New Haven-isms

chrisnewhaven wrote:

CannaScrews wrote:
The NH had triangular mileposts (how system wide - I don't know).

Interesting about the switch targets, I never would have even bothered to look at that! Also on the triangular mileposts, what color where they and where they mounted on signal masts or on their own posts?

Whoops! I meant triangular posts (actually prizm shaped) about 5' tall with one side (the field side) parallel to the rails allowing the other 2 sides to be angled.

The numbers were cast into the concrete post.

The Valley RR has a few examples of them.

Oh yes - one more thing comes to mind.

As thrifty (or bankrupt) Yankees, the New haven reused the center third rail, which was "A" shaped, from their early electrification project around Berlin CT to be reused as train order masts, possibly crossbuck masts etc. Two pieces of the rail were attached making for an "X" cross section.

The rail racks TCurtin mentions were placed at the half-mile point between the mileposts. That way employees would know roughly how far the next milepost was.

CannaScrews wrote:
The rail racks TCurtin mentions were placed at the half-mile point between the mileposts. That way employees would know roughly how far the next milepost was.

Interesting the rail racks in Connecticut (and other parts of the New Haven?) were on the half-mile marks. On the Cape lines (at least through Wareham), the rail racks were next to the granite mile posts.

- Bill

Again, nothing to do with equipment or hardware, but a New Haven-ism had to do with train number designations at GCT. All NH train moves were denoted with the letter "Y" before their number ("Yankee") to differentiate them from NYC moves.

How about their "Flanger" signs at crossings or switches which the upright portions were made out of recycled boiler tubes. Same with the signs that marked culverts and bridges that were shaped like a pizza paddle. Their style of wooden freight houses was pretty common as well.

HighlandRail/DEY-7 652 wrote:Their style of wooden freight houses was pretty common as well.

And pretty much all the same two colors --- either cream or very ligh beige paired with a medium brown color

-Butterfly platform sheds- the only one I can think of off the top of my head thats still in use is in New Canaan, but they were everywhere at one point. The one in Ridgefield Center still exists, too-- 45 years after the rail was pulled and 85 years after the departure of the last passenger train.

-Old rail reused as guardrails in station parking lots. I've never seen this anywhere else. Short lengths of old rail were driven into the ground, notched on the top, then another peice of stick rail was laid across horizontally to form a guardrail to keep cars from parking too close to the tracks. A good example survives at West Cornwall, CT, but I remember the same thing at Branchville and Wilton pre-high level platforms.

The reason for the "Y" on the New Haven Railroad trains on the New York Central (not just in Grand Central Terminal) was simply because the New York Central had trains in and out of GCT with identical train numbers and this was to prevent a mix up. I even have a couple of train orders written by New York Central Dispatchers to New Haven trains with the prefix "Y" in the address. In the towers in Grand Central Teminal the New York Central used the symbols "X" for Harlem, "Y" for New Haven and "Z" for Hudson Division trains and this took place for many, many years.
With regard to public timetables the New Haven used "Leave" and Due in 1916 as well a 1955 and in some of them in between. I did not check all in my collect but I suspect they used it in all of them.
Noel Weaver

ExCon90 wrote:I don't have any old NH timetables and was just going from memory, but I thought I remembered seeing "Dp" in their schedules in place of "Lv".

I checked a lot of New Haven Railroad public timetables in my collection from 1914 to the last one in 1968 and they all used "Leave" and "Due". I could not find "Arrive" in any of them. Funny but until this came up on here I never gave this a thought, it never occurred to me that they were any different than the other railroads. I also checked out a few other northeastern railroads during the above period and all of the others that I looked at used "Arrive" rather than "Due".
Noel Weaver

Thought of another obvious one: separate but identical stations on EB and WB sides in the four track zone. Westport is probably the best surviving example. Did any other road with extensive four-track mainline territory do this?

The EB and WB stations at both Stamford and South Norwalk in the NHRR days had a closer resemblance than did Westport. The two buildings at each location weren't exactly the same but there wasn't much difference. Stratford also fit on this too. The New York Central was more likely to have a common waiting room/ticket office for all tracks either over or under than to maintain separate stations for WB and EB trains.
Noel Weaver