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| Up close and personal at Tower 55 (1308119) | |||
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Up close and personal at Tower 55 |
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Posted by Dave on Sun Aug 17 09:14:34 2014 On a beautiful Friday morning my buddy Ken took me along to shoot some photos at Tower 55 in Ft. Worth. In the process of being completed is MAJOR trackwork - the replacement of a double diamond interlocking with two tracks in each direction, with a new double diamond interlocking with three tracks north-south and two east-west. For a 36 hour period all traffic was rerouted; and this is at one of the busiest interlocking's in the country, with over 100 trains/day.Tower 55 was originally commissioned on Sept. 26, 1904. The current structure was put in service on 1938. Back in 1904 the railroads served were the Texas & Pacific; the Gulf, Colorado & Sante Fe; MKT; and Houston & Central Texas. Today it serves the UP; BNSF; Ft. Worth & Western; and Amtrak. Here are a couple of early images. No, I didn't take these! The first shot is MoPac (T&P) meeting Sante Fe:  A MoPAc (T&P) freight:  With the work winding down and gandydancers all over the place, traffic was restricted to one track in each direction. The signals aren't active yet so each train had to be cleared by a dispatcher in Tower 55. Switch tenders manually threw switches. We were smack-dab in the middle of the action! This crane being disassembled was the one used to lift out the old diamonds and drop in the new diamonds. North-South traffic was halted since the crane was reaching over one of the tracks:  With traffic stopped for 20 minutes the gandydancers got hard to work. In the background is a coal train waiting to proceed:  Darth Vaders waiting to be activated:  With the track clear the UP coal train was authorized to proceed. On the point was 6841, an AC4400CW:   Following was 6239, also an AC4400CW. MAS through the interlocking right now is 10mph:  DPU's were 6648 and 6481, both AC4400CW's:  A few minutes later there was a call to the dispatcher requesting permission for a light engine move to Davidson Yard, a major UP yard a few miles to the west. Because the lead unit was running backwards a trainman rode the porch. Units 7865 (ES44AC) and 5806 (AC4400CWCTE) were the consist:    Here are the new diamonds. The east-west tracks (top to bottom) run west to Davidson Yard. The three north-south tracks (left to right) run to various points. The bottom track is used by UP; the middle track is jointly used by UP and BNSF; and the top track is used by BNSF:  The gray paint indicates insulation sections. The wire is for the signals:  At this point we took a break and headed into the Tower to cool off and drink some water. There were 5 dispatchers and a supervisor in there and since they didn't know me, I wasn't about to start taking pictures! After a 10 minute break we headed back down the stairs. We saw a transfer drag from North Yard waiting for clearance to proceed to Davidson Yard. Units were 5806 (AC4400CWCTE), 7865 (ES44AC), 2233 (SD60), and 2248 (SD60):  It was waiting because a general merchandise freight from Davidson Yard was proceeding first. On the point was 4893, followed by 4826 and 4067 (all SD70M's), then 6822 (AC4400CW), crawling by at 10mph:  A few minutes later the two trains passed each other and the crews exchanged waves:  All in all it was a VERY fun day! |
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