.

Although an honorable mention goes to the old northbound searchlight signal on the Bellows Falls platform that was so popular as a photo backdrop. That has been moved to the adjacent park around the Bellows Falls Chamber of Commerce.

It will be interesting to see if this affects on time performance or the schedule at all. In theory replacing the TWC with CTC for the 10 or so miles south of Brattleboro could allow a speed increase.

Washington Union Station CPLs go LED

It appears that the next step in Amtrak's surprising B&O CPL renaissance is the upgrade of those in the Washington Union Terminal area to use LED lamps. Since the terminal area was last re-signaled, the US&S built dwarf CPL's have suffered from low output, possibly lower than the more typical GRS counterparts (US&S was awarded the contract and had to make its own copycat B&O style CPL's as a result). Combined with the overhead catenary, it has made capturing signaling indications on camera rather challenging.

Well now things are on easy mode as you can see here with the incandescent pole pointed 315 signal compared with the gantry mounted 311 and 351 signals displaying Clear and Approach respectively.

For another point of comparison here is the incandescent 189 signal displaying Slow Clear at the end of Track #23.

In addition to the LED's we can see that the orbitals on the gantry mounted signals have received new extra wide backing plates, even if the additional orbital lamps aren't installed. Hopefully the LED conversion won't be limited to just the overhead signals, which do suffer from the extra visibility problems caused by the overhead wires..

SEPTA Sours on Unilens Dwarfs

In yet another chapter of the rail industry's love-hate relationship with the Safetran Unilens signal, over the last few years SEPTA has been systemically replacing its Unilens signals with L&W LED searchlights similar to those being employed by Amtrak in the Chicago, New Orleans and Albany terminal areas. Although I am in the Philly area and perform various SEPTA excursions I only just noticed the change since they were limited to the former Reading Company lines I haven't ridden lately. Below is an example of a compact Unilens "high" mast at JENKIN interlocking since 2006 that was converted from Unilens to LED searchlight at some point over the last 2 years.

Track 2 LED searchlight high dwarf at JENKIN in 2003

Track 2 LED searchlight high dwarf at JENKIN in 2010

Combing through some SEPTA territory railfan window videos I can confirm that the majority of Unilens signals have now been replaced by LED searchlights. including those at NEWTOWN JCT, TABOR JCT, the Fox Chase sidings and Norristown Elm St. Because of SEPTA's use of reduced aspect signals, new searchlights won't get much opportunity to demonstrate their full rage of colors and the clipped flashing might be a little irritating while displaying "cab speed" indications.

LED Searchlights at Albany Union Station

For those of you who might be encountering the Unilens saga for the first time, the Unilens was created as a solid state replacement for the traditional electro-mechanical searchlight. It makes use of plastic light pipes (think big fiber optics) to deliver light from up to 4 lamps to a single lens assembly. While this might sound like a great solution, apparently the product suffers from expensive propritary incandescent bulbs and degradation of the light pipe that reduces output over time as well as giving green indications a yellow cast.  While some of SEPTA's Unilens dwarfs were approaching 20 years in service, some, like those at Norristown, had been installed less than 10 years ago. It's entirely possible that the long term costs of operating the type became just too much. It will be interesting to see if LED searchlight technology migrates to the Class 1's, which still seem wedded to the Unilens for restricted clearance applications.

New Year's Position Light News

 As 2020 winds to a close I wanted to share a few PRR Position Light related news items.  The first is that the Lebanon Mason Monroe tourist railroad in Lebanon, OH, had installed a semi-functional amber PL at the end of the platform at its Lebanon, OH depot.

Next, the LIRR has started to equip its legacy amber PL's with the same type of LED lamps that SEPTA first installed a decade ago at ARSENAL and ZOO.  With all of the reduced aspect signaling and tower demolitions, its nice to see that some of their PLs might have a brighter future. 

Speaking of SEPTA, I reported back in May that the PRR PL's at ARSENAL and WALNUT interlockings appeared primed for replacement, however during my annual winter SEPTA trip I was able to confirm that the signals at ARSENAL, WALNUT and the MP 1.5 southbound PL automatics are all still in place, however the northbound MP 2.0 automatics have both been replaced by color lights.

MP 2.0 automatic half way through replacement in 2019.

That wraps up my 2020 season.  Signal wise, it was not as bad as some other things.  Stay safe and join me again in the new year.

Curtain Closes on the B&O

Before I get to the rest of the news it is my sad duty to report that the last B&O CPLs on the Capitol Limited route at MEXICO and WEST HUMP in Cumberland, MD have fallen to the Darth Vader plague.  Fortunately there was are no shortage of photos.  Where will the railfan go?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

In other news the former PRR signal bridge at the SA drawbridge has also been taken out of service.

I also noticed that the low cost "virtual head" signals on the old MILW main are also getting replaced with standard Darths.  Again, aren't companies supposed to save money?  Not sure how I personally feel since those virtual head signals aren't much to look at, but I guess they are different.

Speaking of different, I caught this photo showing either CN or CP installing LED searchlights to replace traditional searchlights in the Toronto area.  I wish this would take off because these are the sorts of signals railroads should be embracing.

Enough with the good news, I also learned that the former Conrail signals on the Trenton Line between TRENT and Bound Brook are getting replaced.  I have to assume CP-WING is in the crosshairs as well.  Looks like it might be time for a road trip.

The searchlight sub-species of C&O signal in Michigan are also nearing their end as seen hear in Romulus.  Really...the Seaboard System has absolutely no business being in Michigan.

Although its not like being in Florida makes and difference. These classic Seaboard elephant eats with (P) boards are also slated for the bin.

Well that's it for this month.  At least I was able to snap the streak of news posts without at least one line item of positive news!

No Clipping

As the exciting future of solid state lighting increasingly becomes the present, some of you may have noticed that LED lamps are a bit more, sterile, for lack of a better term, than their incandescent predecessors.  Now I am not talking about the narrow spectrum or the supposed "coldness" of the light, but specifically the way that LED's behave when flashing.



When flashing LEDs are very binary in operation.  On, off, on, off.  As soon as the voltage crosses some threshold the LED lights up, as opposed to an incandescent bulb that has distinct rising and falling edges as evidenced in the following montage.



But wait, perhaps LED's are not to blame.  Amtrak's FAIR interlocking was an early test for retrofitting incandescent position light lamps with LED light sources and its flashing indication aren't quite so harsh.



If you are wondering if this effect is caused by the flasher relay or other interlocking hardware I actually came upon a natural experiment that is only possible in Position Light territory.



As Amtrak's Train 19 rolls past the 6AE signal at FAIR interlocking, the two green PL lamps appear to be flashing out of sync, but what is actually occurring is that the top lamp is set to flash in a clipped LED style and the bottom is flashing in a ramped incandescent style.

I asked some electrical engineers and they suspected that the magic is all with the details of the LED's local power supply.  It appears that the early units at FAIR have a capacitor tied into the circuit, slightly delaying the flash cycle as it charges and then delaying the cycle as it discharges. The other (cheaper?) supplies appear to only supply a fixed voltage or nothing.

I don't know what is driving the clipped style LED signal lamps appearing all over the world.  It might be cost, or simple ignorance or even a belief by the signal vendors (or component purchasers) that the more binary behavior is desirable.  Hopefully, as was the case with Amtrak's initial LED tests, some railroads will request components that behave in a warmer, more analogie style.

PS: If anyone has EE experience and knows how the power supply circuits are constructed, please share in the comments.