There are spring switches that are used on the NS Louisville District in Track Warrant Territory along the sidings of Coal Chute, Waddy, Joyes and Tucker. The Talmage siding and Dumesnil sidings have CTC switches. Eventually the rest of the Louisville Dst will have CTC “islands” installed in the next few years to eliminate the long walks the crew has to make from the rear to the front of the train (source: a NS conductor). There is a CTC “island” installed at Maneta for the Shelbyville Mixing Center.
Had the extreme pleasure of operating a steam locomotive on the Nevada Northern a few weeks ago in Ely, Nevada. Their wye up at Keystone is all spring switch controlled, and saves about ten to twelve minutes in turning their trains.
The old SP Coast Lines (now UP) had spring switches at the sidings in Simi Valley, also. Most of SP’s switch stands had an “S” painted on them for identification.
When I was growing up in Heath Springs, So. Car., I noticed that there was a spring frog in connection with one of the three siding switches. This was 55 years ago. It surprised me that such a device had been installed on that branch line (Kingville, So. Car., to Marion, No. Car.).
My first definite experience with spring switches came in 1971, when I rode into Naples, Fla., on what had been the ACL. The train had an engineer and two trainmen, and none of them had to step off to line the switches as the train went around the wye–the engineer ran past the first and second switches, which were lined for the movements, backed past the second (spring) and third (lined) switches, ran past the third switch (spring) and stopped at the station–ready to head out for Lakeland the next morning, at which time it ran past the first switch (spring).
In the fifties and sixties, various Southern employee timetables showed spring switches in many locations, generally at the ends of sidings. I would say that most of these are no longer spring switches.
The need springs up from time to time.
However, on trolley lines in Tampa, about once every twenty minutes.
Gabe
The C&O used them at the Pressque Isle and the NYC Lake Front coal docks(other RRs used these facilities as well) on the Maumee bay into Lake Erie (near Toledo.) The “Pig” pushes an individual car up onto the machine, probably 40 or 50 feet high. The machine picks the entire car up with the track section it is on and turns it completly over and dumps the coal out into the ship or lake boat. After the car is dumpped it is returned to level and then the car is pushed off the machine where it steeply declines off the machine to gather speed, goes past the spring switch and up a “highbuck” nearly vertical it seems, where gravity stops it, reverses it, then it goes past the spring switch again to slow down by gravity in the empty yards. This process happened probably once a min. which would be a pain for a switchman to be throwing a switch for an eight hour shift, not to mention the switch is not level, it is part way up the “highbuck”. This would happen several hundred times to fill a lake boad with coal. There were many machines of this type on the great Lakes, and I believe they had them at Newport News as well. The only thing that may have been more impressive was the giant Hewlett unloaders for the iron oar (usually taconite) I know a picture of one of these unloaders would be great here but I don’t have one.
Paul
Dayton and Mad River RR