Cowan: What Happened to the Interlocking Machine?

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Fri Oct 29 13:32:52 EDT 2010


I'm certain this question comes fifty years too late. But on the premise that the only bad question is the one which was never asked, I'll pose it anyway.


What became of the interlocking machine in Cowan Tower ?


Union Switch & Signal Co. build the Walton CTC machine in June 1949, and Cowan may well have been part of the Walton CTC installation... I don't know. Anyway, sometime circa 1949, Cowan was closed.


Where did Cowan's interlocking machine go? Obviously it was removed from the tower and carried down the stairs in pieces. (Having dismantled parts of interlocking machines, I can well appreciate the labor involved.) Those machines were expensive, and the Signal Department likely removed it to the Signal Shop in East End Shops. Did it (or its pieces) ever have a useful reincarnation?


Also, does anyone know the type of machine employed at Cowan? Based on what Union Switch & Signal was selling at the time Cowan was built, I surmise that it was probably the Model EP-14 electro-pneumatic, cabinet type machine with "crank levers" rotating left and right through a ninety degree arc.



Is there, in the Archives, a print of the original interlocking at Cowan?


-- Abram Burnett



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