East Leg of Campbell Ave. Wye, Roanoke

[NW Mailing List]

Don’t overthink it. There are lots of ways track authority is granted and some are very simple. The most likely answer was it was handled under Yard Limit rules which basically say any track (except within interlockings and CTC) can be used without permission of the Dispatcher. Just use it. 

Or it could have been under the authority of a specific Yardmaster, switch tender, or operator (the timetable would have specified that). 

But in short, lots of ways, none of them involving interlockings.

And to further confuse things, sometimes the signal system doesn’t know the rules. From my days in Sandusky, we had an incident where a yard crew used a section of main track within Yard Limits under Yard Limit authority. But the signal system, not knowing what they were doing and not quite wired correctly to permit it, knocked down the opposing direction signals. Trainmaster supervising the Operator who controlled that section of track called demanding I pull the crew out of service for what had to be a red signal violation. Nope, I knew exactly what they had done and quickly realized that the signal system had been overly protective but that what the crew did was permitted (it was an odd case of there being non-CTC track leading up to the start of CTC in the middle of a block).

-- 
Larry Stone
lstone19 at stonejongleux.com





> On Jun 23, 2021, at 3:26 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know when the east leg of the Campbell Ave Wye at Roanoke was interlocked?  And how movements there were handled before it was interlocked?
>  
> For a long time I have been looking for information on the first use of **remote interlocking,**  i.e. controlling switches/signals at some distance from a tower or interlocking plant, by the use of electricity.  I have no substantive information yet, but it seems that around 1910-1912 **remote interlocking** may have come onto the general railroad scene.  And while I was looking at the satellite imagery of Raonoke today, the question sprang to my mind, How did they control the East Leg before remote interlocking?  Obviously it was done with hand switches, but what were the protocols, the permissions, the policies and special instructions, &c ?
>  
> -- abram burnett
> June is National Turnip Month 
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