Re: (erielack) Tower Telegraph Designations

[Pamela Frick <"hefrick_@_swbell.net">]

    Cant remember if this one has been covered yet,
     at Binghamton there was a small "tower" called BD


     It was actually a very small square brick building that could have been

     mistaken for a signal box or storage building.
     It was located where the Erie and DLW lines came together,
     and contained a small CTC control machine, and I believe space
    for a maintainer.   It controlled the area thru Binghamton  out to a
   point called West BD.
   One of the last remaining towers on the Erie line was MQ at Campbell
Hall,
    which stayed open until around  1972 or 73.
     After Conraill they had an operator on duty at Pt Jervis in the
roundhouse,
     who had been one of the last operators at MQ.  It retained the call
    letters  PO
    Henry Frick


Jim G wrote:

> It looks like most of the important towers and other telegraph
> designation points on the former Erie & DL&W have already been
> identified.  However, here are a few that I am not sure were mentioned:
>
> NY Division interlocking points manned in the 50s:
> GR  Granton Jct. Tower:  junction of the Northern Branch and NYS&W;
> abandoned some time in the 60s.
> FX  Graham Tower: former junction of the Graham Line and Main Line from
> Middletown, before the realignment in the early 50s which abandoned the
> old passenger main through Otisville, shifted all trains through the
> Otisville tunnel portion of the Graham Line, and moved the Graham Line
> junction east to "GD" Howells Jct., a TCS point controlled by the
> Dispatcher.  I don't think that GD ever had a manned interlocking. The
> single-tracked Otisville Tunnel is known as OV, with the TCS
> interlockings controlling the double-to-single track switches known as
> East OV and West OV.  FX Tower was once famous as the point where steam
> helpers on eastbound freights out of Port Jervis were cut off. (Picture
> in Erie Memories).
> BE Drawbridge, Passaic: On the Main Line between Carlton Hill and
> Passaic;  no tower, but the drawbridge tender did operate interlocking
> signals and derails protecting the bridge, did O.S. trains to the
> Dispatcher, and was selected from the NY Division tower operator
> roster.  The bridge was abandoned in the 1963 realignment of the Main
> Line through Passaic.
> XW Tower, Paterson:  Junction of the Main Line, Newark Branch, Paterson
> Yard, and Paterson Station Lower Level leads.  Tower abandoned and
> interlocking cut over to TCS in 1963 as part of the Main Line
> realignment project.
>
> Buffalo Area, interlocking points still manned by Erie in late 50s:
> IQ  Buffalo Tower
> FW Tower, PRR Crossing
> GB  Tower, Blasdell
>
> Cleveland Area, interlocking points still manned by Erie in late 50s:
> HD  Cleveland Bridge
> WE  West End Tower
>
> Youngstown Area, interlocking points still manned by Erie in late 50s:
> P   Deforest Tower
> NK "NK Target"
> VY   Valley Street Tower  (P&LE Junction)
> AB   Hubbard
>
> Dayton Branch, interlocking points still manned by Erie in late 50's:
> NY  Maitland
> PA   Peoria
>
> This list excludes other towers or interlockings along the Erie that
> were manned by other railroads, e.g. JO Tower in Akron, where the Erie
> and B&O / PRR crossed; the tower was staffed by PRR operators, I
> believe.  Tates Point in Dayton also comes to mind.
>
> Another interesting twist regards interlockings controlled by operators
> housed in stations, not towers.  An earlier thread already mentioned JU
> Ohio City, which was an interlocking plant controlled from within a
> station.  Another example was GN Goshen, NY.   I was told that there was
> once a tower in Goshen called "GP", where the Pine Island Branch and
> Montgomery Branch crossed the Main Line (recall that the L&NE used
> trackage rights on those branches to reach the Maybrook interchange with
> the New Haven until the L&NE quit in 1961)(oh, Maybrook Yard was know to
> the Erie as XC).  However, in the early 50s, the Erie put a small panel
> in the station to control that interlocking.  GN continued to be a three
> trick job until the EL discontinued the interlocking and converted the
> switches and crossovers to hand-throw sometime around '63 or '64.
> Another example of this was at Great Notch on the Greenwood Lake line,
> where double track ended and the Caldwell Branch split off. There was a
> GA Tower (picture in Erie Memories), but it was abandoned when an
> interlocking control panel was placed in the adjacent station building.
> The station continued to use the GA designation, and was a two trick
> job.  Control of the interlocking was transferred to the Hoboken
> dispatcher as part of the 1963 Greenwood Lake - Boonton Line realignment
> (connected to the realignment of the Erie Main Line through Passaic).
>
> Also, by the mid-50s, the station operator at Susquehanna, PA had a
> panel controlling the former JA interlocking at Jefferson Jct. (former
> JA Tower), SR interlocking at the west end of Susquehanna yard (former
> SR Tower, where eastbound freights got helpers for the climb to Gulf
> Summit), and the interlocked crossovers at Gulf Summit.  Being on a busy
> mainline, this job was three trick, and was designated NS.  Sometime in
> the 60's, I believe, this panel was transferred to the control of the
> Hornell Dispatcher.  I was also once told that in the 1950s, one of the
> stations along the Delaware Division (Cochecton?) had a small
> interlocking panel controlling a siding off of the westbound main (the
> Delaware being double-tracked back then), where a way freight or a
> slow-moving westbound road freight could get out of the way of a
> passenger run, say the early afternoon westbound Erie Limited.  I think
> that the interlocked crossing of the NYO&W main and the Erie approach to
> Maybrook Yard was once controlled by an NYO&W operator in a station
> known as "CH" (Campbell Hall, NY), although there was formerly a tower
> there.
>
> Finally, here is a clarification as to my earlier thread about there
> being three points in the New York area using the designation "WR".
> This would seem to run against a cardinal principle of railroading, i.e.
> "avoid confusion".  However, I later found out that when these telegraph
> designations were assigned, probably before the turn of the century,
> each point was along a line which was operated and dispatched
> independently.  To wit, WR West Arlington (New Jersey) Tower /
> Drawbridge was along the Greenwood Lake Line, which had independent
> divisional status even into the 1950s.  WR Woodridge (New Jersey)
> Station was along the New Jersey & New York Railroad, later known as the
> Pascack Valley Line; earlier in this century, the NJ&NY had a higher
> degree of operational independence from the New York Division.  And
> therefore, the original New York Division itself only had one WR, i.e.
> the station at West Cornwall, New York (along the Newburgh Branch).  Of
> course, the WR Tower in Huntington, IN was on the far off Marion
> Division, so there was little possibility for confusion there.
>
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