I stopped at Brighton Park Jct today and took a couple of photos. There were two trains parked but none moved thru the junction.
The switchtender walked over towards me and asked if I was a “spectator”. With the affirmative answer he was quite helpful and didnt have a problem with me being there, as long as I didnt get on the tracks.
Cutover date is July 6th. He said the NS is working at a feverish pace to complete the task.
There is some serious signal hardware on site.
He indicated the semaphores are heading to Roanoke, Va. to the NS museum.
Sounds like an OK place for them; I guess they’d be NS’s to do with whatever they wished. (I kind of liked the idea of moving the shanty and semaphores to Union, myself.)
I’m still curious as to what happened to the CREATE plan of grade-separating the CN route from the north-south lines. I can’t envision a high-speed Chicago-St. Louis route without a grade separation here and at Argo.
[tup]100 percent correct. They should stay in Illinois as a set. Or maybe we can trade them for the 611 and bring it here for restoration and get 'er rolling again…
Suffering from that political disease: Lackafundza
I was at Brighton Park a few years ago on a weekday, and I had no problems. The neighborhood is aging but I’d hardly call it unsafe.
I’m only surprised that Brighton Park remained a non-interlocked junction for as long as it did. Installing an interlocking is something that should have occurred decades ago.
From reading a post on another railfan forum. Brighton Park semaphores are REMOVED !! There were some photos of the semaphore masts being removed after a cutting torch made the cut. The final train through was an Amtrak train last evening.
I understand the entire area is secured with police tape and several railroad police.
I was there about three weeks ago and took photos and had a good conversation with the switchtender.
A couple of days later I went thru the digital photos on my camera and deleted those which had already been loaded to the computer. It was as I hit the delete button that I wondered…“did I save those to computer or not?”
Got this on the spot report from a friend this (Saturday) morning.
“Lest ye doubted, the Brighton Park crossing IS being rebuilt this weekend. I was there (with permission) this morning to watch a well-choreographed effort involving contractor and railroad crews. The main eight-diamond crossing was lifted in as a single unit, with 14-foot track centers. A couple of freights may be allowed through as early as this evening, as there has been much moaning among the railroads about the detours.”
Replacing the diamonds, presumably with new diamonds of a heavier cross-section, makes perfect sense. The crossing is changing from a stop-and-proceed arrangement to being able to proceed at track speed if you have the signal, which means higher speeds over the diamonds.
My friend advises that the crossing is designed for 40mph but railroads may limit trains to 30. Still, the elimination of the mandatory stop and proceed has to improve traffic flow. At 30mph, a mile long train can get over the crossing in two minutes. I don’t know what the old speed limit was, but in any event a train accelerating from a dead stop won’t get an average speed over the crossing equal to the speed limit.
Obviously, there will be times when conflicting moves will require a train to stop. If the overall system is giving the dispatcher good intelligence (train length, weight, power, approaching speed) he should be able to make the decision on who stops and who goes in a manner that minimizes overall delay minutes.
I was at ashland yard this morning it was full of weed weasels and other big wigs trying to get everthing up and running I also got bulletins stating that the CJ tracks are now being controlled by the new dispatcher at ashland which lead up to brighton park
We’ll have to wait and see on that. It means that there will no longer be a human presence at the crossing all the time. But I suspect that security might be stepped up a little, or perhaps fences erected. And Burger King will probably lose a little business.