Who Controls Railroad Diamonds?

foreign fans in this episode I'm answering a viewer question from Doug Rogers of Austell Georgia Doug writes who controls railroad diamonds how are diamond Crossings handled do the different dispatchers coordinate with each other is there a third party that handles permissions to cross well just like a lot of these questions I get I quickly discovered what I don't know about the subject which was most of this stuff so I had to investigate old timetables and Rule books I also had to reach out to experts who deal or dealt with this stuff every single day on the job fortunately for me I know a few retired train dispatchers I contacted them and they were very helpful on the subject actually I couldn't have done it without them so I've learned a lot while preparing for this video so let's go during America's railroad boom in the 1800s they often found their routes crossed other Rail lines when they reached an intersecting point they only had a few options fly over on a bridge go under through a tunnel or cross the other track at grade which is engineering talk for go flat across the other line using a device called a diamond or a level crossing that's what's happening here at TN Tower in Tampa train 0700 on the XC board Airline main to Brooksville has gotten permission to cross the X ACL main going north railroad crossings at grade can be one of the most dangerous Maneuvers on the railroad the possibility of a major accident at diamonds is why there are strict rules on what train Crews can do when Crossing there at Mulberry Florida train 0730 a bone Valley local has gotten permission from the CSX dispatcher to cross the Sal main the Valrico sub the train is on former Atlantic Coastline trackage its Crossing former Seaboard Airline trackage before 1967 these were two separate railroad companies from what I could glean from timetables of the era The Crossing was controlled by ACL as it was normally clear for that sign Sal trains had to pull up call an operator for permission to cross then move derails on either side of the diamond on their track move across and then reset the derails today it's all one company so when a train crew gets authority to travel around on either subdivision they'll get clearance to cross the diamond over the past 10 years CSX has been installing these owls type diamonds at certain locations owls is the acronym for one-way low speed designed for use at Crossings where one line sees far less traffic than the other line on the less busy track wheels ride up on their flanges and over the rail of the busier Line This prevents the wheel banging that makes so much noise and naturally tears Diamond structures apart the Valrico subdivision was traditionally for decades the busiest line in the bone Valley there are essentially two types of railroad crossings at grade interlockings and non-interlockings and interlocking is defined as an arrangement of interconnected signals and Signal appliances for which interlocking rules are in effect signal and movement of signal appliances must succeed each other in proper sequence in plain language the interlocking diamond and any connecting y tracks in the crossing plant are all linked to the signals protecting them an operator cannot move or change any of them until he does so in an exact order and there are two types of interlockings dispatcher controlled also called remotely controlled and automatic at a dispatcher control interlocking the dispatcher or operator fully controls the signals over the locking the whole show drains needing to cross at his Diamond have to contact him either when obtaining Authority on their whole route or specifically before they're approaching the Crossing if both railroads on the diamond are owned by one railroad as here at Plant City no problem one dispatcher to deal with in the days before automatic interlockings operators in offices called Towers sat in charge of railroad crossings inside the tower large levers connected to signals by Trackside rods allowed the operator to give permission to trains to cross the diamonds safely this operator was employed by one of the railroads or sometimes both of them involved in the crossing sometimes it was which railroad got there first other times it was selected by a mutual agreement this Tower was likely right next to the rails when it was in operation it was moved back when it was preserved for the museum here at Crawford Florida the CSX Callahan subdivision crosses the Norfolk Southern Valdosta District this is southbound train 175 approaching the diamond Bound for NS Simpson yard in Jacksonville here we have two separate railroad companies Crossing one another Crawford is an automatic interlocking meaning first come first served while the respective dispatchers have control of their own lines and see the diamond signal status on their screens the Crawford interlocking mechanism will accept the request of the Train That's first in the circuit and begin a countdown of a predetermined length of time say it's 6 minutes and 32 seconds here just for argument's sake from the time he enters the circuit with a clear signal he'll have six minutes and 32 seconds to get his train onto that diamond or time runs out and signals go back to Red it's a safety mechanism that would give any opposing train time to get stopped in case of a conflict Crews can also request clearance to cross the diamond manually on the signal box near the tracks there's a control switch under lock and key a crew member can open it push a button and that sends a request to the system to start running time toward a clear signal across if they get a green or yellow signal they go Plant City Florida is an interlocking that's remotely controlled as opposed to automatic this is the ex-atlantic coastline A-line crossing the XC board Airline s-line but this has all been the same company since the 1967 merger of the two railroads since the lines are all the same company CSX and under the same dispatcher there's no discussion needed about who goes first and which line has priority the CSX JF dispatcher makes all those decisions from his or her desk in Jacksonville it's late on a July Saturday afternoon and the JF dispatcher has cleared the way for Amtrak 92 the Northbound Silver Star when 92's route was set up earlier this afternoon everything else of this diamond was locked out by means of red signals as the star clears the diamond circuits start clearing up for the next train the dispatcher has stacked in the parade tonight ten minutes later it's l778 daily Rock shuttle from Tampa to Winston yard he's running on the same a line as 92 but not going as far watch the wheels of the rockhoppers slamming this diamond the initial assault on the crossing begins with two four hundred thousand pound locomotives there's a second diamond in this interlocking on which the Plant City subdivision breaks out of the S line and runs South to the Bone Valley phosphate area the control method though is the same after that 50 minutes passes a Northbound signal on the S line goes High green when he gets here we discover it's an empty ethanol train returning to Chicago there are no moving Parts in the typical Diamond they are four-sided structures built with channels to allow wheel flanges to pass through in any direction that small Gap is responsible for all that hammering and all of the noise that creates that hammering in turn creates maintenance issues that require diamonds to be replaced at closer intervals than normal track while preparing for this video something I found really interesting is the geometry of diamonds While most of them look like square boxes they rarely have perfect 90 degree angles this is the interlocking at Valdosta Georgia here the CSX bowline crosses the Norfolk Southern Macon District looking from the air that diamond isn't even close to being square and that's just the way it is railroads had to approach these Crossings on their own right-of-way and it was almost never at a perfect right angle Valdosta is another fully automatic interlocking even more interesting is the interlocking at Cordele Georgia you have three railroads crossing here and one of them has a siding going through the plant the X ACL now CSX Fitzgerald sub crosses the X Southern now NS Macon district and its cordial siding at a fairly normal angle but then there's the XC board now heart of Georgia Short Line in order to make this Crossing they had to come into cordial at a pretty shallow angle first across the coastline then across the southern in the early decades it's likely this major Junction was controlled by an operator right here at cordial probably either the southern or the Seaboard control the interlocking since those two got here before the ACL predecessor arrived in 1902. now cordial is all automatic first come first serve for CSX nns but the heart of Georgia has to manually request across that could be because it's an unsignaled line and may not have the circuitry to participate in the automatic system the diamond at Tampa's 14th Street crossing gives us a close-up look at a typical Diamond but one that sees more traffic on the shorter local line than on the class one railroad it crosses this is near the southernmost point on the csxa line here on the Eastern side of downtown Tampa the tico streetcar line crosses the diamond is fully automatic and unusual because like Valdosta it's a signaled interlocking in dark territory CTC signal operation on the A-line ends a mile north of here at TN Tower but when Tampa built this electric streetcar line in the early 2000s CSX demanded they install a protected Crossing so this automatically controlled Diamond has served ever since whoever gets here first streetcar passenger train or local freight train gets the signal first Amtrak 91 is backing into Tampa Union Station and has the clear signal to cross thank you [Applause] and less than a minute after Amtrak clears the circuit the streetcar gets the green to cross all automatic [Music] the tico line has a curvy approach on both sides of the crossing crazy radical curves mean you could never run a conventional train car down it just in case you were wondering when I was shooting the Plant City and Bone Valley parts of this video I went to a spot north of Lakeland that local rail fan Josh kittner recommended to me Granger's barbecue and Steakhouse my kind of place for what it does not have no paved parking lot with tiny spaces for compact cars just a graded dirt park where you want area no credit cards tap to pay or identity theft is going to happen here either cash only and no automatic barbecue machine with digital recipe control just a fireplace with real wood smoke I doubt the Vintage signs were bought at a vintage sign dealer either that Coke sign has probably been rusting in that spot for 30 years I got it to go and ate it in the truck so I could keep an ear on the radio the barbecue was Smoky and authentic enough sliced pork for two people and pretty good sauce the sides were actually my favorite I don't know what they put in the coleslaw or the beans but they're both incredible I might just get those the next time I'm here around 12 50 for this barbecue lunch at Granger's on North US 98 in Lakeland now in preparing for this video my thanks to retired CSX dispatcher Gordon deason he told me some insights on this whole situation this whole area of the rules uh that I just I couldn't have done it without him and some other folks who were still on the job who helped me to understand this unique aspect of railroading now I know a lot of you are saying well that's not the way it's done on my railroad or in my territory or or up where I live and I understand that there are just seem like an infinite number of different ways to handle railroad crossings at grade I couldn't cover them all on this first go-around so I think I'll have to do a part two on diamond somewhere down the line so cut me some slack on that please I thank you also to Ira swanets of Missouri he sent me that purple derail sign which is a beautiful uh specimen Union Pacific puts those signs next to their derails to identify them easily so you can spot them easily when you're coming up on one and that's very cool first first I thought it was a distant signal marker but it's not it's a derail sign the purple identifies it as that and I love purple stuff so thank you Irish wanteds subscribe to the channel if you haven't already done that write your comments in the comments section down below I read them all I try to reply to as many as I can and let's plan to meet up again somewhere soon somewhere out there on the high iron and until we do this is Danny Harmon out

Channel: Distant Signal

Views: 247,395

Keywords: Railroad, Trains, Danny Harmon, Railfan, Railfanning, CSX, Distant Signal, High Iron., Diamonds, Level Crossings, Florida, Georgia, Tampa, Valdosta, Cordele, Plant City, Mulberry, Crawford

Id: CK33G-afHhY

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023