Norwood, OH: East Norwood (GK) Tower: B&O vs. Pennsy vs. Pennsy (First Electro-Mechanical)

(Satellite, the Pennsy used to continue South)

Darren Reynolds posted four photos with the comment: "B&O "GK" Tower.  East Norwood   East norwood, OH.    Photos by: Dan Finfrock   ( I love this tower!!!!)"

Bob Zoellner: Spent a lot of high school evenings in this tower. Billed as the first electro-mechanical interlocking in the U.S.

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Darren Reynold posted six photos, four of which repeated the above photos, with the comment: "B&O   "CK" tower   East Norwood ,OH."

[The above "GK" comment is the correct one. [bullsheet]]

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[This comment comes from yet another post of six photos by Darren.]

John Riddle: The ironman at East Norwood leaned away from the train. In order to pick up orders, you needed to lean way out the engine's window holding a fusee in order to extend far enough to snag the train orders. Whew....

All six of the photos that Darren posted are available at NorthAmericanInterlockings-ohio. This is the seventh one at that site.

NorthAmericanInterlockings-ohio

In addition to controlling the Pennsy crossing of the east/west B&O route, this tower controlled the crossover and turnout for the connection to another Pennsy route.

1953 Cincinnati East Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

I did not try to indicate the current ownership of these routes in the title because it is complicated. This information is from the 2005 SPV Map. However, it shows the Pennsy route extending South past Ivanhoe. That is clearly not the case today. So I fired up Google Earth to see when the industrial park that is now south of the junction was built. It turns out showing this remnant of the Pennsy is a pretty serious error in the SPV Map because there were already buildings in that area in 1994. 

Indiana & Ohio Railway (IORY) has the Pennsy tracks north of the junction. IORY also has the other Pennsy route. But NS shares that route and CSX uses that route west of its connection to the IORY Norwood Yard. CSX, NS and IORY use the B&O route west of the junction and the Indiana & Ohio Central Railroad (IOCR) uses that route east of the junction.

Jon Bentz posted
\Ex-Reading 2102 intimidates a VW Beetle as it passes GK Tower at East Norwood in Cincinnati. 1980
Thomas Wentzel shared