Lima, OH: Sugar Street Junction: CFE/CSX/Pennsy vs. IORY/DTI

(Satellite)

Charles Geletzke Jr. posted
PRR (PC-CR)-DT&I Sugar Street tower in Lima, Ohio on November 1, 1978. (C. H. Geletzke, Jr. photo)
[Note the ironman. According to a 1956 aerial photo, the tower was in the southeast quadrant. So the ironman must have been along the DT&I tracks.]
Charles Geletzke Jr. shared

Craig J. Orosz | The Lima News

At first I thought this article was saying this crossing still uses the "stop and proceed" rule that was invented in the 1800s as a resolution to the crossing war and like Brighton Park used until 2007. That is, thanks to modern communications, even if it is known there won't be a train on the other track for hours, the train approaching the crossing has to stop and look for trains that they know won't be their. Then they have to start and get the train back up to track speed.

But then I read that they do have circuitry and "whenever there’s a problem here, trains have to stop and back up." Control circuitry is designed to be fail safe. That means that if it "gets confused" it will display red in all four directions. It sounds like the current circuitry frequently gets confused. I assume the train backing up and trying again gives the circuitry a chance to get it correct and display green. (As another example of a fail safe design, a traffic light has a separate circuit that does nothing but test if both directions are displaying green at the same time. If it does detect a double green, it overrides the regular circuitry and puts all of the directions into flashing red mode. And I would expect modern equipment to trigger a service alarm.)

The proposed circuitry will place the train detection equipment and signals outside of the city. That way, if a train needs to be stopped because the other track is occupied, it will be stopped out in the country and not tie up several road crossings in the city.

The $2.1 million price tag also includes installing a connection track in the northwest quadrant. I see on a satellite image that there currently is a connection only in the southeast quadrant.