Quote:
Originally Posted by HossC
Does anyone know what the narrow elevated structure to the left of the train is? Could it have been related to the railroad? It's not there in odinthor's GSV image.
|
If you want to read a complex discussion of Santa Fe 2nd District Pasadena area signals go to the Trainorders site for a thread (but it’s kind of late era stuff with some historical info in there).
This was a railroad tower. At the least it would have controlled the crossing gate system since Pacific Electric tracks crossed here too. The Oak Knoll line cars ran all the way down here into 1950, the year of this image, and then it was over. But if it was a more complex tower, and this one looks smaller than usual, it would have controlled the Interlock Plant which allowed the tower guys to run all the track switches in the area from a single location (throwing levers). On the Cruiseline site there is a photo south of here with the Super Chief heading into Los Angeles as it passes the old freight house. You’ll see there are no hand controlled switch stands on the tracks, so they had to be set remotely either by an interlock tower or later by an operator of Centralized Traffic Control (turning knobs that are handling an electro-mechanical system) off in an office location.