Eric Powell writes: > Union wasn't a very exciting place, aesthetically speaking. Just a single > story building. I would imagine a more ornamental interlocker was there at > some point, but I don't know this for fact .... anybody have any insight on > that? Recalling that the PRR/C&EI crossing in Terre Haute was once a non-interlocked crossing controlled by a flagman, I checked an old C&EI timetable and find that as of 1935, at least, the crossing was indeed non-interlocked as of that date. I guess my memory isn't as bad as I'd thought. This fits with my general impression and recollections that most PRR signaling improvements on the "Vandalia" line took place in the very late Thirties, during the WWII years, or immediately thereafter. The PRR was not one of the first railroads to adopt CTC but they eventually put it to good use on the less heavily-trafficked lines out west. The PRR's unique tower arrangements was a result of their labor agreement with the telegraphers union (ORT) which stipulated that only operators would operate signal and switch levers. Where other railroads' dispatchers could operate a large CTC machine and control the entire division from one desk, the PRR could not. So when the PRR decided to CTC some of their territory (mostly the stuff out west like the Vandalia), they had to have operators to do the job. This explains the towers at Limedale, Union, Vandalia, Smithboro, et al, each controlling a more extended territory than just the local interlocking. This labor restriction, so far as I am aware, survived into the Conrail era and when it was finally swept aside, it was one of several factors that led to hundreds of towers chopped by Conrail's swift sword in the ensuing years. I have seen pictures of "centralized dispatching" in the late Penn Central era wherein a dispatcher sat at one desk with his train sheet and gave instructions to one or more operators who manned CTC board -- kind of in the same vein as a train director in a busy tower would give instructions to levermen. If I had to give a semi-authoritative guess, I would say that Union died not long after some of the Conrail "rationalization" (i.e., abandonment) around Terre Haute in the early Eighties. Vandalia closed and became an automatic interlocking on June 7, 1965 (I have the IC correspondence file for the opening and closing of that tower), with its CTC functions on the PRR moving to Smithboro as of that date. Vandalia still stands and is typical of the PRR wartime tower designs; I'm told that Piqua, OH had an identical building built shortly after the tower there burned as a result of a collision. Smithboro was the last holdout of the Vandalia bunch, surviving until some time in 1986. > The foundation of Limedale is still there, as are many of the bricks that > encased the building. It looks like when CR crews bulldozed the joint back > in the early '80s, they just knocked it over, picked up most of the mess and > didn't worry too much about doing a thorough cleanup job. The coolest thing > about Limedale, in my opinion, is that much of the tile floor in the CTC > building is still in place (this is as of a year ago, last time I was > there). Kind of a wierd feeling, to walk on the floor of a building that no > longer exists! That's the same feeling I get when I walk on the foundation of the old depot at Tolono. One can see where each of the internal walls were, so it's easy to pick out the location of the operator's area, the waiting room, the ticket counter, etc. And in my mind's eye I can see the depot as it was a mere eight years ago when it was a live manned interlocking tower. As one who spent many hours there, it is a profoundly depressing experience to have to see the skeleton. ------------------------------------------------------ This is the Illiana Railroad Discussion List. For more info visit http://www.railcenter.com/illiana ------------------------------------------------------
