Home My 1963 Work Schedule My Interlocking Tower Site Van Loon Ivanhoe Griffith

Introduction and Background I grew up in Hobart, a city in northwest Indiana about 40 miles from Chicago. Like many of you, I had Lionel trains as a child and never outgrew my interest in trains. As a kid tops on every Christmas list was more, more, and still more trains. Family trips to Chicago resulted in visits to the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948 and 1949, a fantastic experience for a young kid. I still remember some of it. Those of you near Chicago may remember that somewhere around 1950 the Chicago Tribune would give an American Flyer train set to anyone who sold new subscriptions (I don't remember how many) to the paper. I did that and got the Santa Fe PA and PB freight train set, my first adventure in S gauge. I still have that set. Northwest Indiana is a mecca for trains. In Hobart the single track EJ&E Porter line (the J's original main line) crossed the single track Nickel Plate line (now Norfolk Southern's Chicago District) and the double track Pennsylvania line (now a single track CSX line used by trains of the Chicago, Ft. Wayne & Eastern Railroad). From kindergarten through 3rd grade my walk to and from school took me across the PRR tracks. I well remember some PRR steam (T1's and K4's) and early diesels. In later years, from the south side of Hobart High School, I had a nice view of the Nickel Plate main which still ran the Berkshires up through my senior year. No wonder they became my favorite steam engine. The J had two towers in Hobart: HO and BART. Clever names! Get it? As a middle teen I began to get interested in towers. I rode my bike to BART tower and got up enough nerve to climb the stairs and introduce myself. I was welcomed to come in a look around. As towers go, BART was not very large nor very busy compared to other towers I would subsequently visit, but it was closest to home and became my favorite. Thanks to friendly operators, I made countless visits and learned a lot over the years. It was also where I started throwing levers. For example, I observed early on that after a train passed (knocked down) the signal and was still within the interlocking, the operator would return the signal lever either part way in or all the way back to normal. Soon, I would volunteer to throw the lever. As the operator's confidence grew that I knew what I was doing, I was permitted to throw all lineups. In my experience working towers I always found the mechanical part (throwing levers to produce a lineup) was pretty easy to learn. Most model boards had a table showing the order to throw levers to route a train from point A to point B. I rarely used that information as I could usually figure out what to do by just looking at the track diagram. I was taught that one started at the train's exit point and moved toward the train's entry point to determine the sequence of levers, the last lever being the signal. When I actually worked towers in 1963, I found that learning the phones in towers was much more difficult. More about that later as I describe my experiences in the towers I worked. I never spent much time inside HO tower as my primary interest was in watching the NKP Berkshires from ground level. I would sit trackside for hours watching them perform interchange with the J, switch in the yard, or meet other trains. The NKP in Hobart had a main, two passing sidings, and a small yard. Once I got my driver's license my world was opened up to visiting many more towers in the Chicago area. I made heavy use of the Trains Magazine 1949 "Railroad Map of Chicago" to locate spots of interest. I would just enter a tower, introduce myself, and ask if I could make a sketch of what was on the intelocking diagram board. My Interlocking Tower Site displays the results of visiting towers and making the hand-drawn diagram of the plant. For most locations I have added links to Bing and Google maps to show what the area looks like today where "today" is defined as whenever Bing or Google made the map, and could range from a few days to a few years old. I will say that tower operators were among the most friendly and helpful of railroad employees. Maybe it's because working alone can be lonely and it's nice to occasionally have somebody to talk to. Whatever the reason, almost all of my experiences were positive. The most positive resulted in a lifelong friendship with operator Ralph Eisenbrandt. I had gone to Willow Creek tower in the summer of 1959 and was standing outside watching trains. Before I could get up enough nerve to enter the tower, Ralph invited me inside, explained everything, and allowed me to copy the track diagram. Thus a friendship was born. I only recall two times when I was not welcome at a tower. I was denied entry to the Crocker, Indiana, tower where the EJ&E Porter line crossed the Wabash's Chicago to Montpelier main. I always regretted not returning to this Wabash tower when another operator would be working. Some friends and I were denied entry in the late 1950's to PRR's AR tower in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. We walked in, introduced ourselves, and were promptly told we had to leave. Interlocking towers were my main interest. But the other part of railroading I enjoyed very much was riding locomotive cabs. If you're an "old-timer" like me, you know it used to be pretty easy to get cab rides. You either had a friend or relative who worked for the railroad, simply asked if you could ride the locomotive, were invited aboard by a friendly crew, or went the formal route of getting permission and signing a release. I had good success with all four approaches. Today, in most cases, none of these approaches work. I've kept a log of cab experiences although some of the details have been lost over the years (or are buried in my files). Most memorable trips: Broadway Limited Chicago to Fort Wayne; 20th Century Limited Detroit to Chicago (was supposed to be Elkhart to Chicago but got detoured through Ontario account derailment in Ohio); Phoebe Snow from Hornell to Endicott, NY; and D&H freights aboard brand new Century 628's from Binghamton to Mechanicville, NY, and return. But enough about cab rides... let's get a job on the EJ&E and work some towers. Next:   Getting the Job

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