Nostalgia & History > Santa Fe Depot and Signals at Del Mar, CA

Santa Fe depot and signals at Del Mar, CA which is just north of San Diego on the Pacific Coast.  No information on slide mounts.  My guess is about 1972.  Google Satellite shows the depot.  The camera is facing south in the first two photos.  Yes, that's a telephone booth in Photo 3.

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A very busy depot at times.

Out 

#2 has a nice view of a "position light" style switch indicator on the far right. Santa Fe used upper quadrant semaphore indicators, position-types like this, and bare bulbs (on or off to indicate occupancy in the adjacent block), but I'm not aware of any cases where they used SP's favorite lower quadrant semaphore-style indicator heads.

Evan,

That's actually a block indicator, not a switch indicator, used to indicate to maintenance of way equipment operators when a train was in the adjacent blocks, as your second sentence suggests.  We San Diego railfans were quite familiar with these when we went chasing freight trains at night.  They were all over the Fourth District ('Surf Line"), and I believe the Santa Fe used them all over the  L.A. division.  I never got very far east of Barstow back when they were still in service, so I don't know how much of the system was covered by them.

Your mention of using bare bulbs reminds me that this was what was used for the approach indicators in the operators bay at old Summit -- and there was no bell or buzzer when a train was approaching.  Some operators seemed to be able to nod off in the chair and then wake up when one of the bulbs went out to call the dispatcher with "Summit coming west" (or east).

D F W

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
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> #2 has a nice view of a "position light" style
> switch indicator on the far right. Santa Fe used
> upper quadrant semaphore indicators,
> position-types like this, and bare bulbs (on or
> off to indicate occupancy in the adjacent block),
> but I'm not aware of any cases where they used
> SP's favorite lower quadrant semaphore-style
> indicator heads.

Wildebeest Wrote:

> That's actually a block indicator, not a switch indicator, used to indicate to maintenance of way
> equipment operators when a train was in the adjacent blocks, as your second sentence suggests. 

Perhaps I'm not understanding Santa Fe's terminology correctly.  I didn't mean to imply that this was a switch POINT indicator for use by train crews to determine if the points of a spring switch are in the normal position.  The Kachina Press Santa Fe System Standards books have a couple of pages titled "Switch Indicator Locations," showing gizmos like the one in the photo adjacent to switches.  My impression from that was that a block indicator beside a switch for use by speeder/MoW crews, like the one at Del Mar, was called a "switch indicator."  Is there more nuance to it than that?

Indicators adjacent to switches appeared along the main line east of Barstow, across Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado at least in ABS territory.  I'm not sure how extensively they were used further east.  Some of the last ones I knew of were at Homer and Bannock, CA, lingering into the early 2000's.

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3648845,3649427#3649427
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2099584,2099767#2099767

Wildebeest Wrote:
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> Evan,
>
> That's actually a block indicator, not a switch
> indicator, used to indicate to maintenance of way
> equipment operators....

The signal industry always referred to them as switch indicators, regardless of their roll, so Evan is correct. Their first use was to alert crews of approaching movements while attempting to enter main track in ABS territory without the benefit of wayside signals. Thus, they were position next to switches so the brakeman could ascertain if it was safe to "bend the iron." The name stuck.

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> #2 has a nice view of a "position light" style
> switch indicator on the far right. Santa Fe used
> upper quadrant semaphore indicators,
> position-types like this, and bare bulbs (on or
> off to indicate occupancy in the adjacent block),
> but I'm not aware of any cases where they used
> SP's favorite lower quadrant semaphore-style
> indicator heads.

I have never seen, either in person or a photo, of a Santa Fe  lower-quadrant switch indicator. The Santa Fe did, however, have two styles of upper-quadrant switch indicators.

The bare bulb inbdicators were a result of the Santa Fe being cheap and not wanting to maintain/rebuild the upper quandrant indicators.  They took the mechanism out and installed light bulb sockets.

spladiv Wrote:

> The bare bulb inbdicators were a result of the
> Santa Fe being cheap and not wanting to
> maintain/rebuild the upper quandrant indicators. 
> They took the mechanism out and installed light
> bulb sockets.

I've seen photos of bare bulb indicators on Santa Fe from as early as the mid-1940's, and semaphore-style indicators in person as late as the late 1980's.

I didn't mean to indicate that the conversion was a program of replacement.  As the units failed they were converted.  The light bulb units have no moving parts to fail and are much easier to test in the field.  Pickup and drop away voltages are tested on the semaphore type unless I'm mistaken.

Thanks Marty- great look back. For those that don't know, there was a living quarters on the second floor of the old Del Mar Depot.
I knew an old Agent, now long gone- who actually was allowed to live there. He worked the Del Mar station as an Agent/ early 80s.
How easy was that to report to Work? Walk downstairs, and go on duty. Sweet! I have no idea how the Del Mar depot is used today.