I just bought Brian Soloman’s book “Railroad Signaling” and it is the updated 2010 softcover edition. As I was reading Chapter 4 on Towers and Interlocking came across this statement.
“Some day, the last traditional tower in the United States may close, and an era will have passed. As a result of different cost-accounting or operating philosophies, other countries have been less hasty to implement complete centralization of train control. There more towers remain”
I was both surprised and not surprised by this statement, but I can not help but wonder how foreign railroads have found the need to keep rail towers around opposed to just simply controlling their networks from one location. I know Soloman states his theory above, but maybe someone else has a better explanation. [*-)]
He is probably right if he means Great Britain. Germany certainly still has more towers than the US, but it is because they had more than the US to begin with, they are replacing them wherever it makes sense to do so (lines being resignalled and upgraded). On the other hand lines just short of being closed linger on with towers. The Austrian Matzlienzdorf Signalling Center is an incredible installation.
It is also probably due to the greater density of traffic. Where you have something like 30-60 trains an hour right through the day, and complex routings, the staff is already employed full time. Moving them to some centralized facility will not reduce head counts. There are also some advantages to being on the spot or having visual backup as to what is happening on the track, especially when there are any equipment failures.
North America rarely has this type of density, and many tower operators had quiet periods. Moving control to a central office often provided significant manpower savings, when one person could control four or more locations.
Another possible factor is that remote control of a location requires track circuits to register the presence of trains. These were not necessarily universal over there. Before closing a local tower it was yet another upgrade and expense that might have to be considered.
Computer programs can now do much of the routine work of lining trains through a plant in some places. I imagine chaos is likely if the computer goes down and the dispatcher or leverman suddenly has to jump in without much actual experience in doing the thinking himself.
Most foreign railroads are Government subsidized or even outright Government owned and operated. Having towers employs more people, helping to keep the unemployment and welfare rates lower.
Don’t let politics cloud your understanding of the situation on the rails, Germany, Austria, and probably Switzerland operate more trains in a day than all the Class Is in the US. Yes they are shorter, but the number of routes are much, much greater. Austria’s Matzliensdorf Signalling center is located in a high-tech tower just south of Matzliensdorf station (first suburban station south of the new Wien Zentral Station). The center controls 215 switches, the majority of which cannot be seen from the tower. The Südbahn which passes in front of the tower is a six-track mainline paired by use. A few hundred meters south of the tower is the Donauverbindungslinie (Southern Belt railway) this is a double-track mainline, soon to be two double-track mainlines that cross the Südbahn on a bridge with connecting tracks in all four quadrants, and then crossovers on all four sides. The complexity is immense, 3 men work the night shift, four men the other two shifts. The interlocking is all microprocessor controlled, with automatic routing control, operating the normal schedule is beyond the capability of even 4 men. 1 man manually controls the interlocking at Kledering Yard (main humpyard for Wien), The other two or three try and keep up with getting the occasional late train though the area by overriding the computerized system as needed. Even during these recessionary times more than 500 trains per day will pass through the area that they control. Kledering Yard may have a smaller footprint than Bailey Yard at North Platte, NE but they hump more cars per day. Every train that enters that yard from the south or east is routed by Matzliensdorf Center. Austria should be under 100 towers left by the end of 2012. With the maj
When Solomon speaks of “different operating philosophies,” he’s likely referring to historically different approaches to train handling in North America and Europe. While the “cabin-to-cabin” system (I’ll call it) was not unknown in America, it was (and is) much more prevalent in Europe and helps explain the greater number of towers (or “cabins” or “signal boxes”) there. In the U.S., towers generally control(led) interlockings. Their operators communicated the passing of trains to their colleagues at adjacent towers and to the dispatcher, but those trains normally got permission to occupy the line between interlockings either by train order (telegraphed or telephoned) or, later, by automatic block signal indication. In contrast, in Europe it’s the cabin operators who give trains permission to occupy the line between cabins, with a dispatcher’s oversight. These cabins are often located at passenger stations with passing sidings and their signals control not only safe movement through the interlocking but also serve as “entrance” and “exit” signals that gave permission to enter the next section of line. For safety, these signals, whether mechanical or electrical, are tied in with electrical blocking instruments. Cabin A asks Cabin B for permission to let a train to occupy the line between them. If B agrees, he actuates a button that lets A clear his “entrance” signal to “proceed” while it locks B’s own entrance signal governing movement in the opposite direction on that track at “Danger.” B then asks C for permission, and so on up the line. Changing over from this established infrastructure to centralized dispatching has come slowly in Europe. Even with centralization, though, this operating “philosophy” still applies there.
So basically dense, frequent, and more eye to contact has lead to a more encouragement of RR Towers in Europe. Now how far off is the theory about the fact that most railroads outside the US are government funded and/or owned/operated? What about Asia and Australia?
Anyone think that RR Towers may have a small resurrection someday?
One thing I never fully understood is if rail towers (esspecially in yards) provide a benefit of eye to eye monitoring of what is going on, then why is the Baily command center flat on the ground with no view of the yard operations? Is there no finanical benefit to having a rail tower anymore, more so in a form of a tax deduction of some sort?
in reply to BTSO, an interesting sideline to ‘tower control’ vs. ‘dispatcher control’ is that far more responsibility devolves on a US conductor than on a brit/german ‘guard’. this has led to the british denigration of american speed records, as they claim they’re timed by ‘just a guard’. take NYC’s 112.5 mph record of 1893 for instance; this was over a distance of 3 miles timed by the conductor at 96 seconds. if the mileposts were correct and the conductor’s watch was accurate, both quite reasonable assumptions, then the calculated speed was in fact 112.5; if the conductor mis-read his watch by one second, plus or minus, then the speed was between 113.7 and 111.3. -arturo (while in mexico)
Wiser heads here can better comment on the effects of government rail ownership, but I’ve visited Europe often (spouse is German) and read a lot about that country’s system and others. I’ll go out on a limb to say that labor regulations make it harder in Europe than in the US to pink-slip employees when a new technology comes along. To the extent that’s true, it has probably been a factor in the slow adoption of centralized dispatching centers there. In the cabin example I gave above, over the years a certain busy German line with a cabin-to-cabin system kept its station operators with telephones and blocking machines for many years after computer links were installed in the cabins. But the line is now centrally controlled from Munich. Presumably, cost-effectiveness finally won out.
A resurrection? I think towers (i.e., local control) will survive only where complex local traffic dictates, but they’ll use computer technology, of course. The Long Island RR’s Jamaica complex is a good example. Freight yards like Bailey are another. Maybe some new “towers” will bloom where the need dictates. Otherwise, now that remote computerized remote control of interlockings is so viable and economical, that’s how it will go. Take Philadelphia’s Zoo interlocking. Several towers originally controlled the complex. When technology advanced, one tower replaced the several. Now it’s remotely controlled from one of Amtrak’s NEC centers (with simplified trackage, granted) but the onsite, solid-state logic systems at Zoo resemble the presence of several electro-mechanical towers, rather than one. That’s robotics for you!
I am sorry, but I am not exactly sure what you are getting at, I mean I understand what you are explaining, it is just I do not fully understand the connection between CTC and Tower dispatching.
highgreen.
What you say about foreign railroads probably is not too far off. I mean, people got to work and I suppose as long as the RR keeps making money, what is the point? At least that seems to be the logic.
When I meant resurrection, I meant more so if rail traffic skyrockets and possibly trains become smaller; would there be some encouragement to rebuild some rail towers to oversee the bottlenecks and allow more visual perspectives of operations if it financially makes sense which would be the only way this would happen.