Win Interlocking

After Win Tower burned in 1976 (exact date?), they apparently planned to move the little 5-lever table top interlocking machine that used to control just the remains of White Pot Jct to a location between the Port Washington Branch and Mainline very near to the old substation. I have an official interlocking diagram dated 5-2-77 with the "tower symbol" in this location, completely across the Mainline from where the old tower stood. In addition to controlling the switch into the remains of Rockaway Beach Branch Track 1 (on which they used to store PM equipment trains heading into Penn) the table interlocker is supposed to also control the switch coming out of this track at the west end. They also temporarily reconnected the westbound Rockaway Beach Branch Track 1 into Mainline 3 at White Pot with an electrically-locked hand-operated switch, tower controlled from Win. I do remember this switch when they were doing all that track work on the Mainline 25 years ago or so.

Did this actually happen or was this interlocking diagram reflecting only a plan???

UN:

I was given the date of 1976 by someone as to when the tower was destroyed by fire. It's not an official date by any means.

Somebody else gave me an out of service date of 3/28/77.

Even IF the fire was on December 31, 1976, (not factual . . just making a point here) I can't see the tower not being placed out of service for another 3 months!

Somewhere there's a gap in the facts.

Your mention of moving the block station across the tracks with a date about 2 months further is even more confusing. Maybe the fire was in 1977, and the temporary interlocking was moved across the tracks at that time without any gap in service. (????)

What we need is someone with actual knowledge of the tower's demise and out of service date to come forth and give us the facts.

Also nice would be facts about your interlocking blueprint from May, 1977!!!! Was it in place or just a tentative plan?

Dave

The switches were never moved and were taken out.

In the next few years look to find a new set of crossovers installed on the Main Line near the former Win location.

Clem

I haven't looked the article up, but the NY Times index says the 29 March 1977 paper has a short article on page 35: "LIRR commuters are delayed up to 15 mins on Mar 28 because of fire in line's main switching tower in Woodside, Queens"

THANK YOU TIM!!!

That confirms my 2nd date of 3/28/77 and makes a whole lot more sense.

I'll make the correction on my LIRR Telegraphic Calls listing!

Got that, UN????

Dave

I seem to remember win buring down in Feb 1976. I was married on feb 15 1976, and a few days later was in miami florida on my honeymoon. I went to an out of town newstand in florida and picked up a copy of the daily news, and saw a story about win burning down. Since this is 30 years ago I might not have my facts straight, but I think I am right and will look this up. I believe the date was somewhere around February 17th to 20th 1976..let ya know

That's a whole year earlier.

Were there possibly 2 fires? One not so bad to allow the tower to re-open and the other a year later that was devastating?

Dave

Dave,

Got it! BTW, the main interlocking machine at Win was a 40-lever GRS Model 2, the ONLY GRS machine on LI since Bedford closed in 1949!

Clem,
I know the actual switches never moved. I was curious as to whether the little table top machine got moved. Do you remember those GRS switch machines? I think they were Model 4 and somewhere I have a closeup slide of one. They were affectionately (?) known as "coffins."

Thanks for the extra info, UN!!

Dave

UN,

I do recall the coffins. They were removed and scrapped as was the machine.

Clem