As a young Telegrapher I had the opportunity to work the Operator postions at North Vernon and asl WS Tower at Watson on the branch to Louisville.
My most vivid memory of North Vernon was attempting to hand up train orders to Eastbound trains. The Madison Branch diamond was not inerlocked, it was a 'Statutory Stop' for B&O trains, that could proceed if the diamond was no occupied. Eastbound the grade was slightly decending, the Eastbound Trailer Trains and hot merchandise trains had plenty of power. After making the stop for the diamond, the engineers would be heavy on the throttle, accelerating the train on the decending grade. While the head end of the train passed the depot at a walk, and was thus easy to hand up train orders, the caboose (yes they had occupied cabooses back then) would be rolling 40-50 MPH as the rear of the train crossed the diamond, and diamonds being what they are.....a dust and dirt generator...made being able to see the markers of the caboose difficult (one doesn't want to be close to a moving train except when absolutely necessary - for safety reasons) then to move into position to hand up the train orders.
WS Tower was outside Jeffersonville, IN and was a interlocking with the PRR for entry into the Charlestown Ammo Depot - which was a big deal in WW II but was no longer being utilized in the late 60's. Walking the limits of the interlocking on the PRR trackage one was blocked by trees growing in the middle of the track....inidicative of the fact that the PRR had not used the interlocking since the WW II days, however ICC regulations in force at the time prevented the PRR from abandoning the trackage and it was the B&O Signal maintainers responsibility to see that all the siwtches and signals for the PRR routes were in operating condition, even though it would require a small army of loggers for the PRR to ever be able to operate at train again.
