Asheville, NC: NS Railyard, Yard Tower and Roundhouse

Railyard: (Satellite)

Yard Tower: (Satellite)

Roundhouse: (Satellite)

Daryl Lunsford commented on a post about a NS bridge collapse on Oct 23, 2024
I was a conductor with NS in the 90s, and my cousin still is one. He sent me this drone shot of Asheville yard a couple of weeks ago.
[This is flooding caused by Hurricane Helene.]

This is the yard tower that we see in the water in the above photo.

Street View, Oct 2023

Street View, Feb 2024

None of the topo maps with a scale of 1:24,000 loaded, so I had to use this 1:250,000 map. Southern had routes going to all four points of the compass. They share the route through town so I knew the yard would be along that shared segment.

1960/60 Knoxville Quad @ 250,000

Joseph Anderson posted
Like CSX, NS is not playing around this time and is preparing for future flood events. The replacement housing box for the CP Biltmore interlocking in Asheville, NC I think (at least personally for me) sets a new record for the highest elevated housing box I've seen in all my travels to date. Photo date: 2025-05-18

Jim Ruff: The railroads call these "housing boxes", bungalows.

Jon Roma: Elevated signal bungalows have been a thing for decades; among the installations I recall seeing were on the B&O main line that follows the Potomac River west of Harper's Ferry, and the C&O main line along the Ohio River in eastern Kentucky. The Illinois Central main line along the Mississippi in Kentucky also comes to mind.

Several of these installations were placed after devastating floods in the Thirties. Unfortunately flood events are becoming more widespread.

Joseph Anderson: Jon Roma Out of curiosity, if the components inside the signal housing box are spared from damage from flood events, does that infer that just the switches and their wiring just need to be replaced, or is there more stuff (like the bulbs and wiring for signals that have aspects low to the ground) that would have to be repair/replaced? Or does it simply boil down to "it just depends?".

Jon Roma: Joseph Anderson, when Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, Norfolk Southern had already rerouted rail traffic to other inland interchanges with western railroads, and embargoed service to the area where the storm was expected to make landfall. With the railroad out of service, their signal gangs removed as much equipment – switch machines, crossing signals, wayside signals, etc. and moved them to high ground. The railroad simultaneously stockpiled other material like ballast, ties, and rails near but not in the threatened area.

After the storm passed, there was obviously a lot of track damage (including track that was just plain missing) that had to be restored. Meanwhile the signal workforce began to restore the system.

I suspect that, unless the cables were physically damaged or failed insulation testing, the cable ends could be cleaned and reattached. With all the expensive equipment (microcontrollers, switch machines, signals, etc.) out of harm's way, they were able to restore the signal system relatively quickly.

NS produced a video on the recovery from Katrina, and it was quite interesting to watch.

Here's an article in the trade presss about storm recovery in the Thirties, digitized and on my website.

https://tinyurl.com/ymw4skmn