Passenger Trains > Amtrak Signal Sunday....

Amtrak # 3 the Southwest Chief is 10 mins from its scheduled departure from Albuquerque NM yesterday. AMTK 123 leads the way.

Tony

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What a great photo. Love the old signals. It looks like an Amtrak locomotive in the far right of the photo? Is that a protect unit or is there another reason it is there? Thanks.

Santa Fe enginemen called that signal the "block at Abajo."

Bob

BOBDRGW Wrote:
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> What a great photo. Love the old signals. It looks
> like an Amtrak locomotive in the far right of the
> photo? Is that a protect unit or is there another
> reason it is there? Thanks.

I imagine it is a protect unit just in case. For anyone wondering, it is unit # 140.

Tony

Otto Perry photographed the eastbound Super Chief from near the same spot in 1937:

http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15330coll22/id/62313

The shops were there, but the searchlights and cantilever were still in the future.

Searchlight signals are pleasing to the eye, easier to spot, brighter, and frankly, seem better built, constructed and installed than all the new, tilting, sometimes bent hooded things that are sweeping across America. Really, to me they look like 10 years from now they'll be falling apart, or falling over.

A green searchlight looks like it's yelling "Go!", whereas the hooded things only say it by mumbling "go." They look so draconian, depressing.

I liken it to the late Steve Jobs, who INSISTED that everything APPLE made create a pleasant interface experience with the user. Has to appeal to the senses, look good, feel good. Searchlights do that. Hooded tri-lights don't. They are "ugh-ly."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/12 20:00 by coach.

coach Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Searchlight signals are pleasing to the eye,
> easier to spot, brighter, and frankly, seem better
> built, constructed and installed than all the new,
> tilting, sometimes bent hooded things that are
> sweeping across America. Really, to me they look
> like 10 years from now they'll be falling apart,
> or falling over.
>
> A green searchlight looks like it's yelling "Go!",
> whereas the hooded things only say it by mumbling
> "go." They look so draconian, depressing.
>
> I liken it to the late Steve Jobs, who INSISTED
> that everything APPLE made create a pleasant
> interface experience with the user. Has to appeal
> to the senses, look good, feel good. Searchlights
> do that. Hooded tri-lights don't. They are
> "ugh-ly."


I could not agree more. I've tried to warm up to the hooded trilights but can't. Flimsy, no character, nothing railroad about them. They look like they were bought on special at Walmart in fact.