East Lansing, MI: Trowbidge Tower: CSX+CP/PM vs. CN+CP+Amtrak/GTW1

(Satellite)
Mark Hinsdale posted five photos with the comment:

R.I.P. Trowbridge...
WARNING: The following images may be too graphic for connoisseurs of Interlocking Towers and Tower Architecture. Viewer discretion is advised.
On a cold, clear January 18, 1973 morning, the end came for the small wood frame signal tower known as "Trowbridge," located at the crossing of then busy Grand Trunk Western and Chesapeake & Ohio main lines in East Lansing MI. A local fixture for generations of railfans attending nearby Michigan State University, many a student, including myself, spent countless hours at this place, taking in the heady aura of the railroad, and bugging the ever friendly tower operators that somehow managed to tolerate our incessant questions and thirst for railroad knowledge. I was there on that fateful morning, and captured these images of the tower's demise. Photo 1 captures Trowbridge on it's literal "Eve of Destruction," late in the afternoon on January 17th. Note the missing "Trowbridge" sign and the cut signal and communications "umbilical cord," hanging lifeless just to the right. I never found out who got the tower name sign, but presumed someone in GTW's Detroit HQ was the likely recipient. Images 2, 3 & 4 illustrate the dastardly deed being quickly accomplished by GTW's burro crane on Track #2. Picture 5 was taken the following morning, January 19th, after a light snow had fallen just before GTW westbound train #391 passed what little remained of the tower. Somehow, the snow and gray winter skies seemed appropriate to me for the somber "day after" scene An era had ended, and the location would never be the same again. Photos by Mark Hinsdale

Mark Hinsdale By this date it was all electrified, with the 8 levers reduced to simply completing the appropriate circuits

It is interesting that it was done by the GTW's MoW crane with a clamshell. Now a subcontractor

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It is interesting that it was done by the GTW's MoW crane with a clamshell. Now a demolition contractor would be hired who would use an excavator with a grapple attachment ("thumb") added to the bucket.

Mark Hinsdale posted
A June, 1972 "pre-drone" view of Trowbridge (East Lansing) MI, looking west along the Grand Trunk Western's Flint Subdivision. That's first trick operator Claude Mesick's green Olds by the tower, and for those of you ready to pounce on me over the questionable practices of 45 years ago, the signal maintainer was with me on this day!

Lansing Railroad Archaeology posted, 1952 photo by J.R. Stiefel
"The glory days at Trowbridge Junction. GTW 6332, one of the Trunk's famous U-3-b class Northerns, rushes an eastbound passenger train, presumably the Chicago-Toronto Maple Leaf, across the C&O Mainline at Trowbridge tower. Note the brand new interlocking tower on the left, replacing the soon to be demolished tower on the right. 6332 was retired and scrapped in the late 1950s and the new tower was closed and demolished in 1973. Trains of GTW parent Canadian National (including Amtrak's Blue Water) and C&O successor CSX still pass through the junction in the 21st century." [Gregg Pullano]
Curt Danielewicz shared
U3b 6332 leading a passenger train through Trowbridge Jct in Lansing Michigan.
Roger Shull Both towers were GTW. The tower on the right was deliberately torn down. The new one on the left was destroyed by a derailment sometime in the 1970s. It was never rebuilt. C&O never had a tower there. GTW controlled both lines.