Eastern Railroad Discussion > Conrail power switch question

Detailing the interlockings on my model railroad and trying to remember if power switches had a hand throw lever on the machine or had to be crankred by a maintainer. Vaguely remember trains wait on maintainers when switch failures occurred. TIA
Michael T Kerner
Collinsville, IL

Posted from Android

There were (and still are, I believe) mainline power switches on the former Conrail St. Louis Line that were power-only and did not have a Hand-Throw option.

Not a very wise decision, that, as for many years the lack of ability to hand-line caused hours' worth of delays in single instances.

Pattern of Failure is right.  Some are, some aren't.  Usually the ones that fail are the ones that are Not...Murphy's law and all.
this is a *general* rule, but if it's a higher speed crossover or interlocking, it has a handthrow option, the smaller ones don't...Usually one end of a siding would have it, and one end would not.

ConFail strikes again.

Posted from Android

PRR switches were/are air over electric, activated by the air that is controlled electrically ... unlike today's all electric switch machines that can be manually thrown from a CIH house, the air switches need to be thrown from the field location of each switch ... if a switch couldn't be thrown either by an opr and/or disp a maintainer needs to first be found ... one there he needs to remove the cover for the air box that holds the 3 air control valves for that particular switch ... once the valves are exposed the maintainer removes the lid on the center air control valve while pressing down on the 2 other air control valves ... they will then activate ... to throw the switch back the same needs to be done ... very time consuming especially if the maintainer is not in the area ...

Conrail/CSX has this setup at CP IU, in downtown indianapolis.  WHen the air compressor goes down (Which it does about once a month) the whole interlocking plant goes down...Having to depend on the embarrassingly slow B&B department to fix it to run trains can take upwards of 2 days.  Asking them to fix an airconditioner in a crew office? We've been waiting 3 weeks now for that "part that was ordered"
 

DrLoco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Conrail/CSX has this setup at CP IU, in downtown
> indianapolis.  WHen the air compressor goes down
> (Which it does about once a month) the whole
> interlocking plant goes down...Having to depend on
> the embarrassingly slow B&B department to fix it
> to run trains can take upwards of 2 days.  Asking
> them to fix an airconditioner in a crew office?
> We've been waiting 3 weeks now for that "part that
> was ordered"
>  

A B&M colleague told me about the signal department making a trainline hose connection to the air system so they could blow it up with an engine when needed, which was frequently enough to make the effort necessary.

TAW

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> PRR switches were/are air over electric, activated
> by the air that is controlled electrically ...
> unlike today's all electric switch machines that
> can be manually thrown from a CIH house, the air
> switches need to be thrown from the field location
> of each switch ... if a switch couldn't be thrown
> either by an opr and/or disp a maintainer needs to
> first be found ... one there he needs to remove
> the cover for the air box that holds the 3 air
> control valves for that particular switch ... once
> the valves are exposed the maintainer removes the
> lid on the center air control valve while pressing
> down on the 2 other air control valves ... they
> will then activate ... to throw the switch back
> the same needs to be done ... very time consuming
> especially if the maintainer is not in the area
> ...

B&O expected operators to be able to troubleshoot sufficiently to move trains, just as engineers formerly being required to fix whatever on the engine that was broken. I didn't work anywhere with air switches (Polk Street was the only one on B&OCT), but the places that had power switches were not dual control. Part of qualification was to be able to open the switch machine and use the clutch handle and crank from the tower tool rack to wind the switch over. For mechanical switches, we had to be able to demonstrate that we could disconnect, bar over, and spike if necessary. We had to call the maintainer for the real fix, but we were expected to do something to run trains if it was at all possible.

TAW

While reading this, one might wonder why railroads used air actuated power switches at all?

However, air actuated switches respond faster than motor switches.  This can be crucial when there were many movements in a short period of time, such as suburban terrritory.  And, the frequency of movements usually results in personel available for repairs faster. BSB