Page 25 - NMRA Roundhouse May-June 2019

ALTO tower in 2004 with Conrail gray and blue paint scheme
In the photo below we see the new three track westbound cantilever mast being installed in 2011.
Unlike the 1915 signal bridge it is made from thick tubes of mass produced alu- minum with only a fraction of the labor. Unlike it’s predecessors, the new hard- ware will not be changed through time, but simply replaced and re-purposed. In fact due to some signal changes in 2018 a new cantilever is already scheduled
to replace the one installed just 6 years before.
With Altoona Yard a shadow of its former self and freight trains becoming longer and heavier, it was no longer practical to stop long trains on the grade to attach helpers waiting at ALTO. In fact the helper pockets had been largely unused for years before the closure as through trains stopped elsewhere on the main line for helpers to tie on or cut off.
Conrail could splurge on a drop of paint, trying to restore 1915 vintage windows was beyond the scope of the railroad’s signal department.
Conrail also brought us ALTO’s final configuration in conjunction with the Altoona Transportation Center project in the late 1980s. The direct crossover from track 1 to track 2 westbound was removed so westbound trains on track 1 or out of the yard had to use the western ladder track.Westbound trains on track 2 could switch to track 3 east of the main interlocking or continue straight on track 2.
The Altoona Transportation Center project that extended the passenger platform not only forced the elimination of the 37 switch from track 1 to track 2, but also reduced the space available for signals causing the Penn Central era westbound masts to be replaced by two PRR pedestal type signals and a dwarf.
Reduced use of helpers as diesel engines became more powerful prompted Con- rail to operationally eliminate the track 3 pocket track by signaling through trains directly from track 2 to track 3 over
the 31 switch, instead of running them past the tower to cross over via the one switch.
In 1999 the Conrail’s Pennsylvania Railroad legacy, including the PRR Main Line and ALTO tower, was sold to Norfolk Southern. For a number of years nothing happened, but then around 2006 NS fixed the roof and applied a fresh coat of paint. The paint scheme was a uniform grey, but it showed that NS had no immediate plans to close or demolish the tower.
Of course “immediate” is a relative term. In 2011 a re-signaling project
for the entire Altoona terminal was initiated and in 2012 it was completed with the tower closing after 97 years. In the case of ALTO, the interlocking plant wasn’t simply re-built, it was completely removed, replaced by a plain Jane 3 track crossover named CP-ALTOONA that takes up the space once occupied by CP-SLOPE.
The story of ALTO tower and interlock- ing was one of continuous evolution, always changing with the times to remain relevant until one day it found that its whole reason for existing had complete- ly vanished, seemingly overnight. It’s not just that manned towers have been re- placed by remote offices. It’s that quirky
interlocking plants hand drafted by some Victo- rian era railroad savant have been replaced by lost of straight lines laid out in CAD and cut into the earth by mechanized construction equipment. It’s a world where evolution is no longer necessary because it is more efficient to just start over from scratch.
Michael Brotzman
Original windows replaced with remaunfactured windows
June 2019 - ROUNDHOUSE 25