Very good work as always! Loved the pics in the timer page, some new ones for me. That one of Nassau is great, showing the track that went off to the South to Garden/Hempstead Crossing. I had always wondered why they had the crossover on the Mainline so far west (back in the day when it was all done with pipes) and now I can see it was to access old ML 1 from the Fairgrounds track. Also rare is seeing a woman working a tower job that far back and in a location where you had to have strength to move the pipe-operated switches. There was a great pic of a lady working Hall during WW II, but that was easy as the machine was an electro-pneumatic.
Good shot of Van's board, it was inside the wall that separated Van Yard from the Atlantic Branch tunnel leading into Brook, and it was very tight in there. The photographer must have been sitting on the desk and had a really good flash to get that shot. Also the pic of Harold's board is a first for me, that's a great shot of it. The surface of the main cabinent had glass and so you could see the dogs and other parts move within as you pulled on the levers. The timers varied and could be from 30 seconds to sometimes over 5 minutes. There was a method used calculated by the MAS of the route, so if it was a high speed track then the time would be long. They were often very loud and worked with a buzzing noise, and there was no hiding it from co-workers or the dispatcher and speaker line. Worst rundown was in Penn coming off of the Empire, at one time that rundown was 8 minutes.
