St. Charles, IL: CGW's Depot

Roger Puta took this June 23, 1962

Marty Bernard posted Roger Puta photos of three Chicago Great Western depots. The resolution was good enough that you could see the semaphore control piping in this picture
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Facebook Resolution

I shared Marty's posting with the "Railroad Depot Page" Facebook Group on Nov. 6, 2015 at 7:57pm with the comment:

There is a depot with a couple of semaphore blades on top. If you expand the picture, you can see a couple of pipes near the bottom going into the building at about the height of the agent's desk. This is so he could easily control the position of the blades from his desk. These signals are used by the agent to indicate if a train needs to pick up train orders. I asked some questions about the details of the signalling in another group. Gary answered:

Gary Sprandel: With a full aspect train order signal, green meant no orders, amber was pick up orders on the fly and red meant full stop and receive the orders.

You don't see train order signals in more modern versions of a depot picture because train orders were replaced by track side signaling.

Jerry Hund posted two photos with the comment:

St. Charles Illinois. 

Here’s a before and after view of the St. Charles station of the Chicago Great Western Railroad. Someone decided the ornate roof treatment had to go. Sadly this is all gone now replaced with a cell phone tower.

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