Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Argentine tower being torn down

Well I guess the post I read from a few weeks ago was true, the tall tower at Argentine is being torn down. I screenshot the post from Facebook and removed the names. BNSF sure is on a spree of tearing things down the past few years. 

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Who needs towers when you have cameras everywhere?

This is a historic structure, stop! :)

No need for it there are so few trains in their yard............LOL

Where does the yardmaster reside now?

          Are the yard masters at an office or at home now watching 10 orr 12 monitors so they have a 110% handle on every facet of activity !! ??

Someone stated  towers perhaps do not meet firecode NOW with one way in and out?  So now they can't be used?  wonder how airport control towers satisfy this requirement, elevator and stairs? 2 sets of stairs?

dan Wrote:
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> Someone stated  towers perhaps do not meet
> firecode NOW with one way in and out?  So now
> they can't be used?  wonder how airport control
> towers satisfy this requirement, elevator and
> stairs? 2 sets of stairs?

Usually with changes in code, existing structures would be grandfathered. However, this is California so who knows.

Posted from Android

P Wrote:
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> dan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Someone stated  towers perhaps do not meet
> > firecode NOW with one way in and out?  So now
> > they can't be used?  wonder how airport
> control
> > towers satisfy this requirement, elevator and
> > stairs? 2 sets of stairs?
>
> Usually with changes in code, existing structures
> would be grandfathered. However, this is
> California so who knows.
>
> Posted from Android

Argentine is in Kansas City KANSAS.

ts1457 Wrote:
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> Where does the yardmaster reside now?

On the NS at the old John Sevier Terminal, they just quit calling it a terminal, changed the yard jobs to "road locals" and pretended to close it down.  No terminal, so therefore no need for yardmasters.

Could have added a surplus NASA zipline from pad 39a

dan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Someone stated  towers perhaps do not meet
> firecode NOW with one way in and out?  So now
> they can't be used?  wonder how airport control
> towers satisfy this requirement, elevator and
> stairs? 2 sets of stairs?

or a nice slide or a fire pole

Haqving worked in the high tower at Barstow from 76' to 90', I finjd this post troubling.  Barstow's high tower still has a yardmaster type routing trains within the yard and a car foreman disrecting the inspections of trains in the yard..

TIOGA PASS

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

When I worked at Argentine back in 2009 - 2012, only the terminal manager and someone from the car department were in the tower. There wasn't much looking out of the windows for them as everything was on the screens. Didn't really serve a purpose like it did in an era before cameras and computers. I wish i took some photos from up there when I had a chance. 

For a time in the 90's, road train & engine crews went on duty in the brick building at the base of the tower, and were vanned back and forth to the trains.

Worked there in 1980 as Staff Assistant (fancy name for Management Trainee) was up in the Tall Tower for the morning management confab and the typical midnight turnover to daylights of what they have to clean up from the night shift.  Worked with some good rails there.  Then spent 3 years as an ATM camped out in Barstow in the High Tower with Norman Orfall of Tioga Pass fame and other "famous" Santa Fe activities.  The technology and data available now coupled with cameras really made the Tall Tower and it's ability to oversee the physical operation makes it obsolete.  The Barstow High Tower is still in a stratgic place where you can get some realism on how things are flowing either well or poorly and manage accordingly.

Jim Wilson

Sad news for sure.  Among the other things I've heard, the tall Argentine Tower was subject to high winds.  Was that true?  Plus, looking west, they had to look over a freeway.  Not ideal visibility.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/24 18:34 by ntharalson.

They use parachutes.

dan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Someone stated  towers perhaps do not meet
> firecode NOW with one way in and out?  So now
> they can't be used?  wonder how airport control
> towers satisfy this requirement, elevator and
> stairs? 2 sets of stairs?

It may have to do with asbestos in the old towers. Probably cheaper to tear them down instead of remediation. I believe that was the reason I heard to close the 38th Street tower in Denver.

James Nelson
Thornton, CO
www.flickr.com/mojaveflyer

thought the reason for cheyenne tower disuse was the stairway thing, not sure. If it  is used now, or not. fact or fiction.

wonder about how local building codes , and enforcement effect these things, or is it  new national code?