POTD: Climbing the Divide At Dawn

Photo of the Day: Kevin Morgan

Good morning! That's what you can say about today's Photo of the Day, Kevin Morgan's dawn photograph of Union Pacific's daily manifest train from Denver's North Yard to Roper, Utah. Climbing out of Denver's suburbs toward the Big Ten curves, the Flatirons and eventually the Continental Divide summit inside the Moffat Tunnel, the train has about an hour lead on Amtrak's California Zephyr, which is yet to load in Denver. This shot is the second of two that morning. Kevin's work is consistently such a high quality, he could easily fill a yearly calendar! ◊

Perlman: A Glimpse of Pre-Staggers Act Railroading In America

This late 1950s-era documentary of the New York Central shows some very interesting technology of the time. Of particular interest is the analog version of a mass spectrometer used to predict the failure of a specific part inside a locomotive before it fails. Even in the era of DDE and JFK, railroads were pro-active!



This film was made by Alfred Perlman, president of the New York Central, back in the nadir of railroad regulation. Before the Staggers Act in 1980, railroads were suffering a slow, python-like squeezed death of government-supported competition of trucking industry and airlines on one side and government regulation via the ICC. The crush of it was that the ICC told them what they could charge with rate regulation, what contracts they could write, and all the bureaucracy such government control entailed.

Further, most of what he said was essentially correct. Such regulation was born in a monopoly and made sense at the time, but by the time of trucking and airlines, such regulations were impossible to live with. What he said would come back to haunt the US economy 20 years later. His company, the New York Central Railroad, after merging with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 to try to survive, eventually failed outright, forcing the Gov't to come in and form Conrail, (a CONgress consolidated RAILroad essentially). In true "closing the barn door after the horse has bolted" fashion, Congress would come to the rescue with 4R and Staggers, both passed in major election years. He was telling the truth as he saw it to the American public, and he had hoped it would make a difference in getting some regulation lifted. Not enough, apparently.

Such a debacle likely prompted Reagan to comment a few years later,

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

In 1997, the merger of the Penn Central was essentially undone with CSX and Norfolk Southern, the two eastern US railroads, carving up Conrail between them.

[Off topic: Along with the Reagan quote, my conservative roots can't help but wonder if there's a lesson in this post somewhere for proponents of Obamacare.]◊

Last Surviving Wig Wag in Colorado Still Wags For Amtrak Twice a Day

As a young kid fascinated with trains, I would get my folks to take me often enough to the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. Usually, it was my dad, but it could just as easily have been my mom and her mom as well out to stretch their legs and wander the small network of trails. Usually there was nothing running, not even the Gooses (sic) back then. But one time I remember stopping to view the strangest contraption I'd seen there or any on other right of way to my memory. When I got the courage to ask a volunteer, they said it was their wig wag signal. "Wig... wag? What's a wig wag?"

Long before the crossbucks and alternating red lights had become standard at railroad grade crossings, there were different means of attracting motorists' attention to the very real but too often unseen danger of a train approaching. A sensible solution by Albert Hunt, a Pacific Electric technician, decided that mimicking a crossing guards' lower half wave with a red lantern, then the railroad's universal indication to stop, would be the simplest and mechanically easier than a lot of other options. The gantry mounted wig wags were supplemented by other mounts, usually a pedestal in the median or off to the right of the lane approaching the crossing. The pedestal mounted a counter-weighted target with the box upside down, causing the target to wag like a person waving for attention.



The signals were deemed obsolete in 1949 when the now-common alternating red lights and crossbucks was standardized. Nevertheless, the ones in place since then have been wagging like the family dog for every train that crosses their stretch of rail.



While there doesn't appear to be a conspiracy afoot to remove these arcane contraptions, the number of active signals is dropping fast. The relative quiet of the original Atcheson Topeka & Santa Fe Railway route through Colorado's southeast and over Raton Pass allowed semaphore line signals to remain in place for years. That same quiet allowed the wig wags to survive as well, until the last decade. Wig wags at Manzanola and Rocky Ford have been retired, leaving a lone survivor in Delhi. A thoughtful aficionado with the know-how and resources has even placed a sign with it's unique status as "COLORADO'S LAST WIG WAG." Each day, Amtrak's Southwest Chief hustles by at track speed, one train in each direction, and precious little else. The rest of the day is reserved for quiet observation with cars and coyotes, along with the occasional antelope.

Surviving Wig Wags

The following map details a number of surviving wig-wags across the nation, mostly from Dan's Wig Wag Site. The red ones have been retired in the last 15 years or so. With less than 40 remaining, you might want to grab a photo of the survivors while you can.

Color	Status
	Active at last check
	Retired or removed

Surviving anachronisms? Sure. Historic? Yes, and until BNSF or Amtrak decides differently, the signal at Delhi will keep wagging each way, twice a day.◊