switch stands

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Tue Dec 20 19:35:55 EST 2022


So, when N&W signaled both mains for running in either direction (when?),
did the new signals installed eliminate all the mainline dwarves and switch
stands?
Jim Cochran

On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 4:17 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

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> -------- Original message --------
> From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> Date: 12/20/22 12:05 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> Subject: Re: switch stands
>
>
>> "4.  As for what most people would call ground switches (i.e. low level
>> switch stands of the Ramapo Ajax type,)  N&W practice was to illuminate
>> with oil switch markers those on tracks where there was a significant
>> amount of traffic, say yard ladder tracks.  There may have been a
>> specification about where illuminated switch markers were to be used in the
>> N&W MW Standard Plans; I do not know.  Or there may have been a legal
>> requirement - in Pennsylvania, the Public Utilities Commission required a
>> light on switches which saw, on average, more than six engine/train
>> movements per 24-hour day.  I do not know what the formal requirements were
>> on the N&W as my typical excuse applies:  my function on the N&W was to
>> push box cars around in the darkness, not to wrestle with the formal
>> regulations and policies.  Of course, the advent of Scotch-Light
>> reflectorized tape spelled the death knell of illuminated lamps on most
>> switches.  N&W switches were converted from oil lamps to that garbage
>> sometime in the 1960s.  Radford was the last place I saw still using oil
>> switch markers, and that was sometime in the 1970s.  Interlocked switches,
>> i.e. power-operated switches within interlocking limits, have never, since
>> the earliest days, required a switch marker. "
>>
>> By the late sixties, early seventies mainline switch targets were no
>> longer illuminated nor did they have red or green targets. I was told so
>> that they could not be mistaken for a signal aspect.
>>
>> Jimmy Lisle
>>
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