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

VAN LOON TOWER Interlocking Diagram My first visit to Van Loon tower was in 1958, five years before I actually got to work there. Growing up in Hobart, I was exposed to the J, the Pennsy Fort Wayne line, and the Nickel Plate. The J crossed the latter two. I was fond of all three but the Nickel Plate was special because of its Berkshires which ran up until 1958. It also didn't hurt that Hobart High School had a nice view of the tracks and that my Grandmother had a house right next to the tracks in the Glen Park area of Gary. Guess who loved to visit Grandma? That house really shook when the Berks came thundering by! My first message of the summer called for three days of break in at Van Loon. I did two second tricks plus a split between second and third. That last split was the result of a phone call at home on the morning of the 6th asking if I'd be willing to work 3rd trick on the 9th. I gladly accepted and decided I should spend some break in time on 3rd trick to see if there was anything special I needed to know. Turns out there was as indicated in the last of five pages of notes about the Van Loon job. As stated in my introduction, learning and working the phones in a tower could be quite challenging. When visiting a tower I could observe phone activity but, of course, could never work the phones, nor did I pay much attention to ring sounds and where in the tower they came from. When working a tower, learning the phones is obviously important. This became a significant challenge at Van Loon and all towers. In every set of notes you will see information about phones. For Van Loon I made this phone layout diagram to help me identify who's calling. You will see from the notes that westbound J trains got orders at Van Loon. So during break in I got lots of practice writing train orders and clearance forms, tying train order strings, and mounting them on the Y-shaped order hoops. There were only two EJ&E westbounds during the 3rd trick I worked. Both got orders. Van Loon did have a train order stand. On the last page of my Van Loon notes you will see the third trick operator had to make new copies of what I call "recurring" orders, i.e. orders which were issued to all trains every day until something changed. An example of such a "recurring" order is Order No. 201 although this example is from East Joliet tower a few years earlier. The idea was to make lots of copies (using multiple carbon sheets) of each such "recurring" order. In today's world this kind of information is placed in the daily bulletin. Take a look at these two sample clearance forms which I saved during my first break in day. Both of these forms plus trainorders 201 and 204 and a message would be handed up to the westbound Hartsdale turn (Kirk Yard to Hartsdale and return to Kirk Yard) with engines 903 (centercab DT-6-6-2000) and 305 (SW1200). The second clearance form gives the train authority to return to Kirk Yard with engine 305 now in the lead. Usually the message would say "Fill at Hartsdale" which meant that any cars on the interchange for the EJ&E were to be picked up by this train. Here's the list of Van Loon trains during break in (letter B circled in the upper right) and the 3rd trick I worked on June 9. J trains are listed at the top, Nickel Plate trains at the bottom. Third trick shows NKP passenger trains 5 and 6, led by Alco RS36s. Unfortunately, the PAs were gone by this time. But I do have fond memories of the PAs and occasional Hudsons on the passenger trains through Hobart. When June 9th arrived I was excited about working a job by myself -- my first one ever! I thought I was pretty well-prepared. What could possibly go wrong? When I arrived before 11:30 pm, I was greeted by the 2nd trick operator with the news that some of the phones (not all) were out due to some severe weather, so severe that it made the headlines in the Chicago Tribune. That's not what I wanted to hear! During the shift all phones were eventually restored. At one point I got a call from the Nickel Plate dispatcher suggesting I should have given his westbound the signal earlier. I don't know if he was just being conservative or whether I may have slowed his train. Later the Nickel Plate dispatcher actually had a train slowed due to a problem with a J train. EJ&E Extra 300 east stopped at Van Loon at 2:45 am, cut off his engines and went to the NKP yard to pick up 17 loads. He then returned to his train with the 17 cars. My first notice of a problem was the track light left on at eastbound home signal #9 (see Van Loon track diagram), indicating he may not have judged well the length of his pickup, thus not clearing the home signal. I have Nickel Plate 51 coming, can see only the headlight of X300 in the pitch black night, and have no way to communicate with him that he's fouling my plant. What to do? Situations like this were not covered in break in. I ended up grabbing the lantern on the tower porch and giving him a back-up signal. It worked as shortly thereafter the track circuit went off and I was able to run NKP 51. Overall it was an interesting and successful night. Unfortunately, the work schedule for the remainder of the summer never had me return to Van Loon. There were other new and exciting adventures waiting! Next:   Go to Home and select another tower.

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