From The Tower Friday--West Chicago
This photo shows the West Chicago tower model board as it looked when I was working there. West Chicago had 3 interlocking plants:
"JA" - C&NW's Freeport Line crossing the EJ&E. Note: This was still interlocked, but the C&NW diamond was removed.
"JB" - C&NW's Geneva sub crossing the EJ&E. The only thing that was missing from this plant was crossover #15 between CNW #3 & #2.
"JC" - CB&Q's 12 mile Aurora Branch crossing the EJ&E. This plant was completely O/O/S, however, the signals for the Q were still in place and we could line them up from the tower.
(I know this because I did it one night to see if it actually would change the signal to green, and it did. Unfortunately for me, the timer for the signal had been removed and I had no way to restore the signal to stop, so I had to call a maintainer...lol oops)
Traffic here was thick. Luckily, about 5% of it was J traffic. I could write a book called "Bad Decisions By The EJ&E" on just stupid ideas they had for just this location. You were on the hot seat constantly here. When a westbound J train left Joliet, I was already planning on how I was going to get him through this endless stream of UP freights. Omaha wanted to see there shit lined up when it was 100 miles away, so sneaking anything by here was a nightmare. My estimation of trains here:
50-60 Metra trains daily
50-80 UP freights
6-8 J trains daily
EJ&E West Chicago Tower
October 3rd, 1999
3rd Shift
From The Tower Friday--West Chicago
This photo shows the West Chicago tower model board as it looked when I was working there. West Chicago had 3 interlocking plants:
"JA" - C&NW's Freeport Line crossing the EJ&E. Note: This was still interlocked, but the C&NW diamond was removed.
"JB" - C&NW's Geneva sub crossing the EJ&E. The only thing that was missing from this plant was crossover #15 between CNW #3 & #2.
"JC" - CB&Q's 12 mile Aurora Branch crossing the EJ&E. This plant was completely O/O/S, however, the signals for the Q were still in place and we could line them up from the tower.
(I know this because I did it one night to see if it actually would change the signal to green, and it did. Unfortunately for me, the timer for the signal had been removed and I had no way to restore the signal to stop, so I had to call a maintainer...lol oops)
Traffic here was thick. Luckily, about 5% of it was J traffic. I could write a book called "Bad Decisions By The EJ&E" on just stupid ideas they had for just this location. You were on the hot seat constantly here. When a westbound J train left Joliet, I was already planning on how I was going to get him through this endless stream of UP freights. Omaha wanted to see there shit lined up when it was 100 miles away, so sneaking anything by here was a nightmare. My estimation of trains here:
50-60 Metra trains daily
50-80 UP freights
6-8 J trains daily
EJ&E West Chicago Tower
October 3rd, 1999
3rd Shift