Another disappearing railroad item are towers. There are a number of towers still in the Chicago area, including NW Indiana.
What towers are you aware of, either active or retired in your area?
Here in NW Indiana, there is Calumet and Grassilli on the EJE and IHB in East Chicago. There is a drawbridge tower on the EJE and also Hick Tower on the NS. All are in operation.
Also Wade Tower in Lacrosse, In (Monon and C&O) is being restored.
ed
last knew…Delray in Detroit was still active…Alexs in Toledo maybe…and well thats it for SE Mi
In Kalamazoo I believe that BO tower is still active.
In Blue Island Grand Trunk Tower a.k.a Blue Island Jct is still active.
On Metra’s ex Milw lines, Towers A2, A5 (Pacific Jct), B17 and Rondout are still active. You may hear Tower B35 mentioned on the radio, it is remote controlled from B17.
Sorry Alexis has been gone for a number of years. The only ones left “active” in the Toledo Oh area are Stanley (CSX) and Hallet (Ann Arbor-CSX). Still standing but closed are WR tower, Ironville, and BA tower. Two of the three bridges are manned during the shipping season.
There is a web database somewhere, but I can’t find the URL at this moment. I want to say the guy who maintains it is at the University of Illinois.
Here in New Orleans we still have two operational, manned interlocking towers, East Bridge Tower and West Bridge Tower, which control traffic over the Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi River. I think both are owned by the New Orleans Public Belt Railroad; IC operates the former and BNSF (or maybe UP?) operates the latter.
We also have four towers that are unmanned and in varying states of disuse: Clara St. at Union Passenger Terminal (downtown), East City (confusingly on the west side of the city, on the NS “back belt” connection to the Bernadotte Line, which is down to a short distance and one customer), L&N (NS - CSX east of downtown), and Northeast (also NS - CSX on the east side of town).
F tower in Fostoria is still in operation. There is also an old tower just north of F tower on the old C&O, I am not sure of its history though.
Hello everybody that tower on the north side of fostoria is ex NYC if you look at it very close you can still see the NYC cigar band emblem on the south side of the tower. Nasby tower on toledo’s west side is still standing i think but not used.
last time i was at alexis we still got orders southbound on CSX but that was in 2000…[#offtopic]…i was in Blissfield last weekend…passing thru i caught one of your Geeps hooking up to the dinner train…love the shiny paint keep it up [tup]
I think that the tower in Carleton MI is also still standing.
The database of towers appears at:
nope…razed around '00 …not sure exactly when
Nasby is gone as are the diamonds it protected, leaving a part of the old Toledo Terminal totaly cut off. Carlton is still standing but who knows for how long. [#offtopic] I was the engineer on that train, we try to keep the paint clean but as of late they have been getting a real workout.
deshler tower is still used by csx mow crews(mostly for the bathroom).leipsic tower is still barely standing.might be demolished soon as part of the ethenol plant project.FC tower here in defiance is long gone but crews still call the signals FC(or sometimes KFC).
stay safe
Joe
still [#offtopic] we …me and the family…were in the green ford minivan…lol…just-a-nut takin train pics…are you sure about carlton???..i remember seeing nothing there last time down…which as i said was i '00…but im sure willing to make the drive to see [:-^]
Sorry J.Edgar I must have missed ya. I still worked for CSX until 03 and it was up then(Carlton tower) and I have seen many pics of it in just the last week.
fair enough