Back in the early 1960s I was studying mechanical engineering at Newark College of Engineering in Newark NJ. My good friend and fraternity brother, Dick, was studying law at Rutgers while working as a Block Operator on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Sometimes the partying and noise got so bad at the frat house where I was living that I could not concentrate on my studies. So I would get on the phone and call the Waverly 6 tower (actually a ground level shack). If a gruff voice answered, "WAVERLY --------- (pause)-------- SEX!" I knew that Dick was working there that night and I would head down for some relative peace and quiet, sitting inside hitting the books while Dick talked on the radio, every now and than heading outside to throw a switch. If any of my memory is wrong here, I'm sure that Dick will get back to me and invoke a correction. The Waverly 6 was located across US Routes 1 and 9 from the Anheuser-Busch brewery and was just south of the Waverly yard, now gone, which was located in the vicinity of the present Amtrak Newark Airport train station.
One dark night Dick says to me, "Martin, we're going to have a war." "Why do you say that, Dick" was my reply. "Come outside and I'll show you." There was a long train of nothing but flatcars rumbling slowly by toward Waverly in the darkness. I stood there in awe. The entire train was loaded with nothing but tanks, jeeps, military trucks, personnel carriers and artillery. A year later, the United States was up to its eyeballs in the Vietnam conflict.
I said, "Dick, you sure called that one right!" His reply: "Martin, when you work for the railroad, you always know when there's going to be a war."
A map of the main line with the Lane interlocking heading into Waverly from the south:
http://broadway.pennsyrr.com/Rail/Prr/M ... k/lane.gif