P&LE Tower Update - CP-3Y Demolished

 A couple years ago I posted a piece on how to use Google Street View to check on the status of surviving interlocking towers.  At the time I determined that the former PRR tower BECK and the former P&LE tower CP-3 had both been demolished, while the P&LE tower CP-3Y was still standing. At the time I was using the latest Street View image from July 2016, which showed the existence of CP-3Y.

However what i did not know that was a new set of images from August 2018 were still in the pipeline and would have revealed that CP-3Y had indeed been demolished in the intervening time period. I believe this would eliminate the last standing classic style P&LE interlocking tower.

Just goes to show that time doesn't stand still and just because a tower is here today or on streetview today does not mean it will be there tomorrow so stay alert and remember to check back on a regular basis. 

Caught on Camera: Vanishing Towers

While searching through the North American Interlockings website, I happened upon some Pittsburgh area towers with somewhat recent photos that I wanted to check up on.  The towers in question were CP-3 and CP-3Y on the P&LE and BECK on the former PRR Mon Valley branch.  Since I didn't know the exact location of the towers, I could not rely on Google overhead as a positive indication of demolition because it could simply be my inability to locate them.

Typically I would find as many old photos as I could and use landmarks to try and determine the position of the tower.  However because some of the photos were recent, I pulled up Google Street view and used the back in time feature to back as far as I could to see if any towers appeared.  Let's see what I found.

BECK Tower April 2008

BECK Tower July 2007

Well in the case of BECK, a suspicious driveway leading to a patch of trackside gravel revealed the tower I was looking for.  Clearly having met it's end between July 07 and April 08.  Moving on to CP-3 in McKeeys Rocks I discovered...

Tower CP-3 April 2012

Tower CP-3 April 2007

Yup!  There it is.  Demolished between 2007 and 2012 for additional bus parking.  Anyway, just thought I'd share this little tool.  It won't work everywhere due to the service not being Google Railroad View, but a lot of towers were in sight of busy roads.