TRRS 427: BO Tower 2015 - A Day at a Manned Interlocking Tower

BO Tower in 2015 – A Day in the Life Welcome to Kalamazoo, Michigan, a city of 75,000 and home to one of two remaining railroad interlocking towers in the Wolverine State. This is where BO Tower still stands guard over the rails of Kalamazoo, including Amtrak’s Michigan Line The New York Central constructed the tower a century ago, in 1915, utilizing a 44-level Saxby and Farmer interlocking machine. On September 9th 2014, less than a year short of the tower’s centennial, Amtrak signalmen officially retired the interlocking machine, converting operation to a modern signal system, setup for Positive Train Control and Remote Operation To control the signals and power-operated switches, the operators now use the local control panels, which are ordinarily located in the signal control bungalows. All in all, the tower orchestrates around 20 movements per day, a far cry from the tower’s heyday in the early 1900s. Perhaps the only reason the tower has remained open is the reluctance of Conrail, and later NS, to renovate the plant to modern technology, due to the low volume of traffic. Thus, it wasn’t until the Michigan Department of Transportation stepped in to make a higher-speed passenger corridor out of the Michigan line that BO received the modern upgrades By 2017, NS will hand over dispatching duties to Amtrak, at which point BO tower will close for good, leaving Delray tower in Detroit as the last true interlocking tower in the state of Michigan Thanks for watching this presentation of the Thornapple River Rail Series Train Details: All scenes in this trip were shot at: AMTK/MDOT MI Line/GDLK Kzoo Secondary, BO Interlocking on Feb 16, 2015 AMTK 351 Consist: AMTK 32 [P42DC] AMTK 35 [P42DC] 6 cars [Horizons/Amfleets] Time: WB at 9:52 EST GDLK 105 Consist SB: WAMX 4017 [GP40-2LW] 22 cars [Mixed] Consist NB: WAMX 4017 [GP40-2LW] 13 cars [Mixed] Time: WB to SB at 10:01 EST NS to EB at 15:20 EST AMTK 365 Consist: AMTK 37 [P42DC] 6 cars [Horizons/Amfleets] AMTK 30 [P42DC] Time: WB at 10:20 EST AMTK 350 Consist: AMTK 33 [P42DC] AMTK 38 [P42DC] 4 cars [Superliners] Time: EB at 11:15 EST GDLK 303 Consist: WAMX 4125 [SD40-2] WSOR 4077 [SD40-2] WAMX 3829 [GP38-3] 82 cars [Mixed] Time: WB to SB at 12:37 EST NB at 12:54 EST GDLK 302 Consist: WSOR 4076 [SD40-2] WAMX 4206 [SD40-2] 90 cars [Mixed] Time: NB to EB at 13:34 EST AMTK 353 Consist: AMTK 36 [P42DC] 5 cars [Horizons] Time: WB at 14:34 EST AMTK 352 Consist: AMTK 31 [P42DC] 6 cars [Horizons/Amfleets] Time: EB at 17:02 EST Thanks for watching! Don’t forget to share this video, like and subscribe to Thornapple River Rail Series! Like TRRS on Facebook!   / thornappleriverproductions   Equipment: Sony VJ790 Camcorder Copyright 2015 Thornapple River Rail Series