by gokeefe
I often notice how old some of the wayside equipment is around my area in Maine. As the Downeaster has made to way northward a lot of it has been replaced. This tends to be the case anywhere Amtrak operates due to safety requirements. But as we all know there's always an exception to the rule and sometimes those are the most interesting things to discuss.
Which route segment over which Amtrak operates has the oldest wayside equipment? We all know about the semaphores on the Southwest Chief so I'm not really looking to rehash that. But I do wonder about other segments which might have a lot of old signals, grade crossing lights or switches and controls which might be old and unusual. The term "antique" is traditionally considered to mean older than 50 years which in this case would almost always mean "pre-Amtrak". If it's less than 50 years old it should be an exceptionally "rare" or "unique" equipment type. Anything less than 20 years old really doesn't count.
Personally I always wonder what the ride on the Capitol Limited or the Cardinal would look like. It seems to me as those two trains probably roll by some very old wayside equipment.
Which route segment over which Amtrak operates has the oldest wayside equipment? We all know about the semaphores on the Southwest Chief so I'm not really looking to rehash that. But I do wonder about other segments which might have a lot of old signals, grade crossing lights or switches and controls which might be old and unusual. The term "antique" is traditionally considered to mean older than 50 years which in this case would almost always mean "pre-Amtrak". If it's less than 50 years old it should be an exceptionally "rare" or "unique" equipment type. Anything less than 20 years old really doesn't count.
Personally I always wonder what the ride on the Capitol Limited or the Cardinal would look like. It seems to me as those two trains probably roll by some very old wayside equipment.
Last edited by gokeefe on Wed Apr 22, 2020 11:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
gokeefe