Norfolk Interlocking?

[NW Mailing List]

-----Original Message-----
From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Tue, Mar 27, 2012 8:20 pm
Subject: Re: Norfolk Interlocking?



Harry,
 
Was "NF" (or "FK") a joint facility with N&W, Vgn & NS? If so, which railroad acatually maned the office?
 
Jeff Sanders








Jeff:
My impression is that the "NK/FK" operators didn't fall within the scope of joint facility accounting of
Norfolk Terminal Station.  Norfolk Terminal was headquarters for both VGN and NS and the telegraphic
call for both offices was "GO".  The "GO" offices handled mostly corporate correspondence, rate
inquiries, A.M. reports, etc, but not train movements.  VGN No. 3, for example, got train orders at
Carolina.  Delay report, passenger count, etc. for VGN No. 4 was probably handled by messenger to
the upper floors for the "GO" operator to transmit to Victoria.  Tidewater became NS's "GO" after
4:00 PM.

On the other hand, N&W's "NK/FK" had to clear N&W passenger trains, copy messages for N&W's
freight station across the street, transmit arrivals to Crewe, and keep N&W's Norfolk Terminal super-
vision (then in the Terminal Building) updated.   Then there was the much despised "coal report,"
a daily inventory of all loaded coal cars moving from mines to Tidewater. This was usually transmitted
between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM. After the N&W/VGN merger, this tedious  chore fell to the fomer VGN
operator at South Norfolk.  If you wanted to clean the wax out of your ears, all you had to do was interrupt transmission of "the coal report" with a phone call.  To sum it up, the "NK/FK" operators performed the
majority of work for the benefit of N&W.  VGN/NS relied on outlying points to control train movements
to and from the Terminal.                              Harry Bundy    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20120328/6a9ab040/attachment.html>