I wonder what the three buttons under his elbow were for?

[Cream, Sugar, Lemon. - Dave]

For about two years (97-99) I worked the lever operated interlocking at Springhill, Indiana on the Soo Line. We controlled movement of both Soo and CSXT traffic there, and the only time we engaged the timer was when an established ‘proceed’ route had to be changed. As I recall it took about eight minutes for a route to ‘time out,’ the longest eight minutes one could ever experience. Signals in advance of the interlocking gave the hogger on an approaching train a pretty good idea of what to expect at the interlocking, giving him the opportunity to set up his train handling for the plant. The timing device, for instance, prevented us from changing switches from a main line movement to a crossover move (requiring much slower speeds) when the train crew was rightly expecting to run straight through at maximum speed. Timers are still part of the most sophisticated CTC boards today, but they’re controlled by computer software. I suspect the three white faced devices controlled the train order boards outside the dispatchers office, which the timing apparatus was linked to.

The glass globe with the knob on the far right is a timer. When I visited an interlocking tower at a major junction, the operator explained that he had to set the timer before he could set a route. Then each change he made was locked down until the timer expired, which was after the next train was due. This made him think through his actions, and prevented last-minute corrections. I suppose it serves the same purpose here. I wonder if the three units to the left of it record the times that changes were made?

[Here, with a survivor, from Union Switch & Signal. -tterrace]