Two Oldies at Ames
Ames, IN is on the southeastern outskirts of the bustling metropolis of Crawfordsville. It is important in the eyes of CSX as it is where trains traveling between Lafayette and Indianapolis enter or leave the former Monon for the former Conrail line, The Monon was one of the last bastions of semaphore signals on CSX. I believe they are all gone today. We were visiting in November of 2009 and caught J726, the daily turn between Indy and Lafayette struggling up grade with the usual monster train out of Lafayette. He's about to pass the old semaphore at Ames before making the turn onto the old Conrail for the run to Indianapolis. The semaphore we see here actually is not his signal as it is to protect northbound trains. As old as that semaphore is, the 8881 is no spring chicken, either. The old EMD actually started life on the Pennsylvania RR as an SD40, worked for Penn Central and Conrail, and somewhere along the line got turned into a SD40-2R. She wound up on CSX due to the split of Big Blue with NS. And as far as I can tell, she's still on the roster today. No such luck for the semaphore, though.
Two Oldies at Ames
Ames, IN is on the southeastern outskirts of the bustling metropolis of Crawfordsville. It is important in the eyes of CSX as it is where trains traveling between Lafayette and Indianapolis enter or leave the former Monon for the former Conrail line, The Monon was one of the last bastions of semaphore signals on CSX. I believe they are all gone today. We were visiting in November of 2009 and caught J726, the daily turn between Indy and Lafayette struggling up grade with the usual monster train out of Lafayette. He's about to pass the old semaphore at Ames before making the turn onto the old Conrail for the run to Indianapolis. The semaphore we see here actually is not his signal as it is to protect northbound trains. As old as that semaphore is, the 8881 is no spring chicken, either. The old EMD actually started life on the Pennsylvania RR as an SD40, worked for Penn Central and Conrail, and somewhere along the line got turned into a SD40-2R. She wound up on CSX due to the split of Big Blue with NS. And as far as I can tell, she's still on the roster today. No such luck for the semaphore, though.