Were the towers on PRR west(?) of Horseshoe curve there, just for the purpose of switching trains between the 4 PRR tracks?
Murph:
I do not have first hand knowledge of the Pennsy, but my educated guess is the towers served the purpose of controlling the turnouts and crossovers. Plus handing up train orders.
Remember, that line did not have CTC. Thus the dispatcher would issue train orders which would be handed up or hooped to the engine and the caboose.
As a side note, the neatest Christmas gift I have gotten in a long time was this past year. My girlfriend, later promoted to fiance,found a bunch of my 8x10’s from teh 70’s and had three framed in a horizontal layout of cabooses of the Conrail and C&O with the conductors reaching out for train orders. It was shortly after that gift that she was promoted!
ed
PRR clung to towers longer then most. In fact, most PRR towers lasted into the Conrail era and then quickly disappeared. There are a few left on Amtrak’s NEC, I believe the towers at Paoli, Overbrook, and Zoo are still manned.
My office, at CSX’s Eastside yard, in Philadelphia - RG Tower - was manned until the early 90s. The operator’s desk was next to the yardmasters desk. With the exception of the operation Schuylkill River Drawbridge, all movements are controlled by the AV Dispatcher in Jacksonville, FL. Even though the operator is long gone, tradition dies hard, and the office and yard are still refered to as RG Tower and RG Yard. Most people look at you funny when you call it Eastside.
Nick
I do not think I have ever seen an interlocking tower in person. The only railroad related tower I have been to is a yard tower (for the yardmaster). I did get invited up to one once.
My vote for the most interesting “tower” operation I’ve ever seen is Chicago’s Brighton Park Crossing, where two north/south NS lines and a CSX line are crossed by a CN line (former C&A, etc.) to Joliet. NS, CSX and CN are the current owners – the lines have great history with other long-gone railroads including but not exclusive to NYC and PRR. Others that crossed have long since been abandoned and the rails salvaged.
Here’s what Bill Gustason’s excellent website “Chicago Rail Junctions” has to say:
“What makes Brighton so interesting is its mode of operation. Despite all the trackage, it is not an interlocking plant. It is run by a “switchtender” who occupies the cabin between the CSX and Panhandle tracks. All trains approaching the junction must stop; they are allowed to proceed only when signalled by the switchtender, who uses manually operated semaphores to convey his messages. Going to Brighton is like going back to the 1940’s–one of the few places where semaphores actuated by rods can still be found.”
Here’s one of Bill’s photos:
and here’s the link:
http://www.dhke.com/CRJ/brighton.html
Click on the link for a highly-detailed description including a map of the crossing and directions on how to get there. It is the only place in Chicago where semaphores are still in operation, but BEWARE! – the security around the crossing is extremely tight and intolerant these days and the security agents will sooner have you arrested by the Chicago Police than give you a warning. The controversial video that appeared in a thread here about six months ago where a railroad officer allegedly challenged two railfans (wh
We had a tower here on Vancouver Island at Ladysmith which was on the cover of the September 1978 Railfan and Railroad. It had an armstrong lever that controlled a stop sign mounted on a post outside to stop traffic on the road crossing at the diamond.
Poppa:
I frequent Brighton Park from time to time when I am in the area and have a few minutes. My sales job puts me in the area quite a bit. I will pull in at Burger King and drive up to the CTA building. If there is something there, I take a picture and then get out. I dont linger.
It is a fascinating place. My photos are always the same view…from the SW quadrant. But, I cant complain, not too many manual interlockings left with semaphores.
If I could ever figure out how to insert pictures on this forum I would drop a couple of Brighton Park in.
ed
Conrail cleaned things up (towers) the best they could, given the finances.
They kept Porter Tower open til 1985 and Judd Tower in LaPorte into the 90’s.
One day I was at Wanatah Tower and the operator crawled up in the attic and started throwing stuff down at me “here, catch these”. They were bundles of station sheets from the 1940’s, which showed all the daily train movements in a 24 hour period of time. They were bundled up in a month supply.
The one I am looking at now (Feb 2, 1946) shows 46 westbounds and 44 eastbounds.
Over the years when I would come across an abandoned tower, I would enter and look for such records. Often they were piled, as trash on the floor or in garbage bags. I have a box of them stored away.
ed
There’s a preserved tower at Bowie, MD on the NEC, unless something has happened to it since 1997. I’m pretty sure it was originally somewhere else and was moved to the site. Don’t even know that it was originally a PRR tower, but believe it was.
I have a book called, “ON THE MAIN LINE” by Alexander that presents early photos of the Pennsylvainia RR. The tower scences from the 1800s are fascinating with the manicured landscape, painted fences, and strange, primitive looking semephores. The large cloth window awnings with bold vertical stripes were a nice touch. Overall, they present quite a magical scene of a long gone era.
We had two towers in Wichita,KS. I can slightly remember them as they closed down when I was a little crum cruncher. They were known as North Jct and South Jct. They controlled the two miles stretch of trk on Wichita Union Terminal Ry on the two mile double trk mainline that went by the Union Stn. This consisted of SF, RI and Frisco. Each company owned a third of WUT. The north twr was a skinny two story wood structure, south twr was built of concrete. They were closed in Jan 1969, and traffic control given to the SF @ Newton,KS. Currently, this trackage is now used by BNSF, UP and Kansas & Oklahoma and is dispatched by BNSF from Kan City.
It would seem that the towers became obsolete due to new technology. Why, then did some towers last so much longer than others?
Partly because the technology didn’t go in everywhere at once and partly some towers were so busy that to integrate them into a CTC board would be more than one dispatcher could handle?
Some junctions are just so complex that a tower is the best way to handle it. I believe Zoo Tower in Philly is that way.
So is Fostoria. Murph you should listen in on the web based scanner for Fostoria sometime. That place is a Zoo! There are trains coming every direction. The Fostoria area is actually it’s own subdivision and the tower controls all movements.
A couple of the towers in NW Indiana are owned and operated by the EJE. I believe they keep them in place because the technology to change is more than they wish to invest.
ed
I used to hang out in the Santa Clara tower where the east bay line joined the San Francisco to San Jose main… Had the old levers. The north end of the Santa Clara yard was right there and trains were pulled out of the bowl onto the main or east bay line and then switched onto another yard track.
Interesting to watch trains coming from three directions and yard work all going on just below the tower. Kept the towerman very busy.
Sometimes it’s better to have a pair of eyes and ears ‘on the ground’ than a bunch of track circuits monitored from 1000 miles away, you can keep a simple mechanical interlocking working almost forever with not much more than a pot of grease and a few hand tools (and you don’t need a laptop computer to debug it when it fails!), and sometimes it’s just easier to leave it alone than get several railroads to agree/pay for it’s replacement.
Tony
MP173–how do we excess the fostoria web thread? Would like to take a listen. Thanks
It’s on rrradionet. There are a bunch of live streaming radio feed around the country on this site. Here is the link:
Thanks Chad for jumping in with that info.
I would suggest that you listen to it. There are lots of names of sidings, junctions, etc. which are confusing but the activity is amazing.
If there is any interest, I can supply names and Mileposts for the vicinity. I purchased CSX timetables for the area which lists all points. Also, as a guide, Trains website has a guide to Fostoria. I believe it is under hot spots.
Anytime you hear communications with “Fostoria” that is the tower.
If interest in this subject we can start another thread with info.
ed
The old “TY” tower in Tuscola,IL. My Dad has a lot of pictures from back then (and yellow-stained shirts!)