Alemite at Randolph St in 1923

[NW Mailing List]

Sorry,Only a month late replying to this post.FYI, the concrete foundation for the original Randolph Street Interlocking still stands, or more properly, lies, as a monument to the past. It is just east of the Williamson Rd. bridge (formerly Randolph Street) and west of the passenger car shed.Good investigative reporting!

J Sandermann
 

    On Friday, July 20, 2018, 3:53:28 PM EDT, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  
 
 
One of the things I have long sought, but so far without fruition, is the date for the construction of the original interlocking and tower at Randolph Street, Roanoke, and a technical article on the subject.

Indeed, it seems that photographs of the original Randolph Street Tower are almost non-existent.  Here is one I found in the March 1924, issue of Railway Signaling, in a one-column article touting the virtues of lubricating switches with Alemite.  No further N&W details were given, only the photograph.

If I have my geographical bearings correct, that photograph looks from the Shenandoah Division tracks, towards the depot.  The dining car commissary would be to the right, and the board fence at left shields from our view the RMW (Roanoke Machine Works, a.k.a. "East End Shops") complex.

One of my great desires in life was always to use a pneumatic Alemite gun and play at lubricating grease fittings.  If anyone has such a tool, please invite me to try it out.

Photo by K. Miller.  Man in white gloves has been identified as Section Foreman H. Bundy;  aristocratic man in black hat identified as J. Blackstock.  That poor kid bucking the Alemite gun is identified as young Jerome Sandermann, who later became a successful attorney in Roanoke and practiced law under the name Jeff Sanders.

>From this photo we can determine one thing:  that the "old" Randolph St was an electro-pneumatic interlocking plant, not a manual one.  Which probably means we can confine our search for its history to sometime after about1905.

No lo contendre, ex parte,

     -- abram burnett


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