Why not use the towers?

I am a bit befuddled.

Why doesn't Guilford or the MBTA use the nifty old B&M control towers on the Fitchburg line instead of cheap little trailers? Theres one at Ayer and East Deerfield, and I bet a couple of others as well.

Why have so many towers ended up abandoned?

JD


East Deerfield yard


Ayer (note propane[?] tanks)

That's one of those things

WHAT?? Are you kidding? Geesh...

Because nowadays everything is centrally dispatched from one location.

For example, every CSX line between Boston and Buffalo NY, and Oak Island, NY is dispatched out of Selkirk, NY (near Albany). In the event of an emergency or natural disaster, they have a special "bunker" that they can fly people to and run the operations from there without any problems.

I

I was told the parking lot by Ayer station used to be filled with tracks. If this is so, I can see how the Ayer tower was once usefull, but not anymore as you can't see very far into the yard from there now.

But yes, that is what I mean. Cheap trailers versus sturdy brick towers.

JD

The key word here

Jonelle;look at Guilford's MOW trucks,and you will see what Mick means also! Bud

Not to be a Guilford appologist, but remember that a lot of the towers aren't that big inside, have rooms (on the ground floor) that were often built for machines and not people, and are old and run down. The employees probably prefer the (slightly) more modern interiors of the trailers, and getting the trailers is probably cheaper than renovating (i.e., gutting and rebuilding) the towers with modern and up to code wiring, plumbing, etc...

That's what I was thinking Octr.

Building codes etc. More costly to renovate the old existing buildings as opposed to buying or leasing new trailers.

The crews like the towers

Hmmm... I wonder what the math would end up being. Fix up the towers, which don't look that bad at all outside, or lease/buy trailers. Hmmm... also, aren't taxes being paid on the structures anyway?

I dunno... just seems like a waste.

Don't they use the Lowell tower as a yard office? I see people in there all the time.

Note that "we" aren't construction workers, but I'm sure the railroad employees will use anything besides the woods that they can get. B&M tower in Deerfield was only boarded up in 2002 IIRC. I can see the benefits of trailers, just for the crew relaxing--lets not forget for instance the yard office in East Deerfield is way down by CPF 383 on the east end, and that's quite big.

Plus, quoting mick as saying "The key word here is "cheap". Whenever you wonder why Guilford does something, think of that word" is pretty unnecessary. Let's can it with the Guilford flaming, I doubt you could do a better job. Give them a break, they've kept the railroad going in New England's economics, which is tough to do. There's things that could be better, I suppose, but we all aren't perfect.

I have worked on lines where we had tower operators to deal with but the
train dispatcher made the decisions and I have worked lines where we
directly dealed with the train dispatcher.
I knew a lot of tower operators over the years, actually worked as a tower
operator for a few months in 1964 and many of the former tower operators were my friends over the years.
I am speaking for myself although I am fairly sure that many other
engineers or retire engineers would agree with me, I would prefer to deal
directly with the train dispatcher. The more people involved with a
message, instructions etc, the more margin for error or misunderstanding.
My problem with the way operations were handled was that there were
often cases when a train dispatcher had too much territory to handle.
They could keep the trains running but just had too much territory and too
many trains.
I suspect one reason that the tower buildings are not being used and are
often removed is that the railroads have to pay taxes on them and in the
cases of using trailers, they may well be classified as mobile homes or
offices or temporary buildings and probably they pay much less tax on
them.
Some of these sturdy look towers may well have structural problems,
termites, plumbing or electrical problems or code violations.
Noel Weaver